Development Manager

Keynotes

K4 Asking the Right Questions? What Journalism Can Teach Testers

Thomas McCoy, Australian Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs

Thu, 05/02/2013 - 8:30am

As the testing discipline continues to evolve—and the demands on testers increase—we need to look for new paradigms to guide our work. Thomas McCoy believes the profession of journalism has much to offer in helping us ask the right kinds of questions, be heard, and deliver bad news effectively. In many ways, our profession has ideals similar to those of journalism: our first obligation should be to the truth, we must maintain independence (even when embedded in agile teams), and our mission includes the protection of society.

K5 The Mismeasure of Software: The Last Talk on Measurement You’ll Ever Need to Hear

Lee Copeland, Software Quality Engineering

Thu, 05/02/2013 - 4:15pm

Lee Copeland maintains that most organizations have some kind of metrics program—and almost all are ineffective. After explaining the concept of measurement, Lee describes two key reasons for these almost universal metrics program failures. The first major mistake people make is forgetting that the model we are using for measurement is not necessarily reality. The second major blunder is treating ideas as if they were real things and then counting them.

Tutorials

ME Leading Change—Even If You’re Not in Charge

Jennifer Bonine, tap|QA, Inc.

Mon, 04/29/2013 - 8:30am

Has this happened to you? You try to implement a change in your organization and it doesn’t get the support that you thought it would. And, to make matters worse, you can't figure out why. Or, you have a great idea but can’t get the resources required for successful implementation. Jennifer Bonine shares a toolkit of techniques to help you determine which ideas will—and will not—work within your organization.

TP Distributed Agile Testing: Yes, You Can

Janet Gregory, DragonFire, Inc.

Tue, 04/30/2013 - 1:00pm

When agile development first gained popularity, agile meant collocated teams, including testers, programmers, analysts, and customers who were expected to perform many functions. As agile methods have spread and expanded, many organizations with globally-distributed teams are facing challenges with their agile deployment. Having worked with many such teams, Janet Gregory has observed ways that testers in agile teams can be very productive while delivering a high-quality software product and working well with the rest of the team.

TQ How to Actually DO High-volume Automated Testing

Cem Kaner, Florida Institute of Technology

Carol Oliver, Florida Institute of Technology

Tue, 04/30/2013 - 1:00pm

In high volume automated testing (HiVAT), the test tool generates the test, runs it, evaluates the results, and alerts a human to suspicious results that need further investigation. What makes it simple is its oracle—run the program until it crashes or fails in some other extremely obvious way. More powerful HiVAT approaches are more sensitive to more types of errors. They are particularly useful for testing combinations of many variables and for hunting hard-to-replicate bugs that involve timing or corruption of memory or data. Cem Kaner presents a new strategy for teaching HiVAT testing.