STAREAST 2016 - Leadership
Tuesday, May 3
What’s Your Leadership IQ?
Have you ever needed a way to measure your leadership IQ? Or been in a performance review where the majority of time was spent discussing your need to improve as a leader? If you have ever wondered what your core leadership competencies are and how to build on and improve them, Jennifer Bonine shares a toolkit to help you do just that. This toolkit includes a personal assessment of your leadership competencies, explores a set of eight dimensions of successful leaders, provides suggestions on how you can improve competencies that are not in your core set of strengths, and describes...
Wednesday, May 4
Lessons Learned in (Selling) Software Testing
In 2013, Keith Klain quit his job as Head of the Global Test Center at Barclays Investment Bank to start a test consulting business based on context-driven testing principles. Keith has spent the past two years wading through industry dogma, pitching new ideas about testing to clients, hiring—and firing—testers, and trying to turn context-driven testing into a viable commercial approach. Succeeding in such a setting requires a balance of practical approaches that can driving improvements against “sunk cost”...
Nature vs. Nurture: Building Great Test Teams
When organizations expand internal test teams, hiring managers sort through piles of résumés hoping for a few gems. But scanning for coveted technical skills and relevant experience often leads to disappointment. With the proliferation of new software and the explosion of mobile devices, the QA industry is surging, and experienced testers are becoming harder to find. What inherent qualities do great testers really possess? Do those attributes show up on résumés? Should technical expertise or tool/application...
Thursday, May 5
The Lean Startup Method and Its Value for Testers
A startup is an organization created to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Approximately 40 percent of all startups will cease operations with investors losing everything; 95 percent will fall short of their financial projections. And the number one cause of failure? No one wants to buy their product. Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup...
Reception and Summit Kickoff: As a Leader, What Is Keeping You Up at Night?
Kickoff the Testing & Quality Leadership Summit with a reception and some networking.
Friday, May 6
Creative Leadership for Creative Teams
As developers and testers, we're uniquely creative, we're inspiration driven, we obsess over every detail, and we can rarely turn it off. We are creatives, and we are different. We think differently, we perform differently—and we need to lead differently. Join Martin Ringlein for a rant, a rave, and a reality check on how to build and lead creative teams. Learn how to manage collaboration and fuel inspiration. Leave the Leadership Summit with not just data points and facts and figures about leadership, but how changing our perspective of the world around us results in more effective ways...
Design Your Life
After more than 15 years of pouring her soul and passion into making empathetic and engaging products and product teams for some of the world’s most recognized brands, and absolutely loving her work, Jaimee hit a rock-bottom career burnout. Something she never expected would happen. In finding her way back, she began to explore what might happen if she put that same dedication she had poured into the products she made into her own life as if her life were the product she was designing and she learned some fantastic, useful skills along the way that made her life, her work and how she felt...
When You're the Lone (Female) Voice of Reason
With software engineering still dominated by men, it is not uncommon for women to find themselves alone on a team of men. Those who are test-focused can find themselves in the awkward position of not only being the sole woman in the ship room, but with the tough job of telling her peers they are not ready to go to production. Melissa Benua has spent many years as the lone female voice speaking up for code quality at companies both big and small. Learn from her experiences on how to be heard and taken seriously, with tips on how to be “the woman” without making the job about being female,...
Leading through Change
The ability to change to meet the evolving business environments is critical to the success of any organization. Leading an organization through change is one of the greatest challenges leaders face. In this interactive presentation, Cynthia Gilmer discusses some of the most critical aspects of corporate change and a leader’s role in realizing a successful transformation. Take home valuable lessons on how to be a leader and manage in a crisis or during changing circumstances.
The Power of Collective Experience
Bring your biggest challenges to this session and tap the wisdom of others. In this immersive session, you will tackle some of the most widely mentioned challenges brought to light from the group. Whether it’s a software testing conundrum, a project setback, a management blocker, a group or team dysfunction or an interpersonal hurdle, all of these can slow our progress and reduce our effectiveness. And when we hunt for options, we all have blind spots and biases that prevent us from thinking out of the box and finding new and different solutions. Typically the best ideas come from...
It Was Never A Dress: How agile methodology inspired a project management software company to start a BIG conversation about women in technology and beyond!
In an effort to break down barriers and shift perceptions of women in technology—and all spaces—Axosoft used their tech superhero powers of collaboration, cross-functionality, and agility to offer up a radically reimagined women’s bathroom symbol. This new symbol has started an international conversation that is picking up STEAM! Since the campaign launched in 2015, it has generated over 18 million impressions, received attention from every major media outlet, and is funding a scholarship at Arizona State University for a need-based student entering a STEAM (science, technology,...
Panel–Career Superpowers
Let’s discuss and define the most important career superpowers for women. Hear what industry professionals, leaders, and idea disruptors think the important career superpowers are for women in 2015 and going forward.
Panel: Tania Katan, the Curator of Code at AxoSoft and Melissa Benua, Senior Backend Software Engineer at PlayFab, Inc.