STARCANADA 2016 - Tutorials
Full- and half-day tutorials are consistently the most popular and highly rated part of the conference. Tutorials allow you to take a deeper dive into a specific topic so that you can learn to make improvements to everyday processes in the areas that matter most to you.
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...
Selenium Test Automation: From the Ground Up
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,...
Just in Time Testing
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...
What's Your Leadership IQ?
Have you ever needed a way to measure your leadership IQ? Or been in a performance review where the majority of time was spent discussing your need to improve as a leader? If you have ever wondered what your core leadership competencies are and how to build on and improve them, Jennifer Bonine shares a toolkit to help you do just that. This toolkit includes a personal assessment of your leadership competencies, explores a set of eight dimensions of successful leaders, provides suggestions on how you can improve competencies that are not in your core set of...
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...
Innovation: Evolving and Expanding Your Creative Capabilities
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...
Measurement and Metrics for Managers
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—...
Getting Your Message Across: Communication Skills for Testers
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...
Virtualization and Containers for Automating Web Testing
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...