STARCANADA 2016 - Systems Analyst
Tuesday, October 25
Critical Thinking for Software Testers
Critical thinking is the kind of thinking that specifically looks for problems and mistakes. Regular people don't do a lot of it. However, if you want to be a great tester, you need to be a great critical thinker. Critically thinking testers save projects from dangerous assumptions and ultimately from disasters. The good news is that critical thinking is not just innate intelligence or a talent—it's a learnable and improvable skill you can master. Michael Bolton shares the specific techniques and heuristics of critical thinking and presents realistic testing...
Test Data: Create, Secure, Manage, and Reuse
The absence of a well-defined data management approach can cripple your testing and test automation, significantly reducing pre-release defect yield. Many teams invest lots of time and money managing test data and still do not achieve their goals for test coverage and quality. Test data challenges include test data creation, privacy masking, management, maintenance, replication, security, quality, scalability, and reusability. Chip Groder presents an engaging and interactive discussion on the critical factors for managing test data, including developing a defined...
Test Design for Better Test Automation
When automated tests are cumbersome to maintain, we often view this as a technical problem. However, an often-overlooked factor is the role that testers play in making automation scalable and maintainable. Test design can help or hurt how automation engineers can implement tests efficiently. If tests are too detailed or lack focus, good automation becomes virtually impossible. In this tutorial—for both testers and automation engineers—Hans Buwalda addresses what it means for test design when tests are to be automated. See why successful automated testing is not so...
Wednesday, October 26
High-Performance Agile Testing in Software Development
Agile testing is an approach to software testing that follows the principles of agile software development as outlined in the Agile Manifesto. Since many software development organizations are using agile development practices or transitioning to agile software development, it is very important for software testers to understand and learn to operate with an agile mindset. Sammy Kolluru explores the key aspects of agile—whole-team approach, improved collaboration and ownership, results visibility, and incorporating automated tools into testing. Explore how you can...
When User Stories Are Not Enough
IT organizations adopting agile development often struggle when applying agile to anything other than small, mid-sized, or non-critical applications. Because IT organizations must deal with the myriad business rules, non-functional requirements, industry regulations, and associated audits, the software requirements and resulting user stories can easily become too complex and interrelated. Tony Higgins says that approaches are surfacing which allow complex IT environments to improve upfront scoping, promote reuse, embrace living documentation, and deal with...
Using Artificial Intelligence to Test the Candy Crush Saga Game
Candy Crush Saga is one of the biggest mobile games today with more than 1000 levels of difficulty—and users continue to ask for more. When building new content, 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 level of play. Alexander Andelkovic shows you how King is training artificial intelligence (AI) programs (bots) to test its games by mimicking human interactions. Join Alex as he discusses how King is taking testing to the next level by employing...
Combinatorial Black-Box Testing with Classification Trees
A basic problem in software testing often is choosing a subset from the near infinite number of possible test cases. Consider the challenges of testing multiple browsers, multiple mobile devices, mobile applications, or use case paths. Testers must select test cases to design, create, and then execute to obtain sufficient coverage—all while managing the time it takes to test relative to risks. Even though test resources are limited, you still want to select the best possible set of tests. Peter Kruse shares his experiences designing test cases with TESTONA, the...
Thursday, October 27
Test Design for Responsive Websites
Websites built with responsive design come with the added testing challenge of having a single web application working across all screen sizes and many devices. So, how can you ensure your application will render correctly without testing on a huge number of smartphones, tablets, and desktops? Join Adam Rosenberg as he shares how to make intelligent test design choices for the best selection of devices to test on. For example, which is more important—the screen size or the pixel density? How do these affect how a page renders and what breakpoint is hit? When do...
IoT and Embedded Testing: A Roku Case Study
With big hitters like Time Warner and HBO selectively testing Roku releases, testing these little boxes of joy is becoming more of a necessity in the IoT tester’s playbook. Join Rick Faulise as he shares the secrets of testing on a Roku device including how to get into the Roku interface and make it respond to your commands, how to select a broadcast environment for testing, and how to measure streaming performance. Take your IoT testing to the next level by understanding what special types of testing are unique to the Roku and other important considerations to...