Conference archive

STARCANADA 2016 - Test Automation Engineer

Tuesday, October 25

Michael_Bolton
DevelopSense
TA

Critical Thinking for Software Testers

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Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 8:30am to 4:30pm

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...

TB

Selenium Test Automation: From the Ground Up

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Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 8:30am to 4:30pm

Knowledge of Selenium, the industry-standard tool for testing web applications, is a much sought after skill in today’s world of test automation. If you want to learn Selenium, then this full-day tutorial is a great start. Cheezy Morgan shows you how to build test automation using Selenium. But he doesn’t stop there. He uses his years of experience to show you how to build automation that is clean and easy to maintain. Cheezy introduces other tools that work with Selenium to help manage the data used to drive your tests, evaluate JavaScript-heavy applications,...

Rob_Sabourin
amibug.com
TC

Just in Time Testing

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Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

Turbulent development projects experience almost daily requirements changes, user interface modifications, and the continual integration of new functions, features, and technologies. Keeping your testing efforts on track is a challenge while reacting to changing priorities, technologies, and user needs. In this interactive workshop Rob Sabourin offers a unique set of tools such as dynamic test planning, test idea development, and test triage to help you cope with—and perhaps even flourish in—what may seem to be a totally chaotic environment. Be ready for just...

Chip_Groder
Intervise Consultants Inc.
TE

Test Data: Create, Secure, Manage, and Reuse

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Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

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...

Hans_Buwalda
LogiGear
TF

Test Design for Better Test Automation

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Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

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...

Julie_Gardiner
Hitachi Consulting
TI

Getting Your Message Across: Communication Skills for Testers

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Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

Communication is at the heart of our profession. No matter how advanced our testing capabilities are, if we can’t convey our concerns in ways that connect with key members of the project team, our contribution is likely to be ignored. Because we act solely in an advisory capacity, rather than being in command, our power to exert influence is almost entirely based on our communication skills. With people suffering information overload and deluged with emails, it is more important than ever that we craft succinct and effective messages, using a range of...

Gene_Gotimer
Coveros, Inc.
TJ

Virtualization and Containers for Automating Web Testing

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Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

Vagrant and Docker are automation tools that are becoming increasingly popular in the DevOps world. Vagrant provides a simple, consistent interface to create virtual machines on your local system and in the cloud. Docker lets you control containers—like virtual machines, but smaller and faster with less overhead. These tools can provide on-demand, disposable test environments that are delivered quickly, in a known state, locally or in the cloud. Systems under test, test tools, infrastructure, and even pre-populated test data are all candidates for virtualization...

Wednesday, October 26

Jane_Fraser
Anki, Inc.
W1

Become an Influential Tester: Learn How to Be Heard

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Wednesday, October 26, 2016 - 10:15am to 11:15am

As a tester, are you frustrated that no one listens to you? Are you finding bugs and having them ignored? Are you worried that the development process and product quality aren’t as good as they should be? Jane Fraser shares ways to help you be heard―ways to position yourself as a leader within your organization, ways to increase your influence, and ways to report bugs to get them fixed. In this interactive session, Jane leads you to a better understanding of how to be heard in your organization. Learn how to tailor your defect reports depending on who makes the...

W2

Test-Driven Everything—with Deliberate Collaboration

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Wednesday, October 26, 2016 - 10:15am to 11:15am

You've heard that quality belongs to everybody on an agile team. You've heard that testers and developers should collaborate in order to drive quality higher. You've heard that automated tests help a team continuously validate the quality. Well, it's time to stop just thinking and talking about these things! It's time to make them happen! Watch “Cheezy” Morgan do this in front of your eyes. Watch him build a web application, driven by acceptance and unit tests. Discover how a product owner, tester, and developer collaborate closely and deliberately to create...

W3

High-Performance Agile Testing in Software Development

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Wednesday, October 26, 2016 - 10:15am to 11:15am

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...

Rick_Faulise
tap | QA
W4

Mobile Untethered: Lessons Learned without Wires

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Wednesday, October 26, 2016 - 10:15am to 11:15am

Are you seeking insight into how “going mobile" changes the dev and test roles in real-life organizations? Jennifer Bonine and Rick Faulise take a focused look at the automation of mobile testing: the need, the options, and the tools. They discuss strategies that work—and have not worked—for companies making the transition to mobile. What are the things you, as a developer or tester moving into mobile web and mobile apps, must think about? You need to understand the skill set changes required and the importance of keeping up to date on what companies are looking...

Douglas_Sanders
Comcast
W5

Quality-Driven Delivery in IT

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Wednesday, October 26, 2016 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Compromising on quality and customer experience is not an option for IT organizations anymore. To remain relevant, IT organizations and their software development arms must re-imagine how they operate, amplifying their focus on quality while accelerating time to market. Join Doug Sanders as he discusses the five forces—mobility, big data, artificial intelligence, social media, and cloud—that are driving IT transformations and the instrumental role that QA and testing must play. Doug draws on real-world experiences, lessons learned, and industry best practices as...

Syed_Hossain
QA Consultants
W7

Performance Testing in Agile and DevOps Environments

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Wednesday, October 26, 2016 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

As organizations embrace agile and DevOps delivery models, non-functional performance testing becomes a challenge. While functional validation continues to mature in Agile, many organizations are either struggling to integrate application performance into the delivery model or are addressing performance through an end of sprint hardening approach. Join Syed Hossain as he explores the challenges of performance testing in agile and DevOps environments. Learn proven approaches to performance testing—staggered sprints, incremental testing, and targeted sprints....

Pradeep_Macharla
Inmar Inc.
W8

Addressing the Challenges of Mobile Test Automation

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Wednesday, October 26, 2016 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

As technology continues to disrupt every industry, mobile applications are increasingly becoming a primary way to interact with customers. Mobile application test automation tools and frameworks are far from being as mature as web test automation tools. The mobile test automation space is much more complex than web because of the number of devices that follow different standards. Simulators and emulators partially address this mobile diversity, however, to feel confident releasing an application to market, a deep understanding of what libraries, tools, and...

Jeff_Abshoff
ANSYS Canada Ltd
W10

Better Together: Group Exploratory Testing

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Wednesday, October 26, 2016 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

Jeff Abshoff faced a most difficult challenge in 2015. His team size tripled, with testers of varying skill levels spread across six sites worldwide. The product was moving to a more frequent release cycle, was of poor quality, and had multiple key stakeholders. Features were incomplete, defects were not discovered until late in the cycle, and downstream stability and feature integration problems were common. Join Jeff as he shares his experience with Group Exploratory Testing, and discusses the positive impact this approach has had on his team and the ANSYS...

Michael_Bolton
DevelopSense
W11

A Rapid Testing Approach to Test Automation

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Wednesday, October 26, 2016 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

There are many wonderful ways tools can be used to help software testing. Yet, all across the industry, tools are poorly applied, which adds terrible waste, confusion, and pain to what is already a hard problem. Why is this so? What can be done? Michael Bolton thinks that the fundamental problem is a shallow, narrow, and ritualistic approach to tool use. This is encouraged by the pandemic, rarely examined, and absolutely false belief that testing is a mechanical, repetitive process. Good testing, like programming, is instead a challenging intellectual process,...

Alexander_Andelkovic
King/Midasplayer AB
W12

Using Artificial Intelligence to Test the Candy Crush Saga Game

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Wednesday, October 26, 2016 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

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...

Chip_Groder
Intervise Consultants Inc.
W15

Objects vs. Images: Choosing the Right GUI Test Tool Architecture

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Wednesday, October 26, 2016 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm

Most popular GUI test tools are based on an object recognition architecture. They recognize and manipulate screen objects by communicating with the underlying GUI subsystem. A new breed of tools has been introduced in the past few years that implements an image recognition architecture. These tools use sophisticated image processing and OCR technology to recognize objects by their appearance on the display. Image recognition-based tools have distinct advantages in some environments, but object-based tools are a better choice in other situations. Join Chip Groder...

Rob_Sabourin
amibug.com
K2

Testers in Agile Teams—Isolation or Collaboration?

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Wednesday, October 26, 2016 - 4:15pm to 5:15pm

What exactly are testers doing as organizations evolve from waterfall lifecycles to iterative, incremental agile approaches? Agile transitions, rather than fostering collaboration, often lead to isolation, role confusion, and fear. Many testers are left out in the cold. Agile testers face existential challenges: Is it enough that programmers test their own code? Must testers become programming experts? Do we still need business analysts or subject matter experts? Test evangelist Rob Sabourin explores an exciting vision for testers and demonstrates how they can...

Thursday, October 27

Julie_Gardiner
Hitachi Consulting
K3

Evolution—Not Revolution: Transforming Your Testing

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Thursday, October 27, 2016 - 8:30am to 9:45am

“The only constant on any project is change” is a phrase used in the early 1990s. Yet even now, the prospect of change is rarely welcomed—either personally or professionally. How is it that we still believe that these changes apply to others but not to us? An MIT-published article describes how they are trying to prevent software bugs by leveraging the new trends of DevOps and IoT to radically change how we do testing. Julie Gardiner says that now is the time to re-evaluate and transform how we do testing to deliver more value to organizations—from a people,...

Adam_Rosenberg
Elephant Inc.
T2

Test Design for Responsive Websites

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Thursday, October 27, 2016 - 10:15am to 11:15am

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...

Matt_Joste
Ryerson University
T3

How to Build a Fully Open Source Test Automation Framework

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Thursday, October 27, 2016 - 10:15am to 11:15am

Automated testing can be difficult, slow to implement, involve expensive and non-compatible software, and require a high level of technical expertise to use. Join Matt Joste as he presents Ryerson University's Automation Framework, put together using best-in-class open source software. The framework allows software developers, product owners, and testers without a technical background to write and run automated scripts. This modular framework addresses both functional and nonfunctional automated tests—performance, security, and accessibility—and is both agile and...

T5

API Testing: Top 5 Myths

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Thursday, October 27, 2016 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

With the emergence of the API Economy, the risks associated with an API failure undeniably have broader business impacts. Organizations must ensure that the APIs they produce and consume continuously deliver the expected level of security, reliability, functionality, and performance.

This session dispels some of the most common API testing myths prevalent across the industry. Wondering how rigorously you need to test the 3 rd party APIs you consume? Relying on GUI testing to cover API functionality? Think your monitoring efforts will alert you to critical...

Nir_Szilagyi
PayPal
T6

Design for Testability in Practice

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Thursday, October 27, 2016 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

With the drive for continuous integration and delivery, the implications and approaches for designing more testable software are receiving substantial discussion and debate. What does testability really mean in practice? How do you take the idea of testability—how easy it is to test software—and put it into action through the different dimensions of designing and testing a real-world product? Nir Szilagyi recognizes that the challenges of difficult-to-test software can transform a testing cycle from a small automation and exploratory effort to a long struggle of...

Jerry_Penner
Waterloo Hydrogeologic
T7

Sensible Test Automation

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Thursday, October 27, 2016 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Your boss has given you the directive to “automate everything.” So, what’s behind this? Is he expecting to reduce costs? Implement the latest silver-bullet tool that will save the company? Increase test coverage to avoid future embarrassment? How should you respond? Jerry Penner shows how you can manage expectations by asking the right questions and framing in business terms the capabilities of computer-aided testing. Discussion includes good and bad reasons to automate, and what should and should not be automated so you can find more of the important bugs faster...

Gene_Gotimer
Coveros, Inc.
T8

Add Security Testing Tools to Your Delivery Pipeline

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Thursday, October 27, 2016 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Developing a delivery pipeline means more than just adding automated deploys to the development cycle. To be successful, quality testing of all types must be incorporated throughout the process to ensure that problems aren’t slipping through. Those checks must include security, or you risk developing insecure software. Fortunately, the delivery pipeline opens up opportunities to add more security testing to the delivery process. Continuous integration builds can add static analysis tools to test for simple security errors and check if components with known...

Gopal_Brugalette
Concur Technologies
T9

Build Your Open Source Performance Testing Platform in the Cloud

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Thursday, October 27, 2016 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

Proprietary performance testing platforms can be complex, expensive, and difficult to scale. With the right approach, everything from continuous integration, to continuous deployment pipelines, to full-scale production loads can be supported, but a dizzying array of platforms, services, and approaches available in AWS and the open-source community must be navigated to arrive at solutions that work. Join Gopal Brugalette and explore how to build a performance testing platform in the cloud using open source tools. Gopal shares what he has learned from his failures...

Christine_McGarry
Magnet Forensics
T11

Slowing Down to Speed Up:The Benefits of A Custom Automation Framework

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Thursday, October 27, 2016 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

With today’s shortened software release cycles, products need to be tested quickly and reliably. Automating tests is even more challenging as we are often building the next generation product even as we maintain the legacy products. Join Christine McGarry as she describes how she automated tests for dataset comparison for data stored in substantially differing SQL database schemas. Christine shares a case study on how the test automation strategy and tactics were defined for testing datasets output from distinct versions of an application. She provides insight...