STARCANADA 2018 - Test Management

Avoiding siloed development is a tricky business. It’s so easy for agile teams to fall into the rut in which testers only do traditional testing activities, and programmers strictly do their time-worn coding activities. Rob Sabourin shares a number of examples of how testing skills can be applied to a wide variety of activities in an agile project. Testers are among the most skilled team members in story grooming, elicitation, and exploration. Risk analysis in self-organized agile teams empowers testers to drive design decisions. A tester’s affinity analysis skills help clear the way for...

Leading agile teams and organizations is much different than leading more traditional software development efforts. The emphasis on self-directed teams shifts a leader's role from that of a line manager who tells everybody what to do, to a mentor, facilitator, coach, and servant leader. This tutorial discusses how to effectively lead self-directed teams either as a ScrumMaster or staff manager. Jeff Payne also addresses how management roles are defined in agile, as well as various organizational structures that support agile leadership. He will also give you practical tips and techniques...

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. The keys to good estimates are understanding the primary variables, comparing them to known standards, and normalizing the estimates based on their 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 and a bit of wishful thinking,...

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)....

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...

Test automation projects fail, but why? Could you stop it from happening? In this tongue-in-cheek talk, Seretta Gamba will share seven proven methods to disrupt or utterly ruin a test automation project, including letting a lone champion keep important knowledge to themselves, ignoring good programming practices, setting impossible goals, and feigning support. Seretta’s humorous recommendations provide managers, testers, and automators alike with the early signs of an automation project in danger. By “warning” that the most effective defenses are found using the test automation...

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....

There are two main challenges to testing systems that incorporate elements of artificial intelligence. First, the same input can trigger different responses as an AI system learns and adapts to new conditions, and second, it is difficult to understand what the correct response really should be. Such behavior violates one of the main principles of traditional testing: the repeatability of test case execution. It's like shooting a moving target and not knowing whether you missed. Testers lose confidence in the outcome of their testing when traditional approaches no longer apply. Yury...

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...

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...

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...

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...