STAREAST 2016 - Test Techniques
Wednesday, May 4
Acceptance- and Behavior-Driven Development with Cucumber: Three Case Studies
Acceptance test-driven development (ATDD), behavior-driven development (BDD), and Cucumber promise many benefits related to your user story acceptance tests. They promise tighter collaboration between the product owner and the team. They promise the ability for the product owner and other stakeholders to write their own executable acceptance tests. They even promise an increase in the value produced by the efforts of your team as they focus on building the “right”...
Testing in the New World of Off-the-Shelf Software
Testing an off-the-shelf, sometimes called COTS, system? Often, project managers and stakeholders mistakenly believe that one benefit of purchasing software is that there is little, if any, testing required. This could not be further from the truth. Testing COTS software requires a different focus from traditional testing approaches. Although no software package will be delivered free of bugs, the testing focus from the purchasing organization’s perspective is not on...
The Canary in the Coal Mine: Create an Early Warning Tool to Help Your Testing
Many organizations are using virtualization technology to increase the number of available test machines. However, this increase creates a new dilemma for testers. How can you confirm that all test systems are running properly and not showing signs of serious defects? Since many companies are reluctant to add additional staff members to simply “babysit” test environments, teams are forced to do...
Thursday, May 5
Analyze, Diagnose, and Prevent Test Flakiness
Test code development is generally approached with more lenient standards and less scrutiny than production code. As a result, rather than providing valuable feedback on software quality, this can lead to tests that produce inconsistent results and false outcomes. Team productivity is affected since executing, debugging, and fixing unreliable tests results in a substantial waste of time. Join Dionny Santiago as he describes how to transition from flaky, unreliable tests...
A Tester’s Experience with User Experience Mapping
Let's take an off-the-beaten-path approach to quality—testing based on actual user experiences. Being aware of surroundings and emotions while using intuition and instincts are attributes of great testing. With the right tools and approaches, we can learn to tap into users’ experiences to understand and exploit their underlying emotions. Marjana Shammi explains the basics of experience mapping and describes how testers can use that information to generate great test...
Continuous Integration: A New Way of Life
Continuous integration is the new buzzword in software development because it opens up opportunities well beyond making sure all your team's code compiles cleanly. What if this pipeline could improve everything from the quality of code reviews, to how you monitor your product “in the wild,” and when your automated tests are executed? What if it could provide insight into how well those tests are performing? Melissa Benua explores how to setup a basic integration...
Testing Lessons from the Land of Make Believe
Rob Sabourin has discovered testing lessons in Sesame Street, the Simpsons, the Looney Tunes gang, the Great Detectives, Dr. Seuss, and many other unlikely places, but this year he journeys to the Land of Make Believe. Rob's grandchildren Jane and Suzy draw him into the Land of Make Believe. Every visit is a new adventure. By leaving reality for the realm of play, Rob has discovered many simple truths and clever strategies for solving stubborn technical, management,...