STARCANADA 2018 - Business Analyst - Requirements
Customize your STARCANADA 2018 experience with sessions covering requirements.
Wednesday, October 17
A Tester’s Role in Requirements Exploration
Having a shared understanding of desired and undesired behaviors for each new product feature is key to delivering value to the business frequently and predictably. However, many teams lack this understanding even as they start coding. As testers, we can explore feature specifications early, contributing to a successful and timely delivery. With a testing mindset, testers can elicit examples from stakeholders and help turn them into test scenarios that guide development. Janet Gregory will explain how incorporating that tester mindset and using test techniques during requirements...
Telling a Better Story: Finding Quality in the Agile User Story
When delivering agile software development projects and conducting quality assurance and testing assessments, it often seems that “solving the testing problem” doesn’t solve “the quality problem.” The testing problem is much broader than just code quality, testing tools, automation, and skills gaps. A common problem in many projects and teams is a lack of discipline during backlog grooming and sprint planning, leading to inferior user stories that leave the QA effort in peril and disrupt project delivery. In their interactive presentation, Stephan Marceau and Keith Turpin will dissect the...
Use BDD and Product Analytics to Change Your Vision of Quality
PreviewDevOps teams struggle to ensure quality in multiple daily deployments. Traditional testing approaches have often failed in this context, but there are exciting new ways to test. Laurent Py and Vincent Prêtre will explain how, at Hiptest, DevOps teams combine behavior-driven development (BDD) techniques with product analytic analysis to continuously assert the quality of their product. BDD scenarios align teams to a common goal, and users provide feedback to ensure their needs are met. The team transforms usage scenarios into tests that enable developers to deliver the functionality...
Ditch Your Bug-Tracking Tool: 3 Solid Tactics to Minimize Bug Counts
A bug-free product release is an ideal that testers, developers, and project managers strive for, but when it comes to the go/no-go decision, the balance is often struck between "good" and "good enough," leaving behind a rotting to-do pile in the bug-tracking tool that is rarely acted upon in the next release. How can testers stop adding new bugs to the ever-growing list and clean up the “bug dump”? Is it possible to speed development and deliver better software by sidestepping the bug-tracking tool? Join Jerry Penner as he shares his experiences in reducing the wasted time and effort of...
Combatting Threats to Payment Processing in the Era of Connected Ecosystems
PreviewIn an increasingly connected world, protection from security vulnerabilities and threats is essential. Yet providing that protection can be complex to understand, especially with changes in digital technology, consumer demands, and how social media influences consumer shopping and payment decisions. Consumer demands for a personalized experience, together with regulatory and industry initiatives, force innovation, openness, and collaboration in the payment industry, while new models, new digital ecosystems, and cross-border payments are being transformed by blockchain technology....
Testing at 43,000 Feet: Reporting Risk That Matters
PreviewTesting dashboards can give stakeholders the false impression that projects are under control. But are they really? As a tester, you can see a counter indicating a high percentage of passing tests but know that you may still have critical failures in the product. Alexandre Bauduin will share his experience with test reporting, which goes beyond tallying bugs, counting test cases, and computing a variety of coverage measures. Alexandre will demonstrate how teams can report meaningfully on whether we are testing the right thing well. He will share different reporting strategies in...
Delivering the Goods: Harmonizing Regulated and Agile Practices
Agile testing is hard. Testers contend with terse requirements, minimal process, little documentation, continually evolving business, technical and organizational factors. Auditors demand proof of compliance. Some teams have trouble conforming to regulations while preserving agile practises. Griffin Jones, a tenured regulated software testing consultant, says “not only can agile practices blend with regulatory compliance - they can be harmonized with them leading to high quality and more agility.” Griffin feels that regulators are project stakeholders, who join the product owner in...
Thursday, October 18
Automation in Aviation and Mission-Critical Software
PreviewAre you confronted with automating tests of large, complex systems? Are there more conditions to test than you can do in a lifetime? Are auditors demanding compliance to a never-ending collection of regulations? Do stakeholders want slick dashboards tracking abstract key process indicators? Join Alexandre Bauduin as he shares his experience leading the complex system testing challenges of a real-time Boeing 777 Flight Simulator. Alexandre will outline how he overcame the many challenges faced by combining his skills in test design and his expertise as an airline pilot, including...
The Importance of When: How to Effect Change in Your Team
Have you ever had lots of ideas to improve software quality, but your project team seemed less than responsive? Does your team struggle to work well together? Do you already have lots of actions to take from the conference and you don’t know how these changes will be received? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then this session is for you. Join Julie Gardiner as she shares ways of getting your message across and how to play to people’s strengths to make your team work more efficiently and effectively. She will demonstrate an effective communication style model and explain why...
Testing in the Dark: Improving Quality when You Don't Know the Product
PreviewStakeholders drop software on our desks and expect us to test it without any requirements, design, or product knowledge whatsoever. About the only clear thing is the absurd and unrealistic deadline. We are expected to bend over backward, spread magic pixie dust, and heroically test quality into a product we have never heard of before. But testing in the dark is not impossible, and as Rob Sabourin shows, it can even be a very valuable and fun experience. Learn strategies to emerge from a murky fog into clear, meaningful quality insights and leverage unlikely sources about what...
Devices and Desires: As Humans How Do We Experience Software?
We consume and still we desire more. More devices, more apps, more data, more bandwidth, more connectivity. The more we have, the more we want …. We assume that to be true – those of us who work in the software industry. But is that true? To understand what is really required of our products, we need to design and test a pyramid of interlocking quality attributes, that build together to make an optimum experience for the people who use our products, matching their needs, and their desires. It is not enough to test functional suitability, performance, and reliability. People also require...
Behavior-Driven Testing Using Page Object Models
Does it feel like you spend half of every sprint fixing failing automated functional tests? Are programmers unwilling to work with automation code? Is test automation a maintenance nightmare? There is a better way. The Page Object Model (POM) is a powerful design pattern for building test automation. A lack of design discipline can lead to test automation code that is buggy, brittle, and almost impossible to maintain. Focusing on the fundamentals of the POM pattern, combined with some disciplined behavior-driven practices, leads to high-quality, maintainable automation code, saving teams...
Mobbing for Test Design: Connecting with Your Colleagues’ Test Ideas
PreviewDo you have trouble generating test case ideas? Are there seemingly obvious bugs getting through your test plan? Are you considering revamping your current test analysis and design? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this session is for you. You may have heard of mob programming as an extension of pair programming. Mob testing is the same principle: having the whole team test together on one computer, collaborating and throwing out ideas. You end up getting the best from everyone. Join Jeff MacBane and James Fogarty as they show you how to leverage mob test design...