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Tutorials

Begin your experience by attending half- or full-day tutorials. Please note that you must register for the tutorial(s) you want to attend as space is limited and many sell out quickly.

Tutorials
MA Practical Agile Measurement: Benchmarking to Chart Project Trends NEW
Michael Mah, QSM Associates, Inc.
Monday, November 9, 2015 - 8:30am - 5:00pm

How can you compare the productivity and quality you achieve across the span of your projects—whether agile, waterfall, or outsourced? Join Michael Mah to learn about schedule, quality, and defect metric trends and how these patterns behave on real projects. Learn how to use your own data to move from sketches on a whiteboard to understand your own project trends for productivity, time-to-market, and defect rates. Using recent, real-world case studies, Michael offers a practical, expert view of software measurement, showing you these metrics in action. With hands-on exercises, learn how to use these techniques to make your own comparisons for time, cost, and quality. Working in pairs, calculate productivity metrics using the templates Michael employs in his consulting practice. Leverage these metrics to make the case for changing to more agile practices and creating realistic project commitments within your organization. Take back new ways for communicating to key decision makers the value of implementing agile development practices.

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6.75 PMI® PDUs
Learn more about Michael Mah.
MB Configuration Management: Robust Processes for Fast Delivery
Bob Aiello, CM Best Practices Consulting
Monday, November 9, 2015 - 8:30am - 4:30pm

Robust configuration management (CM) practices are critical for creating continuous application build, package and deployment to support agile’s integration and testing demands, and for rapidly packaging, releasing, and deploying applications into production. Classic CM—identifying system components, controlling changes, reporting the system’s configuration, and auditing—won’t do the trick anymore. Bob Aiello presents an in-depth tour of a more robust and powerful approach to CM consisting of six key functions: source code management, build engineering, environment management, change management and control, release management, and deployment which are the prerequisites for continuous delivery and DevOps. Bob describes current and emerging CM trends—support for agile development, container based deployments including Docker, cloud computing, and mobile apps development—and reviews the industry standards and frameworks available in practice today. Take back an integrated approach to establish proper IT governance and compliance using the latest CM practices while offering development teams the most effective CM practices available today.

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6.75 PMI® PDUs
Learn more about Bob Aiello.
MC Boot Camp for Agile Leaders: Understanding Your Leadership Style NEW
Jennifer Bonine, tap|QA, Inc.
Monday, November 9, 2015 - 8:30am - 12:00pm

The key to helping your teams transform and be successful in an agile world is knowing what skills are needed for you to be effective. Join Jennifer Bonine as she identifies these skills and shares a toolkit for agile leadership. The basic attributes of successful agile leaders are adaptability and the ability to change. At this boot camp explore your level of acceptance of change, how adaptive you are, and strategies to help others adapt to change. Learn your leadership style and identify your potential blind spots. Determine what metrics you should capture and use as you move to agile. Explore these ideas during hands-on activities dealing with how to influence and promote ideas that inspire others to follow and invest in new ideas. Finally, learn how to partner across cross-functional teams and geographies. Leave with ideas of what will work for you and your organization and take away tools you can use to help ensure you are an agile leader that your teams want to follow.

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Learn more about Jennifer Bonine.
MD Eight Steps to Kanban
Ken Pugh, Net Objectives
Monday, November 9, 2015 - 8:30am - 12:00pm

Transitioning to agile can be difficult—often downright wrenching—for teams, so many organizations are turning to kanban instead. Kanban, which involves just-in-time software delivery, offers a more gradual transition to agile and is adaptable to many company cultures and environments. With kanban, developers pull work from a queue—taking care not to exceed a threshold for simultaneous tasks—while making progress visible to all. Ken Pugh shares eight steps to adopt kanban in your team and organization. Ken begins with a value stream map of existing processes to establish an initial kanban board, providing transparency into the state of the current workflow. Another step establishes explicit policies to define workflow changes and engender project visibility. Because you can easily expand kanban to cover many parts of development, another step is to increase stakeholder involvement in the process. Join this interactive session to practice these key steps with hands-on exercises and take away an initial plan for implementing kanban in your organization.

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3.75 PMI® PDUs
Learn more about Ken Pugh.
ME A Product Ownership Practicum for ScrumMasters and Product Owners NEW
Bob Galen, Velocity Partners
Monday, November 9, 2015 - 8:30am - 12:00pm

You’ve just been selected by your boss for the Product Owner role … or you’re a newly minted ScrumMaster trying to figure out how it all works … or you’re an experienced Product Owner who is struggling to find balance between your stakeholders, customers, and team … or you’ve just received your CSPO certification but have no experience being a REAL Product Owner. Fear not! Join Product Owner coach and author Bob Galen in this fast-paced, crash course in how to ROCK your new role. Explore the dynamics of user stories, product backlogs, valuation and prioritization, establishing minimal marketable deliverables, and how to deliver high-impact sprint reviews. Bob then raises the bar to talk about product ownership at scale, how to build quality into your products, and how to effectively communicate and negotiate within your organization. Leave this tutorial with the ideas, skills, and techniques to become the Product Owner your boss wants you to be.

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3.75 PMI® PDUs
Learn more about Bob Galen.
MG Agile Estimation and Planning: Scrum, Kanban, and Beyond Monday, November 9, 2015 - 8:30am - 12:00pm

If you are new to agile methods—or trying to improve your estimation and planning skills—this session is for you. David Hussman brings years of experience coaching teams on how to employ XP, lean, Scrum, and kanban. He advises teams to obtain the estimating skills they need from these approaches rather than following a prescribed process. From start to finish, David focuses on learning from estimates as you learn to estimate. He covers skills and techniques from story point estimating delivered within iterations to planning without estimates by delivering a continuous flow of value. Going beyond the simple mechanics of estimation and planning, David explores agile techniques to enable continuous learning and ways to prevent sprint planning sessions from becoming empty rituals. Join David and your peers to practice your agile estimation and planning techniques so they can become powerful tools within your project.

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Learn more about David Hussman.
MH Measurement and Metrics for Test Managers
Michael Sowers, TechWell Corp.
Monday, November 9, 2015 - 8:30am - 12:00pm

To be most effective, test managers must develop and use metrics to help direct the testing effort and make informed recommendations about the software’s release readiness and associated risks. Because one important testing activity is to “measure” the quality of the software, test managers must measure the results of both the development and testing processes. Collecting, analyzing, and using metrics are complicated because many developers and testers are concerned that the metrics will be used against them. Join Mike Sowers as he addresses common metrics—measures of product quality, defect removal efficiency, defect density, defect arrival rate, and testing status. Learn the guidelines for developing a test measurement program, rules of thumb for collecting data, and ways to avoid “metrics dysfunction.” Mike identifies several metrics paradigms and discusses the pros and cons of each.

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3.75 PMI® PDUs
Learn more about Michael Sowers.
MI Building Cross Platform and Mobile Apps with XAML NEW
Mike Benkovich, Imagine Technologies, Inc.
Monday, November 9, 2015 - 1:00pm - 4:30pm

To make it possible for designers and developers to collaborate and build compelling user interfaces using the same assets, Microsoft created the extended application markup language XAML and introduced it in the release of the Windows Presentation Foundation. Based in XML and using language features that enable data binding, templating, styling, and adaptive layouts, it creates the interfaces declaratively and efficiently. XAML has appeared in Silverlight, Windows Phone, and Metro and has now gone cross platform to Android and iOS with Xamarin. Mike Benkovich begins with the basics of XAML—controls and containers, options for layout including canvases, stack panels and grids, and responsive layouts that take advantage of the available screen real estate. Next Mike dives into XAML advanced data binding and converters. Finally, he takes a brief look at Xamarin to show how you can deliver great applications across platforms on almost any device.

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3.75 PMI® PDUs
Learn more about Mike Benkovich.
MJ Principles and Practices of Lean Software Development
Ken Pugh, Net Objectives
Monday, November 9, 2015 - 1:00pm - 4:30pm

Lean software development has often been described as “better, faster, cheaper” and focused on “eliminating waste,” but those are misnomers. Going after speed improvement and waste elimination can actually reduce the benefits you might otherwise get from lean. Ken Pugh describes what lean software development really is and why you should be incorporating it into your development efforts—whether you use Scrum, kanban, or SAFe. Ken explains the mindset, principles, and practices of lean. Its foundations are systems thinking, a relentless focus on time, and an understanding that complex systems require holistic solutions. Employing lean principles, you optimize the whole, eliminate delays, improve collaboration, deliver value quickly, create effective ecosystems for development, push decisions to the people doing the work, and build integrity in. Lean practices include small batches, cross-functional teams, implementing pull, and managing work in process. Ken describes how to use lean—no matter where you are in your development process.

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3.75 PMI® PDUs
Learn more about Ken Pugh.

One of the latest facets of the mobile paradigm is mobile wearables―a new generation of personalized technology that knows us better than our closest friends do. How many of your friends know how far you walked or what you ate today? Although you may now think mobile wearables are just for geeks, they will become commonplace very quickly. Our challenge is to develop applications that can synthesize context from the gigantic amount of data these devices and their sensors generate. Ensuring the privacy and security of device usage and its data will be of highest concern. Philip Lew systematically analyzes context―the most important element in future design and development of mobile applications while incorporating big data, privacy, and security. Using examples, Philip shows the contextual elements you need to consider now and discusses how to identify key factors for a future generation of wearable products based on discovering anticipatory services.

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Learn more about Philip Lew.
ML Test Attacks to Break Mobile, IoT, and Embedded Software NEW
Jon Hagar, Independent Consultant
Monday, November 9, 2015 - 1:00pm - 4:30pm

In the tradition of James Whittaker’s book series How to Break Software, Jon Hagar applies the testing “attack” concept to the domain of mobile, IoT, and embedded software systems. First, Jon defines the environments of mobile, IoT and embedded software. He then examines the issues of software product failures caused by defects found in these types of software. Next, Jon shares a set of ten attacks against mobile, IoT, and embedded software based on common modes of failure that teams can direct against their software today. Like software design patterns, attacks are test design patterns that must be customized for particular contexts. For specific attacks, Jon explains when and how to conduct the attack, who should conduct the attack, and why the attack works to find bugs. In addition to learning these testing concepts, attendees will get to practice the attack pattern on devices containing mobile, IoT and/or embedded software—so bring your smart phones.

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Learn more about Jon Hagar.
MM Innovation Thinking: Evolve and Expand Your Capabilities
Jennifer Bonine, tap|QA, Inc.
Monday, November 9, 2015 - 1:00pm - 4:30pm

Innovation is a word frequently tossed around in organizations today. The standard cliché is “Do more with less.” People and teams want to be innovative but often struggle with how to define, prioritize, implement, and track their innovation efforts. Jennifer Bonine shares the Innovation Types model to give you new tools to evolve and expand your innovation capabilities. Find out if your innovation ideas and efforts match your team and company goals. Learn how to classify your innovation and improvement efforts as core (to the business) or context (essential but non-revenue generating). With this data, you can better decide how much of your effort should be spent on core versus context activities. Take away new tools for classifying innovation and mapping your activities and your team’s priorities to their importance and value. With Jennifer’s guidance you’ll evolve and expand your innovation capabilities on the spot.

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3.75 PMI® PDUs
Learn more about Jennifer Bonine.
MN Planning, Architecting, and Implementing Test Automation within the Lifecycle
Michael Sowers, TechWell Corp.
Monday, November 9, 2015 - 1:00pm - 4:30pm

In test automation, we must often use several tools that have been developed or acquired over time with little to no consideration of an overall plan, architecture, or the need for integration. As a result, productivity suffers and frustrations increase. Join Mike Sowers as he shares experiences from multiple organizations in creating an integrated test automation plan and developing a test automation architecture. Mike discusses both the good (engaging the technical architecture team) and bad (too much isolation between test automators and test designers) on his test automation journey in large and small enterprises. Discover approaches to ensure that the test tools you currently have and the new test tools you acquire or develop will work well with other testing and application lifecycle software. Explore approaches to drive test automation adoption across multiple project teams and departments, and communicate the real challenges and potential benefits to your stakeholders.

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3.75 PMI® PDUs
Learn more about Michael Sowers.
TA Continuous Delivery: Rapid and Reliable Releases with DevOps
Bob Aiello, CM Best Practices Consulting
Tuesday, November 10, 2015 - 8:30am - 5:00pm

DevOps is an emerging set of principles, methods, and practices that enables the rapid deployment of software systems. DevOps focuses on lowering barriers between development, testing, security, and operations in support of rapid iterative development and deployment. Many organizations struggle when implementing DevOps because of its inherent technical, process, and cultural challenges. Bob Aiello shares DevOps best practices, starting with its role early in the application lifecycle and bridging the gap with testing, security, and operations. Bob explains how to implement DevOps using industry standards and frameworks such as ITIL v3 (IT Service Management) in both agile and non-agile environments, focusing on automated deployment frameworks that quickly deliver value to the business. DevOps includes server provisioning essential for cloud computing in what is becoming known as Infrastructure as Code. Bob equips you with practical and effective DevOps practices—automated application build, packaging, and deployment—essential for meeting today's business and technology demands.

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6.75 PMI® PDUs
Learn more about Bob Aiello.
TB Requirements Engineering: A Hands-On Practicum SOLD OUT NEW
Erik van Veenendaal, Improve IT Services BV
Tuesday, November 10, 2015 - 8:30am - 4:30pm

Identifying, documenting, and communicating requirements are key to all successful IT projects. Common problems in requirements engineering are How do we discover the real requirements?, How do we document requirements?, and How do user stories, use cases, and epics fit into requirements? Erik van Veenendaal answers these questions and more while helping you improve your skills in requirements engineering for both traditional and agile projects. With practical case studies and hands-on exercises, Erik illustrates requirements issues and solutions. Practice specifying and evaluating traditional requirements and user stories while learning how to gather information through varied elicitation techniques. Explore the advantages and disadvantages of each technique. Learn a rule set for determining how much documentation you need for “good enough” requirements. Explore requirements review techniques—walkthroughs and inspections—to determine what will work best for you. Create a set of Golden Rules for requirements engineering that your project can use.

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6.75 PMI® PDUs
Learn more about Erik van Veenendaal.
TC Scaling, Spreading, and Succeeding: When to Do What and Why Tuesday, November 10, 2015 - 8:30am - 12:00pm

More and more large organizations are adopting agile methods. As they do, many are  not focused on what level of process will help and are adding more process than needed. David Hussman describes the use of agile methods on large programs and small teams in large organizations including Disney, Target, Siemens, and others. David uses real-world experiences to teach concrete ideas of when scale is needed or not, as well as how to spread lasting agility that is based on concrete measures of success. Be warned—you will be participating. So come prepared with one or more situations where you would like to see agile methods spread throughout your organization or scaled to address the production challenges of a large system or process. Working in pairs and small groups, learn how to apply less process with more value, being mindful that large groups working on a single effort need disciplined practices to synchronize, validate, and promote real and lasting agility. Please come with your questions, experiences, and skepticism (the latter is always welcome).

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Learn more about David Hussman.
TD The GROWS™ Method: A Modern Software Development Suite NEW
Andy Hunt, Pragmatic Bookshelf
Jared Richardson, Agile Artisans
Tuesday, November 10, 2015 - 8:30am - 12:00pm

Join Agile Manifesto author Andy Hunt and Jared Richardson to learn about GROWS™, a modern development approach that’s built around the Dreyfus Model of Skills Acquisition and deliberate experimentation to guide project decisions. Incorporating existing practices, it's a methodology designed to improve both initial adoption and on-going evolution of your team and organization. Andy and Jared describe GROWS in detail, diving into specific steps and practices for managers and executives. Learn techniques to share the company's vision effectively, and simple tools for managing progress without micromanaging. Know when a project is doing well—and when it's in trouble. Discover how to keep your team on track with the “3 Rs”—building on a Rhythm (their iteration cadence), building the Right thing (from the vision), and working the Right way (with craftsmanship and technical practices). Come, learn, and participate as Andy and Jared provide an understanding of the GROWS Method and how it can move your company forward.

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3.75 PMI® PDUs
Learn more about Andy Hunt and Jared Richardson.
TE Agile Project Failures: Root Causes and Corrective Actions SOLD OUT
Jeffery Payne, Coveros, Inc.
Tuesday, November 10, 2015 - 8:30am - 12:00pm

Agile initiatives always begin with high expectations—accelerate delivery, meet customer needs, and improve software quality. The truth is that many agile projects do not deliver on some or all of these expectations. If you want help to ensure the success of your agile project or to get an agile project back on track, this tutorial is for you. Jeffery Payne discusses the most common causes of agile project failure and how you can avoid these issues—or mitigate their damaging effects. Poor project management, ineffective requirements development, failed communications, software development problems, and (non)agile testing can all contribute to project failure. Jeffery shares practical tips and techniques to identify early warning signs that your agile project might be in trouble and offers suggestions for getting your project back on track. Gain the knowledge you need to guide your organization toward agile project implementations that serve both the business and the stakeholders.

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3.75 PMI® PDUs
Learn more about Jeffery Payne.
TF Build Your Continuous Deployment Pipeline NEW
Jennifer Bonine, tap|QA, Inc.
Tuesday, November 10, 2015 - 8:30am - 12:00pm

A great deal of confusion surrounds the concepts of release automation, continuous integration (CI), continuous delivery, and continuous deployment. How these concepts work progressively to achieve high-quality software delivery is generating a lot of discussion and controversy. Jennifer Bonine defines the methodology options, processes, and tools associated with release automation, as well as the differences between its maturity levels. Understand the benefits of more frequent, smaller releases, and the exponential risk generated by large, infrequent releases. Hear highlights of industry case studies that demonstrate the substantial speed, quality, and ROI gains of improving your release automation process. Acquire the insight and motivation needed to take the next step—from wherever your organization is now—toward full release automation. Learn to build your continuous deployment strategy, and discover ways to incorporate mobile and device testing into your plan. Start building out a roadmap using a case study and understand your options for building a continuous deployment pipeline.

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3.75 PMI® PDUs
Learn more about Jennifer Bonine.
TG Telling Your Testing Stories
Bob Galen, Velocity Partners
Tuesday, November 10, 2015 - 8:30am - 12:00pm

It used to be that your work and the results spoke for themselves. No longer is that the case. Today you need to be more collaborative and a better communicator and facilitator so that you drive results from a team perspective. One of the most effective communication paradigms is the “Story.” You can tell stories that drive specific action. You can tell stories that communicate general product requirements or customer needs. You can tell stories that inspire teams and drive results. Or you can try to write everything down and hope for the best.

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Learn more about Bob Galen.
TH Test Estimation in Practice
Rob Sabourin, AmiBug.com
Tuesday, November 10, 2015 - 8:30am - 12:00pm

Anyone who has ever attempted to estimate software testing effort realizes just how difficult the task can be. The number of factors that can affect the estimate is virtually unlimited. Rob Sabourin says that the key to good estimates is to understand the primary variables, compare them to known standards, and normalize the estimates based on their differences. This is easy to say but difficult to accomplish because estimates are frequently required even when very little is known about the project and what is known is constantly changing. Throw in a healthy dose of politics and a bit of wishful thinking, and estimation can become a nightmare. Rob provides a foundation for anyone who must estimate software testing work effort. Learn about the test team’s and tester’s roles in estimation and measurement, and how to estimate in the face of uncertainty. Analysts, developers, leads, test managers, testers, and QA personnel can all benefit from this tutorial.

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3.75 PMI® PDUs
Learn more about Rob Sabourin.
TI Coaching and Leading Agility: Tuning Agile Practices Tuesday, November 10, 2015 - 1:00pm - 4:30pm

Are you an agile practitioner who wants to take agility to the next level? Are you looking to gain real value from agile instead of simply more talk? Even though many are using agile methods, not all are seeing big returns on their investment. David Hussman shares his experiences and describes a short assessment that you can use to identify both strengths and weaknesses in your use of agile methods. Creating an assessment helps you look at the processes you are using, examine why you are using them, and determine whether they provide real value. This assessment guides you through the rest of the tutorial, helping you tune your current processes and embrace new tools—product thinking, product delivery, team building, technical excellence, program level agility, and more. Leave with an actionable coaching plan that is measurable and contextually significant to your organization. If you want to promote real agility—or lead others to do so—come ready to think, challenge, question, listen, and learn.

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3.75 PMI® PDUs
Learn more about David Hussman.
TJ Quality Assurance: Moving Your Organization Beyond Testing NEW
Jeffery Payne, Coveros, Inc.
Tuesday, November 10, 2015 - 1:00pm - 4:30pm

Many organizations use the terms quality assurance and software testing interchangeably to describe their testing activities. But true quality assurance is much, much more than testing alone. Quality assurance encompasses a planned set of tasks, activities, and actions used to provide management with information about the quality of software so appropriate business decisions can be made. Jeffery Payne discusses the differences between software testing and quality assurance, examining the typical activities performed during a true quality assurance program. Topics discussed include evaluating software processes, validating software artifacts (requirements, designs, etc.), presenting a quality case to management, and how to start implementing a true quality assurance program. Leave with a working knowledge of quality assurance and a framework for incrementally improving your overall software quality assurance program.

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3.75 PMI® PDUs
Learn more about Jeffery Payne.
TK Mobile App Usability and UX for Developers and Testers
Philip Lew, XBOSoft
Tuesday, November 10, 2015 - 1:00pm - 4:30pm

Many enterprises  today are migrating to mobile while new organizations are adopting a mobile-first or mobile-only strategy. Because of the special characteristics of the mobile platform and its user base, usability and the user experience (UX) take on an increased emphasis, although there are currently no formal models describing UX. With SaaS-based business models, where users can pay by the month and switch applications in a heartbeat, UX becomes paramount. Phil Lew explains the definitions of usability and user experience, describes the connections between them, and explores evaluation methods you can use as the first step toward improving UX on the mobile platform. To build a deeper understanding of how to improve your own app’s UX, Phil gives examples to illustrate the good, the bad, and the ugly of mobile UX. Discover key principles for design and evaluation of usability. Develop a methodology for continuous improvement of your users’ experience.

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3.75 PMI® PDUs
Learn more about Philip Lew.
TL Acceptance Test-Driven Development: Principles and Practices NEW
Ken Pugh, Net Objectives
Tuesday, November 10, 2015 - 1:00pm - 4:30pm

Defining, understanding, and agreeing on the scope of work to be done is often an area of discomfort for product managers, developers, and quality assurance experts alike. The origin of many items living in our defect tracking systems can be traced to the difficulty of performing these initial activities. Ken Pugh introduces acceptance test-driven development (ATDD), explains why it works, and outlines the different roles team members play in the process. ATDD improves communication among customers, developers, and testers. ATDD has proven to dramatically increase productivity and reduce delays in development by decreasing re-work. Through interactive exercises, Ken shows how acceptance tests created during requirement analysis decrease ambiguity, increase scenario coverage, help with effort estimation, and act as a measurement of quality. Join Ken to examine issues with automating acceptance tests including how to create test doubles and when to insert them into the process. Explore the quality of tests and how they relate to the underlying code.

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3.75 PMI® PDUs
Learn more about Ken Pugh.
TN Advanced Test Automation in Agile Development
Rob Sabourin, AmiBug.com
Tuesday, November 10, 2015 - 1:00pm - 4:30pm

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 that test-driven development (TDD) techniques, precise test and tool selection, appropriate automation design, and team collaboration can be combined to fully integrate testing into agile delivery teams. Learn how automation supports and drives agile testing activities, and how test automation is implemented in diverse organizations. Rob illustrates many types of automation with sample test descriptions, source code, and test scripts. See examples of automated tests for TDD, acceptance test-driven development, and behavior driven-development. Leave with a new toolkit of agile automation methods and techniques.

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3.75 PMI® PDUs
Learn more about Rob Sabourin.