STARCANADA 2018 - Quality Assurance | TechWell

Conference archive

STARCANADA 2018 - Quality Assurance

Customize your STARCANADA 2018 experience with sessions covering quality assurance for software developers or testers.

Tuesday, October 16

Jeff Payne
Coveros
TK

Web Security Testing: The Basics and More

Add to calendar
Tuesday, October 16, 2018 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

Web applications are often security critical or serve as front-ends for security critical applications, making web testing for vulnerabilities an essential part of software testing. Unfortunately, most software testers have not been taught how to identify web security issues while testing applications. Join Jeffery Payne as he shares what you need to know to security test web-based applications as part of your overall testing process. Learn about the most common web security vulnerabilities and how they are introduced into web code and exploited by hackers. Explore test techniques for...

Chris Blain
Medidata Solutions, Inc.
TM

Just In Time Testing

New
Add to calendar
Tuesday, October 16, 2018 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

Turbulent development projects experience almost daily requirements changes, user interface modifications, and the continual integration of new functions, features, and technologies. Keep your testing efforts on track while reacting to changing priorities, technologies, and user needs. This highly interactive workshop offers a unique set of tools to help you cope with—and perhaps even flourish in—what may seem to be a totally chaotic environment. Practice dynamic test planning and scheduling, test idea development, bug tracking, reporting, test triage, exploratory testing, and much more....

Wednesday, October 17

Janet Gregory
DragonFire, Inc.
W3

A Tester’s Role in Requirements Exploration

Add to calendar
Wednesday, October 17, 2018 - 10:15am to 11:15am

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...

Coveros
W4

The Test Expert's Role in DevOps

Add to calendar
Wednesday, October 17, 2018 - 10:15am to 11:15am

DevOps is a culture shift that emphasizes collaboration between software developers and other IT professionals while automating software delivery and infrastructure changes. It aims to establish an environment where building, testing, and releasing software can happen more rapidly, frequently, and reliably. Many see DevOps as an extension to agile. In this session, Mike Sowers suggests that for those in testing roles, we may still be running to keep up in order to contribute in an agile context, and DevOps just adds to that pressure. But we can and should still strive to contribute...

Chris_Loder
InGenius Software
W5

Everything I Know about Automation I Learned from Saturday Morning Cartoons

Add to calendar
Wednesday, October 17, 2018 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Do you remember sitting in front of the television as a kid, enjoying your favorite Saturday morning cartoons? Chris Loder shows you how the lessons we learned from those cartoons apply to our everyday work in test automation. Wait until you hear what we’ve learned from the likes of Scooby Doo, Wile E. Coyote, and many other favorites! Like Bugs Bunny, maybe we "should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque" and possibly done things a little differently. Discover how the animators in Spider-Man didn’t redraw every background but reused the animation cels, similar to our reusing pieces of...

Raj Subramanian
Testim.io
W6

How AI Is Transforming Software Testing

Preview
Add to calendar
Wednesday, October 17, 2018 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning concepts are rapidly being integrated into IT systems. Companies like Apple, Tesla, Google, Amazon, and Facebook have started investing more in AI to solve different technological problems in the areas of health care, autonomous cars, search engines, predictive modeling, and much more. Applying AI is real, it’s coming fast, and it’s going to affect every business, no matter how big or small. So, how do we as testers adapt to this change and embrace AI? Where should we start? And once we get to the era of wanting to automate...

W7

Telling a Better Story: Finding Quality in the Agile User Story

Add to calendar
Wednesday, October 17, 2018 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

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...

Gil_Tayar
Applitools
W8

Docker and the Path to a Better Staging Environment

Add to calendar
Wednesday, October 17, 2018 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Staging environments are notoriously difficult to set up and maintain. Unless you have a top-notch DevOps team, staging environments are usually different from production environments, and consequently, they are fraught with problems—failing deployments, "out of disk space" errors, and various other issues. Even when the staging environment is great, there's still a problem: There’s only one. If you want to test a feature branch, you must allocate time or, alternatively, install the feature branch and risk disrupting other testers. It’s time the testers took control about building their...

Laurent Py
Hiptest
Vincent Prêtre
Hiptest
W10

Use BDD and Product Analytics to Change Your Vision of Quality

Preview
Add to calendar
Wednesday, October 17, 2018 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

DevOps 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...

Jerry Penner
Waterloo Hydrogeologic
W11

Ditch Your Bug-Tracking Tool: 3 Solid Tactics to Minimize Bug Counts

Add to calendar
Wednesday, October 17, 2018 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

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...

W12

Combatting Threats to Payment Processing in the Era of Connected Ecosystems

Preview
Add to calendar
Wednesday, October 17, 2018 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

In 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....

Fiona Charles
Quality Intelligence
W9

Gaining Consciousness

Add to calendar
Wednesday, October 17, 2018 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

Testers make difficult decisions with minimal information in turbulent times on critical projects.  Independent consultant, Fiona Charles, suggests that testers must learn to draw a line in the decision-making process between trained intuition and careless assumption.  In this presentation, Fiona shares her experience with helping testers train their instincts leading to better decision making. Skilled practitioners naturally make some decisions purely on instinct. For example, an expert medical doctor makes a dazzlingly accurate diagnosis in a complex case that baffles other physicians...

Alexandre Bauduin
House Of Test
W15

Testing at 43,000 Feet: Reporting Risk That Matters

Preview
Add to calendar
Wednesday, October 17, 2018 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm

Testing 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...

Griffin Jones
Congruent Compliance
W16

Delivering the Goods: Harmonizing Regulated and Agile Practices

Add to calendar
Wednesday, October 17, 2018 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm

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

Alexandre Bauduin
House Of Test
K3

Automation in Aviation and Mission-Critical Software

Preview
Add to calendar
Thursday, October 18, 2018 - 8:30am to 9:30am

Are 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...

Isabel Evans
Independent Consultant
T1

No More Shelfware—Let's Just Drive Test Automation

Add to calendar
Thursday, October 18, 2018 - 10:15am to 11:15am

When Isabel Evans learned to drive a car, she also learned how to check, clean, and change spark plugs, mend the fan belt with a stocking, and indicate speed and direction changes with arm and hand signals. Now, we don’t expect to have to do any of those things; we just drive the car. That’s how test tools and automation could be: Just drive and concentrate on the journey of delivering software continuously—concentrate on engineering the solutions, not on the automation. To be effective engineers, we need the support of a powerful toolset that we understand. Is that what we have? Or do we...

Jeff Payne
Coveros
T2

Test Management in Agile—What Happened to All My Testers?

Add to calendar
Thursday, October 18, 2018 - 10:15am to 11:15am

Substantial confusion exists about the roles and responsibilities of test management when using an agile software development process. Agile seeks to streamline project management and leadership under the role of a ScrumMaster, but what does this mean for test managers? How do they stay involved in the process? What role do they fill? Is it possible that test managers are no longer needed? Join Jeffery Payne for a collaborative dialogue to discuss the pros and cons of a variety of test management models he has seen used by companies that have adopted agile. Learn how to best position...

Julie_Gardiner
Independent Consultant
T3

The Importance of When: How to Effect Change in Your Team

Add to calendar
Thursday, October 18, 2018 - 10:15am to 11:15am

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...

Rob_Sabourin
AmiBug.com
T4

Testing in the Dark: Improving Quality when You Don't Know the Product

Preview
Add to calendar
Thursday, October 18, 2018 - 10:15am to 11:15am

Stakeholders 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...

Isabel Evans
Independent Consultant
T5

Devices and Desires: As Humans How Do We Experience Software?

Add to calendar
Thursday, October 18, 2018 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

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...

Nimesh_Patel
Valtech Canada
T6

Testing Retail VR Applications

Add to calendar
Thursday, October 18, 2018 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Traditional test approaches break down when applied to retail virtual reality systems. In this presentation, Nimesh Patel will share his experience developing a novel approach to retail VR testing that uses a blend of exploratory research and business- and user-focused testing strategies. Nimesh juggles the needs of a rich collection of company stakeholders, diverse clients, and highly specialized VR team members in order to draw critical insights from VR testing. Exploratory research of other retail VR applications was used to identify many domain-specific risks by studying their...

Brenda Hall
Bridge360
T7

Why Military Veterans Make Exceptional Testers

Preview
Add to calendar
Thursday, October 18, 2018 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Hiring trained talent has been a challenge for IT organizations for several years now. How do you find a steady source of qualified candidates for entry-level QA and QE positions, especially considering colleges and universities don't include a software quality assurance curriculum? Enter the returning veteran! Our veterans often find the search for jobs a daunting challenge, but Brenda Hall discovered just how well veterans are suited for work in software quality. She will share her insights into solving two challenges—our companies needing talent, and returning veterans needing...

Coveros
T8

Behavior-Driven Testing Using Page Object Models

Add to calendar
Thursday, October 18, 2018 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

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...

Jeff MacBane
TechSmith
James Fogarty
TechSmith
T10

Mobbing for Test Design: Connecting with Your Colleagues’ Test Ideas

Preview
Add to calendar
Thursday, October 18, 2018 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

Do 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...

T11

Shift Your Perspective on Data and Influence Stakeholders

Add to calendar
Thursday, October 18, 2018 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

With all the open source tools available in the market, it can be overwhelming to determine which might meet your needs and which will work best in your environment. Join Jennifer Bonine as she explains the relationship between data and your environment, and using data to help make decisions in order to create a high-performing team and metrics dashboard. She will identify opportunities for applying data analytics across the engineering and testing landscape. She also will review ways to collaborate and show results in a way that clearly demonstrates progress, as well as how to present a...