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Software Development

Concurrent Sessions

W4 Usability Testing: Personas, Scenarios, Use Cases, and Test Cases
Koray Yitmen, UXservices
Wed, 04/10/2013 - 10:30am

To create better test cases, Koray Yitmen says you must know your users. And the path to better test case creation in usability testing starts with the segmentation and definition of users, a concept known as personas. Contrary to common market-wise segmentation that focuses on users' demographic information, personas focus on users’ behavioral characteristics, animating them in the minds of designers, developers, and testers. Put these personas “on stage” and let them play their roles in user scenarios.

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W6 Concurrent Testing Games: Developers and Testers Working Together
Nate Oster, CodeSquads, LLC
Wed, 04/10/2013 - 12:45pm

The best software development teams find ways for programmers and testers to work closely together. These teams recognize that programmers and testers each bring their own unique strengths and perspectives to the project. However, working in agile teams requires us to unlearn many of the patterns that traditional development taught us.

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W7 Testing Challenges within Agile Teams
Janet Gregory, DragonFire, Inc.
Wed, 04/10/2013 - 12:45pm

In her book Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams, Janet Gregory recommends using the automation pyramid as a model for test coverage. In the pyramid model, most automated tests are unit tests written and maintained by the programmers,and tests that execute below the user interface—API-level tests that can be developed and maintained collaboratively by programmers and testers. However, as agile becomes mainstream, some circumstances may challenge this model.

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W9 Collaboration without Chaos
Griffin Jones, Congruent Compliance
Wed, 04/10/2013 - 2:00pm

Sometimes software testers overvalue the adherence to the collective wisdom embodied in organizational processes and the mechanical execution of tasks. Overly directive procedures work—to a point—projecting an impression of firm, clear control. But do they generate test results that are valuable to our stakeholders? Is there a way to orchestrate everyone’s creative contributions without inviting disorganized confusion? Is there a model that leverages the knowledge and creativity of the people doing the work, yet exerts reliable control in a non-directive way?

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W12 How Spotify Tests World Class Apps
Alexander Andelkovic, Spotify
Wed, 04/10/2013 - 2:00pm

In today’s competitive world, more and more HTML5 applications are being developed for mobile and desktop platforms. Spotify has partnered with world-renowned organizations to create high quality apps to enrich the user experience. Testing a single application within a few months can be a challenge. But it's a totally different beast to test multiple world-class music discovery apps every week. Alexander Andelkovic shares insights into the challenges they face coordinating all aspects of app testing to meet their stringent testing requirements.

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T10 Quantifying the Value of Static Analysis
William Oliver, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Thu, 04/11/2013 - 2:00pm

During the past ten years, static analysis tools have become a vital part of software development for many organizations. However, the question arises, “Can we quantify the benefits of static analysis?” William Oliver presents the results of a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory study that first measured the cost of finding software defects using formal testing on a system without static analysis; then, they integrated a static analysis tool into the process and, over a period of time, recalculated the cost of finding software defects.

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T2 Whiteboarding—for Testers, Developers, and Customers, Too
Rob Sabourin, AmiBug.com
Thu, 04/11/2013 - 10:30am

How can testers spend more time doing productive testing and waste less time preparing "useless" project documentation? Rob Sabourin employs whiteboarding techniques to enable faster, easier, and more powerful communication and collaboration—without all the paperwork. Rob uses whiteboarding to help identify technical risks, understand user needs, and focus testing on what really matters to business stakeholders. Whiteboard block diagrams visualize technical risk to stakeholders. Whiteboard fault models highlight failure modes to developers and testers.

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