STAREAST 2016 - General Management
Sunday, May 1
Fundamentals of Agile Certification—ICAgile (2–Day)
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
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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”...
Lightning Strikes the Keynotes
Throughout the years, Lightning Talks have been a popular part of the STAR conferences. If you’re not familiar with the concept, Lightning Talks consists of a series of five-minute talks by different speakers within one presentation period. Lightning Talks are the opportunity for speakers to deliver their single biggest bang-for-the-buck idea in a rapid-fire presentation. And now, lightning has struck the STAR keynotes. Some of the best-known experts in testing will step up to the podium and give you their best shot of lightning. Get multiple keynote presentations for the price of one—and...
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...
Quality Metrics: The Dirty Word in the Room
Is tracking metrics beneficial? What does it accomplish? How and what should be tracked with regards to software quality? Management wants software metrics to understand what the individual and/or teams are accomplishing and how they are doing with regards to management's expectations. Unfortunately, sometimes those metrics are used against the team and/or individuals. Join Annette Ash as she explores beneficial options to significantly increase software quality, excite...
Testing at Startup Companies: What, When, Where, and How
Startups are becoming increasingly prolific—technology startups even more so. CEOs are recognizing the need for quality. Their users are their growth, and if they can't retain users, their growth slows or stops. So quality matters. How do you convince the rest of the company that test brings value? How do you convince developers and product owners that spending time on quality is important, particularly if they have never worked with testers before? Should startups even...
Finding Success with Test Process Improvement
When you go on a road trip and want to plan your journey, you need to know where you are, where you want to go, and why you want to go there. You need the same things when you want to improve your test process. It doesn’t matter whether you are agile, waterfall, or part of a Test Center of Excellence, you need to assess the current state of the process, your goal, and how to implement the improvements. Gitte Ottosen takes you through some of test process improvement...
Friday, May 6
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,...
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.