Tutorials

Large-scale testing projects severely stress “normal” testing practices. This can result in a number of less than optimal results. A number of innovative ideas and concepts have emerged to support industrial-strength testing of large and complex projects—some successful and others not so successful. Hans Buwalda shares his experiences and the strategies he's developed over the years for large testing on large projects. He describes the possibilities and pitfalls of outsourcing test automation. Learn how to design tests specifically for automation, and how to successfully incorporate keyword testing. The automation discussion will include virtualization and cloud options, how to deal with numerous versions and configurations common to large projects, and how to handle the complexity added by mobile devices. Hans’ information is based on his nineteen years of worldwide experience with testing and test automation involving large projects with test cases executing continuously for many weeks on multiple machines.

In response to increasing market demand for well-performing applications, many organizations implement performance testing programs, often at great expense. Sadly, these solutions alone are often insufficient to keep pace with emerging expectations and competitive pressures. Scott Barber shares the fundamentals of implementing T⁴APM™ including specific examples from recent client implementations. T⁴APM™ is a simple and universal approach that is valuable independently or as an extension of existing performance testing programs. The approach hinges on applying a simple and unobtrusive "Target, Test, Trend, Tune” cycle to tasks in your application lifecycle—from a single unit test through entire system production monitoring. Leveraging T⁴APM™ on a particular task may require knowledge specific to the task, but learning how to leverage the approach does not. Scott provides everything you need to become the T⁴APM™ coach and champion, and to help your team keep up with increasing demand for better performance, regardless of your current title or role.

So you’ve “gone agile” and have been relatively successful for a year or so. But how do you know how well you’re really doing? And how do you continuously improve your practices? And when things get rocky, how do you handle the challenges without reverting to old habits? You realize that the path to high-performance agile testing isn’t easy or quick. It also helps to have a guide. So consider this workshop your guide to ongoing, improved, and sustained high-performance. Join seasoned agile testing coach Bob Galen as he share lessons from his most successful agile testing transitions. You’ll explore actual team case studies for building team skills, embracing agile requirements, fostering customer interaction, building agile automation, driving business value, and testing at-scale stories of agile testing excellence. You’ll examine the mistakes, adjustments, and the successes—so you’ll learn how to react to real-world contexts. Leave with a better view of your team’s strengths, weaknesses, and where you need to focus to improve.

In today’s market, global outreach, quick time to release, and a feature rich design are the major factors that determine a product’s success. Organizations are constantly on the lookout for innovative testing techniques to match these driving forces. Crowdsourced testing is a paradigm increasing in popularity because it addresses these factors through its scale, flexibility, cost effectiveness, and fast turnaround. Join Rajini Padmanaban as she describes what it takes to implement a crowdsourced testing effort including its definition, models, relevance to today’s development world, and challenges and mitigation strategies. Rajini shares the facts and myths about crowdsourced testing. She spans a range of theory and practice including case studies of real-life experiences and exercises to illustrate her message, and explains what it takes to maximize the benefits of a crowdsourced test implementation.

“Testing costs too much.” “We don’t get the value we should from the investment we make.” “Testing just delays the project.” Familiar sayings in your organization? Although testing is accepted by most as an integral part of any software development lifecycle, some see it as a hole in which to throw money rather than as an investment in quality. In order to gain credibility and reduce the negative views of our work, we testers and test managers must show senior management a clear return on their investment. Lloyd Roden describes ten measures that demonstrate the value of testing in tangible business terms. Lloyd demonstrates how these highly practical measures can be used to quantify the value of testing and to predict future quality levels. He shows how to report these measurements in ways that are meaningful to management. In this highly practical tutorial, Lloyd demonstrates the use of various measurement utilities that each delegate will receive as a takeaway.

Exploratory testing is an approach to testing that emphasizes the freedom and responsibility of testers to continually optimize the value of their work. It is the process of three mutually supportive activities done in parallel: learning, test design, and test execution. With skill and practice, exploratory testers typically uncover an order of magnitude more problems than when the same amount of effort is spent on procedurally scripted testing. All testers conduct exploratory testing in one way or another, but few know how to do it systematically to obtain the greatest benefits. Even fewer can articulate the process. James Bach looks at specific heuristics and techniques of exploratory testing that will help you get the most from this highly productive approach. James focuses on the skills and dynamics of exploratory testing, and how it can be combined with scripted approaches.

On agile teams, testers often struggle to “keep up” with the pace of development if they continue employing a waterfall-based verification process—finding bugs after development. Nate Oster challenges you to question waterfall assumptions and replace this legacy verification testing with Acceptance Test-driven Development (ATDD). With ATDD, you “test first” by writing executable specifications for a new feature before development begins. Learn to switch from “tests as verification” to “tests as specification” and to guide development with acceptance tests written in the language of your business. Get started by joining a team for a simulation and experience how ATDD helps build in quality instead of trying to test out defects. Then progress to increasingly more realistic scenarios and practice the art of specifying intent with plain-language and table-based formats. These paper-based simulations give you meaningful practice with how ATDD changes the way you think about tests and collaborate as a team. Leave empowered with a kit of exercises to advocate ATDD with your own teams!

Feel your testing’s stuck in a rut? Looking for new ways to discover test ideas? Wonder if your testers have constructive methods to discover different approaches for testing? In this interactive session, Karen Johnson explains how to use heuristics to find new ideas. After a brief discussion, Karen has you apply and practice with a variety of heuristics. Need to step back and consider some of your testing challenges from a fresh perspective? This workshop explores the use of the CIA’s tool—the Phoenix Checklist—a set of intentionally designed context-free questions to help you look from a fresh perspective at a problem or challenge. Karen reviews the use of the fun and useful tool of brainstorming and variations on brainstorming that you can use with your team. Come join a session designed to explore creative ways to strengthen your approach to testing.

As applications for smartphones and tablets become incredibly popular, organizations face increasing pressure to quickly and successfully deliver testing for these devices. When faced with a mobile testing project, many testers find it tempting to apply the same methods and techniques used for desktop applications. Although some of these concepts transfer directly, testing mobile applications presents its own special challenges. Jonathan Kohl says if you follow the same practices and techniques as you have before, you will miss critical defects. Learn how to effectively test mobile applications, and how to add more structure and organization to generate effective test ideas to exploit the capabilities and weaknesses of mobile devices. Jonathan shares first-hand experiences with testing mobile applications and discusses how to address various challenges. Work on real problems on your own device, and learn firsthand how to be productive while testing mobile applications.

Note: This is a hands-on course. Participants must bring their own mobile device for course exercises.

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, too. 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. James Bach shares the specific techniques and heuristics of critical thinking and presents realistic testing puzzles that help you practice and increase your thinking skills. Critical thinking begins with just three questions—Huh? Really? and So?—that kick start your brain to analyze specifications, risks, causes, effects, project plans, and anything else that puzzles you. Join James for this interactive, hands-on session and practice your critical thinking skills. Study and analyze product behaviors and experience new ways to identify, isolate, and characterize bugs.

Today’s software applications are often security-critical, making security testing an essential part of a software quality program. Unfortunately, most testers have not been taught how to effectively test the security of the software applications they validate. Join Jeff Payne as he shares what you need to know to integrate effective security testing into your everyday software testing activities. Learn how software vulnerabilities are introduced into code and exploited by hackers. Discover how to define and validate security requirements. Explore effective test techniques for assuring that common security features are tested. Learn about the most common security vulnerabilities and how to identify key security risks within applications and use testing to mitigate them. Understand how to security test applications—both web- and GUI-based—during the software development process. Review examples of how common security testing tools work and assist the security testing process. Take home valuable tools and techniques for effectively testing the security of your applications going forward.

Because the cloud introduces additional system risks—Internet dependencies, security challenges, performance concerns, and more—you, as a test manager, need to broaden your scope and update your team’s practices and processes. Ruud Teunissen shares a unique approach that directly addresses more than 140 new testing concerns and risks you may encounter in the cloud. Learn how to identify cloud-specific requirements and the risks that can ensue from those requirements. Then, explore the test strategies you'll need to adopt to mitigate those risks. Explore cloud services selection, implementation, and operations. Then, take a dive in to the wider scope of test management in the cloud. Take back the ammunition you need to convince senior management that test managers should participate during the cloud services selection to help avoid risks before implementation and, further, why you should work with IT operations to extend test activities after the system goes live.

The nature of exploration, coupled with the ability of testers to rapidly apply their skills and experience, make exploratory testing a widely used test approach—especially when time is short. Unfortunately, exploratory testing often is dismissed by project managers who assume that it is not reproducible, measurable, or accountable. If you have these concerns, you may find a solution in a technique called session-based test management (SBTM), developed by Jon Bach and his brother James to specifically address these issues. In SBTM, testers are assigned areas of a product to explore, and testing is time boxed in “sessions” that have mission statements called “charters” to create a meaningful and countable unit of work. Jon discusses—and you practice—the skills of exploration using the SBTM approach. He demonstrates a freely available, open source tool to help manage your exploration and prepares you to implement SBTM in your test organization.

Testing in production for online applications has evolved into a critical component of successful performance testing strategies. Dan Bartow explains the fundamentals of cloud computing, its application to full-scale performance validation, and the practices and techniques needed to design and execute a successful testing-in-production strategy. Drawing on his experiences, Dan describes the methodology he has used for testing numerous online applications in a production environment with minimal disruption. He explains how to create a performance testing strategy to give your team critical data about how your online application performs and scales. Learn how to create a robust lab-to-production ecosystem that delivers the answers about what will happen when peak traffic hits your site. Take back practical approaches to mitigate the three most common problems—security, test data, and potential live customer impact—that arise when embarking on testing in production.

The cloud can deliver services over the Internet in three ways—software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Each of these approaches requires testers to focus on more than classical functional testing. Ruud Teunissen explores the new techniques and skills testers need to master for testing cloud services. Examples include testing for elasticity; testing fall back scenarios to guarantee continuity of business processes; testing for adherence to laws and regulations; and testing apps, web services, and the numerous platforms that need to be supported. Join Ruud and learn how to test these additional cloud requirements to get a grip on technical test issues, explore cloud services operations, and jump-start the broader scope of testing in the cloud. Take back practical approaches for tuning and tweaking your present test techniques to fly high in the cloud.

In both agile and traditional projects, keyword-driven testing has proven to be a powerful way to attain a high level of automation—when it is done correctly. Many testing organizations use keyword testing but aren’t realizing the full benefits of scalability and maintainability that are essential to keep up with the demands of testing today’s software. Hans Buwalda outlines how you can meet what he calls the 5 percent challenges—automating 95 percent of your tests with no more than 5 percent of your total testing effort—using the proven, keyword-driven test method he uses. Hans discusses how keywords relate to other automation techniques like scripting and data-driven testing. The information and real-world application Hans presents enables you to attain a very high level of automation with the lowest possible effort.