STARCANADA 2019 - Software Tester | TechWell

Conference archive

STARCANADA 2019 - Software Tester

Customize your STARCANADA 2019 experience with sessions for software testers.

Tuesday, October 22

TA

Selenium Test Automation: From the Ground Up

Add to calendar
Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 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. Matt 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, robust, and easy to maintain. Matt introduces other tools that work with Selenium to help manage the data used to drive your tests, evaluate JavaScript-heavy applications, manage your test...

Michael_Bolton
DevelopSense
TB

Critical Thinking for Software Testers

Add to calendar
Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 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...

Melissa_Benua
mParticle
TC

Test Design for Fully Automated Build Architecture

Add to calendar
Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

Imagine this … As soon as any developed functionality is submitted into the code repository, it is automatically subjected to the appropriate battery of tests and then released straight into production. Setting up the pipeline capable of doing just that is becoming more and more common and something you need to know about. But most organizations hit the same stumbling block—just what IS the appropriate battery of tests? Automated build architectures don't always lend themselves well to the traditional stages of testing. In this hands-on tutorial, Melissa Benua introduces you to key test...

Jeff Payne
Coveros
TD

Integrating Automated Testing into DevOps

Add to calendar
Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 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—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/continuous...

Isabel Evans
Independent Consultant
TE

Shifting Our Testing to Embrace Customer Experience

Add to calendar
Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

In today’s environment, customer and user experience (CX/UX) is overwhelmingly important—and is not just about the product. CX/UX describes all facets of a person’s interactions with and reactions to the product, the organization that supplies it, and the environment in which it is experienced. Isabel Evans says that in order to focus our tests appropriately, it is vital that we testers understand our users’ experiences. We need to explore and measure human, business, and societal impacts of products we develop, and how those aspects are underpinned by technical qualities. We need to shift...

Tariq_King
Self-Test.IO
TF

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Skills for the Testing World

Add to calendar
Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

Software continues to revolutionize the world, impacting nearly every aspect of our work, family, and personal life. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are playing key roles in this revolution through improvements in search results, recommendations, forecasts, and other predictions. AI and ML technologies are being used in platforms for digital assistants, home entertainment, medical diagnosis, customer support, and autonomous vehicles. Testing practitioners are recognizing the potential for advances in AI and ML to be leveraged for automated testing—an area that still...

Chris_Loder
InGenius Software
TG

System-Level Test Automation: Ensuring a Good Start

Add to calendar
Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 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 leader, 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? This tutorial covers both “theory” and “practice”. Chris Loder explains the critical issues for getting a good start and his experiences in getting good automation started at a number of companies. The tutorial covers the most important management issues you must address for test automation success...

Melissa_Benua
mParticle
TI

Continuous Testing Using Containers

Add to calendar
Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

Containers. Every manager thinks they want them, but few teams have experience in knowing what to DO with them. Used thoughtfully, containerization of your services can transform the way your organization thinks about testing. Gone can be the days of maintaining X different compute environments with Y different configurations. Imagine instead spinning up just the code you need, on the machine type it needs, and only for as long as you need it. In this technical training, Melissa will walk through what containerization means for a legacy code base attempting to practice continuous...

Isabel Evans
Independent Consultant
TJ

Success with Test Automation Projects: A People-driven Approach

New
Add to calendar
Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

As we face increased demands for speed, change and technical excellence—the pressure, and the need for automating aspects of testing increases. But, successful test automation is not just about selecting and implementing tools and a technical infrastructure. People ensure the success or failure of the automation project; they must drive the project. Join Isabel Evans as she shows you how to make your test automation projects people-driven, by focusing on two vital but often neglected elements of any automation project: attitudes towards automation and experiences of automation. What...

Chris_Loder
InGenius Software
TK

Automation Framework Essentials

New
Add to calendar
Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

Automation is critical in today’s software delivery lifecycle, and yet many organizations struggle to keep their automation running. How can we mitigate difficulties and get consistent automation runs and results we can trust? The secret is implementing a solid automation framework, but that isn’t as easy as it seems. Chris Loder has built several automation frameworks over his career and has learned what works—and, more importantly, what doesn’t. This tutorial will cover what an automation framework is, the benefits of having one, and the keys to a successful framework, including...

Mike_Sowers
Coveros
TL

Quality and Testing Measures and Metrics

Add to calendar
Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

To be most effective, leaders—including development and testing managers, ScrumMasters, product owners, and IT managers—need metrics to help direct their efforts and make informed recommendations about the software’s release readiness and associated risks. Because one important evaluation activity is to “measure” the quality of the software, the progress and results of both development and testing must be measured. Collecting, analyzing, and using metrics are complicated because developers and testers often are concerned that the metrics will be used against them. Join Mike Sowers as he...

Jennifer Bonine
PinkLion AI
TM

Testing Transformation: The Art and Science for Success

Add to calendar
Tuesday, October 22, 2019 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

Technologies, testing processes, and the role of the tester have evolved significantly in the past few years with the advent of agile, DevOps, and other new technologies. It is critical that we testing professionals evaluate ourselves and continue to add tangible value to our organizations. In your work, are you focused on the trivial or on real game changers? Jennifer Bonine describes critical elements that help you artfully blend people, process, and technology to create a synergistic relationship that adds value. Jennifer shares ideas on mastering politics, maneuvering core vs. context...

Wednesday, October 23

Jess_Ingrassellino
Salesforce.org
K1

A Framework for the Whole Team to Own Quality

Add to calendar
Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - 8:30am to 9:45am

Enterprise software teams often keep testers in silos, only to be frustrated when testing is slow. A frequent answer is to make the whole team responsible for quality. But how does that work? How can testers engage key stakeholders in testing throughout the software development cycle? How can test managers build teams where everyone participates in a way that plays to individual strengths while simultaneously increasing collaboration? In this practical and inspiring talk, Jess Ingrassellino will share how she developed collaborative test charters when she started working as the first...

Jeff_Cheezy_Morgan
Industrial Logic Canada
W1

Continuous Delivery Requires Radical Changes for Testers

Add to calendar
Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - 10:15am to 11:15am

What do testing and quality look like in a continuous delivery world? Who does what and how? Is there still a need for testers, or do developers do all the testing? Is it really possible to achieve quality when you deploy to production many times each day? What should testers do when there is no time for a “testing phase”? These are some of the questions people in the testing community ask as the software development industry moves toward this new paradigm of design and delivery. Continuous delivery is a radical change in the way we build and deliver software, so it requires a radical...

Gene Gotimer
Coveros, Inc.
W2

How Fast Is My App? Performance Testing 101

Add to calendar
Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - 10:15am to 11:15am

Product owners and stakeholders love to ask about performance. “Is the app fast? How fast?” What do those questions even mean? Are they interested in the number of transactions per second? The time for the page to load? How many users it can support at once? Performance testing is a much broader topic than just being able to say an application is “fast” or “slow.” There is load testing, stress testing, and soak testing. You can measure transaction times, concurrency, and capacity. You can address some performance issues with more systems, others with more memory or faster processors or a...

ThoughtWorks Canada
W4

Advanced Principles of API Testing | Part 1

Add to calendar
Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - 10:15am to 11:15am

When your enterprise application is moving from a monolithic to a microservices architecture, migrating your testing approach, design and framework can be quite an undertaking. This interactive workshop will introduce you to new advanced techniques and design patterns. Varuna Srivastava will introduce you to how to use design patterns and teach you how to apply those in your test automation code. Come learn how to put together the advanced concepts of an API test in a framework that is scalable, robust, and easy to read and eliminates the brittleness in your checks. You will leave with...

Eran_Kinsbruner
Perfecto
W5

Stabilizing Continuous Testing in DevOps

Add to calendar
Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Organizations have matured their software development practices over the past few years. Despite advancements and innovations, testing remains one of the biggest challenges in DevOps. To increase test automation coverage and scale agile, we need to match software testing deliveries with the right testing tool, the right skill set, and the right testing persona. This could be a developer, a software development engineer in test (SDET), or a test engineer. Eran Kinsbruner will address the most painful challenges developers and testers face and offer an agile testing approach that examines...

Phil Wells
New York Times
W6

Automating the New York Times Crossword

Add to calendar
Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

The New York Times digital crossword has more subscribers than the population of Iceland. The team responsible for this media mainstay add new features all the time. They release new games, like Spelling Bee and Letter Boxed. They introduce new features, like leaderboards and vertical streaks. They add engaging bonuses like milestone animations to the crossword. How does a team doing so much, with a product so renowned, ensure that they're building in quality with every new release? Join Phil Wells, a software engineer in test for the Games team, as he discusses that very topic. Phil...

ThoughtWorks Canada
W8

Advanced Principles of API Testing | Part 2

Add to calendar
Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

When your enterprise application is moving from a monolithic to a microservices architecture, migrating your testing approach, design and framework can be quite an undertaking. This interactive workshop will introduce you to new advanced techniques and design patterns. Varuna Srivastava will introduce you to how to use design patterns and teach you how to apply those in your test automation code. Come learn how to put together the advanced concepts of an API test in a framework that is scalable, robust, and easy to read and eliminates the brittleness in your checks. You will leave with...

Roy Tuason
Zap Surgical Systems
W9

Safety-Critical Software the Quality Agilist’s Way

Add to calendar
Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

Delivering hundreds of laser beams to brain tumors with sub-millimeter precision requires accurate, safe, and effective software that is developed and tested carefully and meticulously. But to be competitive in the market and responsive to customer needs you’ve got to be fast. How do you satisfy this contradiction? How do you know when the software is ready? When is good enough, truly good enough? Are you fast enough, and are you compliant? In two-week sprints, Zap Surgical develops software for planning brain cancer treatments, and then delivering those treatments on its new gyroscopic...

Adam_Sandman
Inflectra Corporation
W12

API Testing Is Critical—Here's How to Do It Right

Preview
Add to calendar
Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

It is important to make sure you have a sound API testing strategy because it relates to the critical operation of today’s connected businesses. But all too often, API testing is overlooked. Adam Sandman will provide practical techniques for how to ensure you have sufficient test coverage of your API endpoints, how to leverage realistic test data, and how to integrate API tests into your DevOps toolchain and overall test reporting environment. He will also cover API design patterns such as endpoint versioning, self-describing data formats, authentication, authorization, and mocking...

Jonathan Kauffman
Coveros, Inc.
W13

Document Generation for Regulated Industries

Preview
Add to calendar
Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm

One of the lines in the Agile Manifesto is "Working software over comprehensive documentation." This doesn't mean that no documentation is produced, but instead that only documentation that brings value to the team and the customer should be created. So what do you do when you are working in a regulated industry and you need to produce extensive documentation to prove that the system works correctly? Jonathan Kauffman recently worked with a company that produces FDA Class II medical devices and wanted to reduce the overhead of creating the documentation required by regulatory...

Melissa_Benua
mParticle
Chris_Loder
InGenius Software
Dawn_Jardine
Independent QA Consultant
Alison Wade
TechWell Corp.
W16

Ask Me Anything!

Add to calendar
Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm

Have you ever wondered how a conference program is put together? Did you always want to know what happens behind the scenes at a conference? Maybe you have an automation question for the self-proclaimed lazy Automator, Chris Loder? Perhaps you wanted to ask Melissa Benua about continuous testing, containers, or imposter syndrome? It may be that you are interested in asking Dawn Jardine about her career path, what she thinks about One-On-One meetings, or how you too can be a speaker? Or conceivably your very curious mind wants to know "so why did Alison Wade start Women Who Test?" During...

Michael_Bolton
DevelopSense
K2

The Logic of Verification

Add to calendar
Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - 4:15pm to 5:15pm

Software testing is sometimes described as verification and validation—according to Wikipedia, “the process of checking that a software system meets specifications and that it fulfills its intended purpose.” Yet, if we examine the concept and logic of verification, we recognize that there are serious limitations to what can and cannot be checked and verified. This is not to say that checking is a bad thing—on the contrary; checking can be very valuable. Still, it’s important for testers and their clients to recognize the fundamental limitations of checking and to address those limitations...

Thursday, October 24

Chris_Loder
InGenius Software
K3

The Lazy Student’s Guide to Test Automation

Add to calendar
Thursday, October 24, 2019 - 8:30am to 9:45am

Do you loathe regression? Do you tire of the repetitive tasks that are part of your product's lifecycle? If you do, then you might be lazy like Chris Loder. Since his Grade 4 teacher wrote “Chris is lazy” on his report card, it has become his way of life. Chris will share how his “lazy” mindset has enabled him to produce world-class test automation with minimal effort. He’ll show examples of his work with software verification, documentation, reports, and analytical functionality, and even go into the archives to bring out some of his earliest automation efforts. You’ll leave with key...

Talia_Nassi
WeWork
T3

Testing in Production

Add to calendar
Thursday, October 24, 2019 - 10:15am to 11:15am

How do you know your feature is working perfectly in production? If something breaks in production, how will you know? Will you wait for a user to report it to you? What do you do when your staging test results do not reflect current production behavior? In order to test proactively as opposed to reactively, why not test in production?! By testing in production, you will have an increased accuracy of test results, your tests will run faster in production due to elimination of mock/bad data, and you will have a higher confidence before releases. You can accomplish this through feature...

Rob_Sabourin
AmiBug.Com, Inc.
T5

Reality Driven Testing in Agile Projects

Add to calendar
Thursday, October 24, 2019 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Many agile teams rework previously deployed stories, even after plenty of in-sprint testing. Well groomed, refined, stories framed with typical, alternate and error scenarios, gracefully described in well formed gherkin, continue to encounter all sorts of bugs. Software engineering consultant, Rob Sabourin, often sees rework in over 20% of deployed stories. In this presentation Rob shows how agile teams can drive rework down dramatically, often achieving near Zero rework after a story is DONE. Rob teaches teams to identify and implement relevant testing activities above and beyond those...

Arnika Hryszko
Polish Testing Board
T6

How to Ensure That Requirements Are Testable

Preview
Add to calendar
Thursday, October 24, 2019 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Everything starts with a requirement—a singular, documented need that a particular design, product, or process aims to satisfy. No other part of our work paralyzes the resulting system if it is done wrong, and no other part is more difficult to repair later. And yet we devote so little attention to requirements. By teaching people who create requirements, Arnika Hryszko learned a lot about their ways of working. She will share those lessons so that you will be able to improve your teams and projects by establishing detailed technical requirements. Discover practical ways to plan...

Noha_Gomaa
Aldo Group
T7

Testing as a Top-Notch Service

Add to calendar
Thursday, October 24, 2019 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Companies today must respond to the ever-increasing demand of delivering products in a fast-paced digital environment. As a result, many traditional system testing departments are being dismantled, teams are being split up, and individual testers are being distributed across multiple projects or functional teams. This transition can lead to workflows that are awkward and siloed, with team members trying to figure out what exactly to do with the tester. Noha Gomaa feels there must be a better way to handle the transition. She champions "testing as a service" to project teams, helping them...

Jessie Shternshus
The Improv Effect, LLC.
K4

Conscious Curiosity: The Key To Innovation

Add to calendar
Thursday, October 24, 2019 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

Curiosity is the spark that drives ideas.  It fuels imagination, creative work and innovation, and it is the driving force behind discoveries of all kinds.   Yet we tend to lose our drive to be curious as we grow up. How can we all be more consciously curious? How can you help instill a culture of curiosity at your company or at home?  What are the benefits of a curious mind and culture? Jessie will share her innate and learned curiosity, and how it fueled her exploration of the subject. She will walk you through how she has learned to ask more inquisitive questions, looks for new and...

Carrie Hughston
SAS Institute
Lynneth Lohse
SAS Institute
T9

The Hidden Testers in Your Organization

Preview
Add to calendar
Thursday, October 24, 2019 - 2:45pm to 3:45pm

The market demands that high-quality software is released at an increasing pace, yet resources remain fixed. How can organizations expand and improve testing under these conditions and help prevent costly and embarrassing bugs in production software? Why not invite internal staff to test-drive preproduction software? Structured testing events engage everyone across the company—sales, legal, day care workers, front desk receptionists—to exercise emerging software and give feedback directly to the development team. The results are incredibly valuable feedback for the development...

Dawn_Jardine
Independent QA Consultant
T10

The ROI of One-On-Ones

Add to calendar
Thursday, October 24, 2019 - 2:45pm to 3:45pm

Having regular one-on-ones is the key to supporting employee performance. As a leader, you know regular conversations are important. When can you find time? How can you make them more productive? What can you do to make them valuable to both you and your team member? What is the benefit to the organization? As a manager of a 50+ testing team, Dawn has successfully rolled out a one-on-one format that produced an increase in team performance across the organization. She will share her experiences and lessons learned from NOT having one-on-ones, and show you how you can use your one-on-ones...

K5

Automation Face-Off

Add to calendar
Thursday, October 24, 2019 - 4:00pm to 5:00pm

What do you think about when you hear the words "test automation"? Are you considering developing your own tools to help you probe the product deeply, or will you apply a commercial tool for automated checking? Are “tools” and “automation” the same thing in your world, or do you see them as fundamentally different? Are you excited by new, powerful, enabling technologies, or do you worry that a robot will replace you? And are these our only choices? One thing is for sure: When we apply automation and tools, we may fundamentally change the context and the nature of the work we do. Our...