STARCANADA 2017 sessions about Developer | TechWell

Conference archive

STARCANADA 2017 - Developer

Sunday, October 15

Mike_Sowers
TechWell Corp.

Agile Tester Certification (2-Day)

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Sunday, October 15, 2017 - 8:30am to Monday, October 16, 2017 - 5:00am
Learn the role of the tester in an agile team and explore agile testing processes in an interactive workshop. Successful attendees earn the ICAgile Certified Professional in Agile Testing (ICP-TST) designation. This course is also accredited for the ISTQB® Foundation Level Agile Extension exam.
Rob_Sabourin
AmiBug.com

Agile Test Automation—ICAgile (2-Day)

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Sunday, October 15, 2017 - 8:30am to Monday, October 16, 2017 - 5:00pm

Explore the many ways automation supports agile testing in this two-day course with real-world, vendor-neutral examples of agile test automation approaches and tools. In addition, successful attendees are awarded the ICAgile Certified Professional in Agile Test Automation (ICP-ATA).

Fundamentals of DevOps Certification—ICAgile (2-Day)

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Sunday, October 15, 2017 - 8:30am to Monday, October 16, 2017 - 5:00pm

This two-day course will teach you how to avoid the common mistakes of DevOps implementations and to leverage DevOps best practices. Upon completion attendees will be certified by the International Consortium for Agile and awarded the ICAgile Professional (ICP-FDO) designation.

Tuesday, October 17

TA

Selenium Test Automation: From the Ground Up

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Tuesday, October 17, 2017 - 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 provides 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, manage your test...

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,...

Bob Galen
Zenergy Technologies
TF

Agile Test Team Leadership: From Concept to Product

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

Today, many agile organizations are making a terrible error. They are assuming there is no place for test management and leadership in agile, self-directed team contexts. We beg to differ with this view and believe a strong need exists for testing leadership in agile organizations—just not the way we’ve typically approached it. Join Bob Galen as he explores what excellent test team leadership looks like in agile contexts. Explore the aspects of self-directed teams and the implications to your previous leadership styles. Look under the covers of Scrum and see where you should be...
Jeffery Payne
Coveros, Inc.
TG

Integrating Automated Testing into DevOps

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

In many organizations, agile development processes are driving the pursuit of faster software releases, which has spawned a set of new practices called DevOps. DevOps stresses communications and integration between development and operations, including rapid deployment, continuous integration, and continuous delivery. Because DevOps practices require confidence that changes made to the code base will function as expected, automated testing is essential. Join Jeffery Payne as he discusses the unique challenges associated with integrating automated testing into continuous integration/...

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)....

Janet Gregory
DragonFire, Inc.
TK

Test Automation in Agile: The Path to Faster, Better Releases

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

Agile teams deliver “potentially” shippable software at the end of every iteration (one to four weeks) or possibly every day. Janet Gregory says that this goal can't be achieved without automated tests, and many teams struggle with test automation. The challenge of automating functional regression tests frightens many testers, who feel their skills aren’t up to the job. So, how can you deliver good quality when you have to release so often? By combining a collaborative team approach with appropriate tools and design approaches, you can not only automate your regression tests but also use...

Bob Galen
Zenergy Technologies
TL

Agile Testing: Team Tactics that Deliver the Goods

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

Let’s face it—agile testing is different. Challenges exist in successfully integrating within the teams themselves. Scrummerfall continues to run rampant. The dichotomy of testing v. quality and balancing both the team’s and your focus still exists. Delivering value is both an imperative and a challenge. In this dynamic workshop, join agile coach Bob Galen to explore the tools, techniques, and mindset you need to bring to the table to successfully test in agile contexts. Bob examines risk-based testing, iterative test planning, exploratory testing, agile automation strategies, test...

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...
W6

Improve Test Strategies and Outcomes with Mind Maps

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

Do you ever sit in test strategy or test plan review sessions and get little or no participation from others? Are you looking for a better way to communicate important information around the test plan or strategy? Do you want your stakeholders to understand and engage in providing feedback and suggestions? Jennifer Bonine has a solution for you—a mind mapping tool that can help you address these questions. A mind map is a visual approach used to help organize information rather than a text outline or list. Jennifer helps you download a free mind mapping tool, trains you how to use the tool...

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...
Dorothy Graham
Software Test Consultant
W10

Are Your Tests Well-Traveled? Thoughts on Test Coverage

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

There are many places to visit it the world and it can be interesting to see “where you’ve been”. There are many places in software for tests to visit, and seeing “where the tests have been” can be very interesting for testers. Dot Graham explains what coverage is, and why it can be misleading to talk about 100% coverage. Coverage is a relationship between the tests and the software being tested, and is an objective measurement of some aspect of thoroughness of the testing. Dot will discuss the ways in which the term coverage is mis-used, and the four caveats of coverage which every tester...

Chris_Loder
InGenius Software
W11

World-Class Test Automation: You Can Build It Too

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

Join Chris Loder as he describes the test automation framework they have created from the ground up. Chris shares the environment they have put together to run in virtual machines, physical hardware, and mobile devices—with Jenkins keeping track of it all. He explains their use of the keyword driven and page object approaches, and how that has allowed a high rate of automated test case development from all members of the quality team. Using this framework, they run over 7,000 unique regression web tests daily—quickly and consistently. Chris shows how they built their automation with both...

W12

Flaky No More: Find the Right Framework for Your Selenium Tests

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

Selenium has an industry reputation of being a flaky tool where individual tests pass, then fail—sometimes with no production changes at all. Such flakiness in your test suites can be extremely difficult, time-consuming, and frustrating to debug. The vast majority of these issues come from using either bad locators or bad wait conditions. Both of these root causes can be addressed by implementing the right framework for your Selenium tests. Craig Schwarzwald shares the most important concepts in creating a more reliable Selenium framework, such as using a base page object that wraps core...

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...

Rob_Sabourin
AmiBug.com
W14

Discovering What Matters, Fast: Combination Testing Case Studies

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

Even the simplest application depends on a vast, rich, and complex set of variables interacting and collaborating to drive behavior. Each variable has many options, and the number of ways these variables can be combined can be astronomical, making it next to impossible to test them all. Combination testing—combining individual test values to form complete test cases—can help. Rob Sabourin shares three real-world case studies that show how combination test design helped testers focus on a manageable subset of combinations to find critical bugs, quickly. Rob will share examples of some...

Hilary_Weaver-Robb
Quicken Loans
W15

Testing RESTful Web Services

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

A lot of folks doing testing (QAs, BAs, and Devs alike) are experienced with testing applications through the front end—a graphical user interface or a mobile app. However, Hilary Weaver-Robb says that with this type of testing we often miss the internal web services and APIs that power those applications. Integration or web service tests are right in the middle of the Testing Pyramid, so to ensure adequate coverage it’s vital for testers to know how to test at that level. Thankfully, to test web services we can apply many of the same principles we already know. Hilary focuses on...
Dawn_Jardine
Independent QA Consultant
W16

Combine Automation and Exploratory Testing for Quality Coverage

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

With the pressure of decreased time to market and the demand for error-free web applications, some people erroneously believe that test automation can solve all our defect woes. Dawn Jardine believes that neither test automation nor exploratory testing alone can solve quality issues. So, what is the best approach? Where do we invest our resources, time, and money so clients are happy with our product? How can automation and exploratory testing work together to obtain maximum test coverage? Join Dawn as she shares her experience of moving from a solely manual test case execution process...
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

Geoff_Meyer
Dell EMC
T2

Leverage Big Data and Analytics for Testing

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

Sabermetrics turned the baseball world upside down by challenging decades-old measures of individual performance and their perceived linkage to team success. After cementing their legacy as the Lovable Losers for 108 years, the Chicago Cubs were able to leverage a data-driven approach to finally win a World Series. An Arkansas high school football coach, devoted to statistical analysis, has won three state championships—by never punting. Formula 1 racing teams collect staggering amounts of telemetry data from their race cars for the purpose of eking out seconds during the course of a race...

David_Best
Inclusive Media Design
Sandy_Feldman
Inclusive Media Design
Rob_Harvie
Inclusive Media Design
T3

Accessibility Standards and Testing Techniques: Be Inclusive or Be Left Behind

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

While Information and Communication Technology (ICT) accessibility for a wider spectrum of users—including the blind—and their interfaces is being required by law across more jurisdictions, testing for it remains limited, naïve, and too late. The consequences of staying ignorant include increased exposure to litigation, penalties, and loss of contracts and revenue. Join David Best, Sandy Feldman, and Rob Harvie to learn why accessibility is now becoming a valued, integral part of the design process and much different from usability of twenty years ago. Ensure compliance for your...
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...
Joshua_Eastman
Experis
T6

Behavior Driven Development—A Guide to Agile Practices

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

It seems as if the agile methods have lots of DD’s going on. BDD – Behavior Driven Development, ATDD – Acceptance Test Driven Development and several others. Adopting BDD allows for testing to be done as early as possible in the software development life cycle, promoting accurate testing, ensuring proper test coverage, and supporting the introduction of automation testing. One challenge is understanding the characteristics and benefits of “driven” approaches. Join Josh Eastman to discover ways that BDD can be employed to describe and test system behavior, user stories, and user acceptance...

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,...
Rob_Sabourin
AmiBug.com
T12

Great Scripts I Have Known

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

Are there any great scripted tests? Rob Sabourin shares dozens of examples of test scripts from software development projects. In this talk you will be exposed to the good, the bad, and the ugly side of test scripting. You will see some test scripts which have helped to drive profitable businesses, and other test scripts which have almost brought about corporate ruin. Rob explores the many context drivers behind testing, highlighting when and how they can help you focus on what matters. You will see many types of test scripts: smoke tests, FAST tests, business facing regression 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...