Quality Assurance

Tutorials

James Whittaker, Microsoft

Mon, 06/08/2015 - 8:30am

Line up all the successful people in the world. Take away the pedigreed and the prodigies—you know the people who are going to succeed no matter what. Remove the brown-nosers and right-time-right-place lottery winners. And who do you have left? People who succeeded on purpose. Study these folks carefully, and you’ll find their paths to the top have common themes. James Whittaker exposes the career strategies of the ultra-successful and analyzes them in detail. Learn about personal strategies for identifying high-payoff activities and gain insight into being more effective as an individual contributor, manager, and leader. Discover how to identify and interact with the right set of career mentors and role models. Being successful doesn’t have to be an accident. Join James and learn how to succeed—on purpose.

ML Wearables: Navigating the Perfect Storm of Sensors, Big Data, Privacy, and Security NEW

Philip Lew, XBOSoft

Mon, 06/08/2015 - 1:00pm

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 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.

TD Giving Great Presentations: The Art of Stage Presence SOLD OUT

James Whittaker, Microsoft

Tue, 06/09/2015 - 8:30am

Every hour of every day in every country where business is conducted, the same scene plays out―dozens of well-paid people sitting in a conference room being bored senseless. Death by a thousand slides. This mind numbing, soul crushing, grotesquely expensive experience ends here and now! James Whittaker reveals the secrets to conceiving, building, and delivering a great presentation. Whatever your level of presentation skills, this tutorial will hone them. Learn how to build a compelling story from the ground up. Receive advice on how to remember and recall that story as you deliver it. Learn how to use oratory and literary instruments to make the story come alive for your audience. Do your part to put an end to bad presentations―attend this tutorial.

TL Mobile App Usability and UX for Developers and Testers NEW

Philip Lew, XBOSoft

Tue, 06/09/2015 - 1:00pm

Today, many organizations 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. With SaaS-based business models, where users can pay by the month and switch applications in a heartbeat, user experience becomes paramount. Currently, there are no formal models describing UX. Philip 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 user experience on the mobile platform. Philip uses examples to illustrate the good, the bad, and the ugly of mobile UX to build a deeper understanding of how to improve your own app’s UX. Discover key principles for design and evaluation of usability. Develop a methodology for continuous improvement of your users’ experience.

TM Innovation Thinking: Evolve and Expand Your Capabilities SOLD OUT

Jennifer Bonine, tap|QA, Inc.

Tue, 06/09/2015 - 1:00pm

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.

Keynotes

K2 Better Thinking for Better Software: Thinking Critically about Software Development

Laurent Bossavit, Institut Agile

Wed, 06/10/2015 - 10:00am

To paraphrase a famous Albert Einstein quote—We cannot solve our problems by applying the same level of thinking that we used when we created them. Although Einstein was originally talking about war, this also is applicable to software development, where one level of thinking—known as software engineering—has prevailed for the past four decades. Laurent Bossavit explores why several of the key assumptions are no longer—or never were—credible. These include the cost of defects curve, the notion of 10x engineers, and the origin of software bugs. Not stopping at debunking suspect claims and sharing techniques to expose them, Laurent goes on to explain the driving motivation which helped the claims become widespread―a misguided search for universal laws of software development―and suggests an alternative approach at a different level, hinted at by lean and agile practices. In this alternative approach each of us, backed by hard data and critical thinking, puts on the scientist's lab coat in search of local truths within our development organizations.

K3 Lean UX: Turn User Experience Design Inside Out

Jeff Patton, Jeff Patton & Associates

Thu, 06/11/2015 - 8:30am

It’s usually the finer points of the user experience (UX) design that separate good-enough software from really-great software. For companies launching new products or adding new capabilities, how well they understand their users and their needs differentiates the wild successes from the dismal failures. This is user experience design, and doing it well in the past took experienced specialists and lots of time. But the world has changed. Jeff Patton describes how Lean UX turns product design into a team sport in which everyone participates. Learn how Lean UX thinking breaks what we thought were good design rules. In Lean UX design, it’s OK to guess. It's OK for developers to talk to users. It’s OK for bad artists to design user interfaces. And, it’s OK to demonstrate half-baked ideas. You’d think that if we break all these rules, good user experience couldn’t possibly result—but it does. Jeff shares examples of how all this rule breaking is supported by a culture of experimentation and learning—and that makes all the difference.