STARCANADA 2017 - Test Strategy, Planning, Metrics | TechWell

Conference archive

STARCANADA 2017 - Test Strategy, Planning, Metrics

Sunday, October 15

Conrad Fujimoto
Intellectica Systems Inc.

Software Tester Certification—Foundation Level (3-Day)

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Sunday, October 15, 2017 - 8:30am to Tuesday, October 17, 2017 - 5:00pm

Accredited training for the ISTQB® Certified Tester—Foundation Level (CTFL) certification. Find out what it takes to be a successful software tester and learn about the relationship of testing to development, test levels, black-box methods, white-box testing, exploratory testing, and more.

Tuesday, October 17

Michael_Bolton
DevelopSense
TB

Critical Thinking for Software Testers

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Tuesday, October 17, 2017 - 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 puzzles that help you practice...

Rob_Sabourin
AmiBug.com
TC

Test Estimation in the Face of Uncertainty

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Tuesday, October 17, 2017 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

Anyone who has ever attempted to estimate software testing effort realizes just how difficult the task can be. The number of factors that can affect the estimate is virtually unlimited. Rob Sabourin says that the keys to good estimates are understanding the primary variables, comparing them to known standards, and normalizing the estimates based on the differences. This is easy to say but difficult to accomplish because estimates are frequently required even when we know very little about the project—and what we do know is constantly changing. Throw in a healthy dose of politics, add a bit...

Dorothy Graham
Software Test Consultant
TD

System-Level Test Automation: Ensuring a Good Start

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Tuesday, October 17, 2017 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

Many organizations invest a lot of effort in test automation at the system level but then have serious problems later on. As a manager, how can you ensure that your new automation efforts will get off to a good start? What can you do to ensure that your automation work provides continuing value? Dot Graham describes the most important management issues you must address for test automation success, particularly when you are new to automation. Dot helps you understand and choose the best approaches for your organization—no matter which automation tools you use. Focusing on system level...

Mike_Sowers
TechWell Corp.
TE

Measurement and Metrics for Test Managers

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Tuesday, October 17, 2017 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

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—measures of product quality,...

Isabel Evans
Independent Consultant
TH

Human Factors for Test Automation: How People Affect Project Success

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Tuesday, October 17, 2017 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

Successful test automation is not just about selecting and implementing tools and a technical infrastructure. People in teams make the changes that are required. People ensure the success or failure of the automation project. Understanding and managing expectations, attitudes toward change, teamwork, motivation, and communication are all vital if automation projects are to succeed. Isabel Evans identifies and discusses human factors around automation, teamwork, and human behavior to enable you to understand resistance to change, overcome mistrust of automation, and moderate inflated...
TI

Innovation: Evolving and Expanding Your Creative Capabilities

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Tuesday, October 17, 2017 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

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)....

Wednesday, October 18

Dorothy Graham
Software Test Consultant
K1

Blunders in Test Automation

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Wednesday, October 18, 2017 - 8:30am to 9:30am

In chess, the word blunder means a very bad move by someone who should know better. Even though functional test automation has been around for a long time, people still make some very bad moves and serious blunders. The most common misconception in automation is thinking that manual testing is the same as automated testing. And this misguided thinking accounts for most of the blunders in system level test automation. Dorothy Graham takes you on a tour of these blunders, including the Stable-Application Myth (you can’t start automating until the application is stable), Inside-the-Box...

Michael_Bolton
DevelopSense
W1

The Secret Life of Testers: Where Your Time Really Goes

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Wednesday, October 18, 2017 - 10:15am to 11:15am

Testing is on the schedule. Your title is Tester. It is time to test. The team is waiting for you. Everybody thinks you spend your time testing. So, why does it seem that you spend so little time actually testing? Michael Bolton will show you a training and research tool to visually animate the progress of testing has been developed. Through the use of testopsies and session-based test management data, patterns have been collected on how context-driven testers use their time—from the micro to the macro level. Among the findings are that a good tester can spend a whole week in earnest work...

Bob Galen
Zenergy Technologies
W3

The Three Pillars Approach to an Agile Testing Strategy

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Wednesday, October 18, 2017 - 10:15am to 11:15am

Far too often, organizations focus solely on the development teams and their technical practices as their agile adoption strategy. And then there’s the near constant focus on acquiring development tools. Often the testing activity and the testing teams are left behind in agile adoption, or even worse, they’re simply along for the ride. This is not an effective transformation strategy. Join experienced agile coach Bob Galen as he shares the Three Pillars framework for establishing a balanced strategic plan for quality and testing. The Three Pillars focus on development and test...
Bernd Bornhausen
TD Insurance
W5

Applying Earned Value Management to Testing

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Wednesday, October 18, 2017 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Project managers have two main goals when it comes to their projects: deliver on time, and deliver within the budget. To track progress against these two objectives, the project management profession has developed a technique called earned value management (EVM). This method allows you to objectively measure project performance, predict cost and time, and evaluate the general health of a project. Join Bernd Bornhausen as he shares his experience with applying EVM to testing and how it changed his approach to reporting the test status of his projects. Bernd provides real-life examples...
Paul_Merrill
Beaufort Fairmont
W7

Machine Learning: Will It Take Over Testing?

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Wednesday, October 18, 2017 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Machine learning (ML), a branch of artificial intelligence, is gaining widespread adoption and interest on software development projects. Paul Merrill says that ML isn't typical programming. Algorithms can be changed and checked for accuracy at runtime to “learn” from data. Some companies are already generating and executing test cases using machine learning algorithms. It is projected that significant areas of the labor force—16 percent in transportation and 9 percent of healthcare—could see job cuts in the next few years. So it's time to start thinking: Might testing be on that list...
Sophie Benjamin
Videotron
W9

Transforming Your QA and Test Team

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Wednesday, October 18, 2017 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

QA and test departments often are composed of employees with business backgrounds who have little training when it comes to software testing. Though they are engaged, these team members can get overwhelmed by the thousands of test cases they have to execute over and over, and they don’t see a future career path in testing. What can be done to address these challenges? Join Sophie Benjamin as she presents her personal step-by-step recipe to transform QA and test teams and position them for success within IT. She talks about the essential roles in QA and test teams, their skills and...
Isabel Evans
Independent Consultant
W13

Story Time for Testers

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Wednesday, October 18, 2017 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm

Stories help us learn. They can be fun or scary, exciting or relaxing. People worldwide tell and listen to stories. We access them through books, film, TV, and computers. But direct, face-to-face storytelling is still a powerful experience. When Isabel Evans was young, there was a program on the radio called Listen with Mother. For fifteen minutes, mothers and children across the land would sit and listen to a story. Join Isabel and become your younger child, bring your testing parent, and listen to her stories. In fifteen-minute sections, Isabel recounts stories drawn from myths, legends...

Jeffery Payne
Coveros, Inc.
K2

Succeeding with Rapid and Continuous Testing

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Wednesday, October 18, 2017 - 4:15pm to 5:15pm

All organizations are running to keep pace with the transformative changes in software development and delivery. You’re on the hook for immediately automating more and more tests to support a more rapid or continuous flow of new features, delivered into production. So, where do you start? Must testers become coders and automate to survive? Must everything be automated? Jeffery Payne argues that the need to automate almost all tests is a misconception. Jeffery explores how automated testing and manual testing are best balanced during rapid and continuous testing. See how you can employ...

Thursday, October 19

Isabel Evans
Independent Consultant
K3

Leading, Following, or Managing? You Can Help Your Group Thrive

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Thursday, October 19, 2017 - 8:30am to 9:30am

As testers or test managers, being effective mentors, coaches, and leaders is critical to our team’s success. Quite often we also play important roles in driving change, influencing others, and helping individuals, teams, and the business move from where they are to a higher level of excellence. We must interact with many people and work together in project teams made up of individuals with diverse perspectives. Join Isabel Evans as she reviews the range of interaction approaches of leadership and management, explores what styles we feel most comfortable with, discusses how we react to...

Peter de Jager
de Jager and Company Ltd.
T1

Seven Questions to Ask for Successful Change Management

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Thursday, October 19, 2017 - 10:15am to 11:15am

Effective communication is key to driving change, and it should be a constant activity before, during, and after any change initiative. This isn’t exactly news. The problem arises when the questioning becomes a bit more detailed. What, exactly, should we be communicating? Successful change management requires answers to more than simply the old reporter’s standby of who, what, when, where, and why. Join Peter de Jager as he shares seven more relevant questions for driving change: Why is this particular change necessary now? What if we don’t address this? What will we be doing...
Susan Brockley
Independent Consultant
T4

Jump Start Agile Testing with Acceptance Test Driven Development

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Thursday, October 19, 2017 - 10:15am to 11:15am

Does your agile team struggle to find the right level of detail prior to beginning development? You may be suffering from “chunky” user stories—those that are too large or insufficiently defined to implement or test efficiently. Acceptance test driven development (ATDD) can help you quickly slice those user stories down to a testable size and provide the necessary detail for your developers to begin coding. Join Susan Brockley as she discusses the difference between agile user stories and traditional requirements, and why both are necessary for effective testing. Through real-world...
Scott_Acker
Likha Solutions, Inc.
T5

Implementing a Test Dashboard to Boost Quality

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Thursday, October 19, 2017 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

You are responsible for addressing quality problems that are plaguing your product and having an adverse impact on the business. Have you been challenged to provide a simple mechanism for quantifying and tracking key performance indicators selected by your organization. The ultimate goal is an approach that will enable the cross-functional team to identify problem areas so they can take corrective action. Where do you start? Attend this session to learn how you can develop a quantifiable approach to assessing testing effectiveness and addressing quality. Scott Acker shows you a...
Pablo_Garcia_Munos
Quality Point AB
T8

Scale Your QA & Test: Testing with Multiple Teams in Large Agile Organizations

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Thursday, October 19, 2017 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Agile practices are maturing, and more agile teams are making development and testing work in an effective way thanks to TDD, BDD, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment. However, there are many challenges still to conquer in agile practices, such as the lack of accountability for systems developed outside the team, environments with multiple teams where some teams practice agile and others do not, and organizations where testers are not well integrated into the team. Join Pablo Garcia Munos as he shares his experience testing in large agile organizations with ten teams or more...
T9

Architecting an Agile Test Transformation Program

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Thursday, October 19, 2017 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

Transitioning test automation efforts from traditional to agile approaches is challenging because it requires cultural, process, technology, and people changes to create a sustained mindset shift and drive desired outcomes. Join Klaudia Breslavets to learn how a complex organization scaled its test automation transformation and “shifted left” enterprise-wide to support agile practices and continuous delivery. Learn the specific ways Vanguard fueled the transformation and structured its program to help IT delivery teams achieve faster speed to market, greater confidence in their tests,...
Janet Gregory
DragonFire, Inc.
K4

Key Skills and Attributes for Everyone Who Tests Software

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Thursday, October 19, 2017 - 2:45pm to 3:45pm

As organizations continue to refine their software development and testing approaches, the skills and attributes for the tester role must keep pace with these rapid changes. Many people other than traditional testers are now being asked to conduct testing. Whether you’re a lifelong tester or are just embracing testing from another discipline, there are key skills everyone requires. Janet Gregory presents some key skills and attributes testers need, whether they are practicing agile or more traditional methods. She explores skills such as effective communication as well as technical and...

Friday, October 20

Jaimee Newberry
Picture This Clothing
WWT1

It's Not All Rainbows & Unicorns (The Picture This Clothing Story)

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Friday, October 20, 2017 - 8:45am to 9:30am

When Picture This Clothing launched in August of 2016 and instantly went viral, the media made it sound like Jaimee was a "simple mom" who stumbled upon a great idea and struck gold. What they didn't share is the teamwork, the trials-and-error, and the years of work that happened before this viral success. While her current day-to-day is quite literally surrounded with imagination, unicorns, and rainbows, Jaimee delves into the struggle of self-worth, re-designing her life, and how her compass of intention positioned everything that has unfolded as she shares the story of how Picture This...

Dorothy Graham
Software Test Consultant
WWT2

The Tester’s 3 C's: Criticism, Communication and Confidence

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Friday, October 20, 2017 - 9:30am to 10:45am

Communication in agile teams is supposed to be seamless and much better than the “old days”. Whether you are in an independent testing team and need to communicate more formally, or communicating face-to-face in an agile context, how can you be effective when you are sometimes telling people what they don’t want to hear? What do testers do? They are critics, often of other people’s work; they need to communicate their findings successfully with confidence. In this talk, Dorothy Graham looks at what criticism is, its different types and “DASR”, an effective script for giving criticism (...

Alison Wade
TechWell Corp.
WWT3

The Power of Collective Experience

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Friday, October 20, 2017 - 10:45am to 12:30pm

Bring your biggest challenges to this session and tap the wisdom of others. In this immersive session, you will tackle some of the most widely mentioned challenges brought to light from the group. Whether it’s a software testing conundrum, a project setback, a management blocker, a group or team dysfunction or an interpersonal hurdle, all of these can slow our progress and reduce our effectiveness.  And when we hunt for options, we all have blind spots and biases that prevent us from thinking out of the box and finding new and different solutions. Typically the best ideas come from...

Yolande_Grill
InfoSol, Inc.
WWT4

Create the Life You Want: How Asking the Right Questions Will Open Doors to Your Future

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Friday, October 20, 2017 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

The definition of a realist is someone who makes decisions based on past data. The definition of genius is someone who creates the future. In a world of data analytics and visualizations, the world (at least in my world of Business Intelligence) seems obsessed with measuring three things: what happened, what is happening and trying to predict what could happen next. What if instead we asked the question, "What do we want to have happen here and in doing that created our desired future?" Through the creative practices of journaling, art, movement and stillness, we can open a door to...

Alison Wade
TechWell Corp.
WWT5

Panel–Career Superpowers

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Friday, October 20, 2017 - 2:30pm to 3:30pm

Let’s discuss and define the most important career superpowers for women. Hear what industry professionals, leaders, and idea disruptors think the important career superpowers are for women in 2017 and going forward.

 

WWT6

Building your Personal Brand for Success

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Friday, October 20, 2017 - 3:30pm to 4:30pm
Building the right personal brand is one of the critical success factors in today’s workplace. Organizations develop a brand and image, but not many individuals think about their personal brand and how it can affect their career. As we interact with people, we want to influence them to support our efforts—approving projects, budgets, and funding; supporting our next career move; or recommending us for that promotion or raise we want.  As a professional, it is critical to understand how you are being perceived by your “target audience.” During this interactive session...