Better Software East 2016 - Test Automation Engineer

Docker is a mechanism for low-overhead virtualization that is emerging as a key aspect of DevOps architectures. Interest in Docker—with its lightweight, portable, “build once, configure once, and run anywhere” containers—is growing. Aater Suleman presents and demonstrates best practices, pitfalls, and practical advice from real-world case studies using Docker. Aater discusses basic Docker concepts, Docker terminology, Docker commands, must-know Docker features, and real-world examples of Docker projects. He focuses on eight common use cases and explores the...

DevOps is more than a buzzword or passing fad. It's a radically new approach to rapidly delivering high-quality software applications. However, many organizations don’t fully grasp the magnitude of this change or what it means for everyone involved in the software development lifecycle. Jeffery Payne says that DevOps—when done right—drives higher quality and efficiency into software development, software testing, and application management activities. It empowers teams to remove impediments to quality and productivity throughout the entire software lifecycle....

Agile teams are charged with delivering potentially shippable software at the end of each iteration. In fact, some high-performing agile teams with advanced automation can ship working software every day. They achieve regression confidence with extensive automated test suites and other advanced practices. Rob Sabourin shares automation techniques to improve story and feature testing, exploratory testing, and regression testing. Explore ways to fully integrate testing into agile delivery teams by combining test-driven development (TDD) techniques, precise test and...

Harold “Waldo” Grunenwald hears it all the time—DevOps doesn't work. Sometimes it's from people whose “DevOps transformation” consisted of a team rename or from operations people who scoff at the idea of letting development teams deploy to production frequently. Waldo demonstrates why placing the blame on DevOps practices and tooling is missing the point. He offers practical solutions to the problems of historically poor relations between operations and development teams, describes why delegating authority is the path to freedom, and shows why cross-functional...

Whether you’re a developer, tester, ScrumMaster, CTO, or CEO, you know you have to listen to the needs of your customers and team; accept the fact that they are going to change their minds; and respond, adapt, tap dance, iterate, raise your voice, stand up, and delight your audience in order to ship out the best software of your entire life. Can I get a witness?! Jonathan Silva shares evangelizing strategies that can help you inspire at any level—whether a Fortune 500 company or a startup software company. These approaches include developing your point of view,...

As companies look to drive down the cost of quality, they often leap to the conclusion that centralizing QA into a Testing Center of Excellence (TCoE) will magically result in increased quality and lower costs—without understanding the path required to get there. Change requires defining mission and goals, and putting into place a plan to move forward. Equally important is the need to establish cost of quality metrics to shift the focus from the cost of testing to the cost of building quality applications. Susan Schanta shares her experience transitioning...

An organization’s ability to adopt a DevOps approach for software delivery often hinges on a cultural transformation that may be more difficult than technology issues. The keys to success are change supported from the top down, combined with people on the front line who are willing to experiment, fail fast, continuously learn, and openly collaborate in a blameless and fun working environment. When done right, the result is a renewed level of trust between the people involved and the organization they work for. Join Al Wagner as he shares how teams can increase...

When building new content for a game such as Candy Crush Saga that has more than 1000 levels, it is extremely important to make sure that the level of difficulty is balanced and that the user does not experience crashes or problems through some unforeseen type of play. Alexander Andelkovic shows you how King is training AI-programs (bots) to test its games by mimicking human interactions. Alex explains how King is taking testing to the next level by employing Monte Carlo tree search, automatic heuristic construction, and NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topologies (...

Much of the time, security testing is relegated to the end of development and then is assumed to be someone else’s problem. However, late security fixes can have a huge impact on your delivery dates. Although automated scanners offer some help by inspecting your application’s HTTP traffic, most common attacks are best performed in the browser, which should be the focus of your exploratory security testing. Using familiar automation practices, open source tools (Webdriver/Selenium), and a browser (Chrome/Firefox/Edge), Abraham Marin-Perez shows you how to drive a...

When creating models of system performance, the primary challenges are where and how to start. Whatever the performance characteristics to be estimated or modeled, we need to adopt methods that are repeatable and able to address both the business and technical needs of the project's delivery. All too often, performance tests inadvertently mix scenarios with little regard for how transaction rates can confound technical recommendations and business decisions. Join Will Hurley as he presents a real-world case study that demonstrates the impact on business decisions...

High-performing DevOps organizations deploy hundreds of times more frequently than lower performers, so it is no surprise that high performers are known for their innovation and quality. Low-performing DevOps teams fail to achieve continuous delivery due to limitations in their testing process and strategy and thus miss the opportunity to continuously test their ideas and integrate feedback. Stacy Kirk describes how to start or optimize quality in your DevOps lifecycle for continuous delivery of innovative applications. Stacy explains how to foster a culture of...

A solid test automation implementation is key to any foray into continuous delivery. Although the test automation waters may look peaceful and pristine, anyone who has jumped in to automate testing complex systems has found the waters to be troubled and murky. Tests take too long to run, they periodically break for mysterious reasons, or they fail to catch business critical problems. Over time this leads to automated tests becoming outdated and irrelevant. Brian Saylor has studied a number of test automation projects—and far too many lines of test code—to...

Most of us believe we are good listeners. However, we often overestimate this skill and are hard-wired to short change it by making assumptions, providing answers, and jumping in when we think we know what people are trying to say. In doing so, we rob ourselves of the chance to encourage growth, build trust and respect, and promote ownership. Listening is about more than hearing the words; it is about tone, body language, and so much more. But wait … listening well can be learned, so join Judith Mills to understand and practice this underutilized skill....