STAREAST 2016 - Software Tester

You're under tight time pressure with barely enough information to proceed with testing. How do you test quickly and inexpensively, yet still produce informative, credible, and accountable results? Rapid Software Testing, adopted by context-driven testers worldwide, offers a field-proven answer to this all-too-common dilemma. In this one-day sampler of the approach, James Bach introduces you to the skills and practice of Rapid Software Testing through stories, discussions, and “minds-on” exercises that simulate important aspects of real testing problems. The rapid approach isn't just...

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the next big technology challenge for software testing. IoT testing uses not only concepts from traditional and mobile environments but also has new testing problems and new patterns. Jon Hagar begins by examining how to use data analytics from error profiles and social media to discover the new error patterns in IoT systems. Usage data on IoT devices is growing rapidly and becoming a big data issue. Through hands-on exercises, Jon explains how teams can use data analytics to improve development and testing. Next, he uses the analytics to define real-world...

You’ve “gone agile” and have been relatively successful. So, how do you know how well your test team is really doing? And how do you continuously improve your test practices? When things get rocky, how do you handle the challenges without reverting to old habits? The path to high-performance agile testing isn’t easy or quick, and it helps to have a guide. So consider this tutorial your guide to ongoing, improved, and sustained high-performance agile testing. Join Bob Galen and Mary Thorn as they share lessons from their most successful agile testing transitions. Explore actual team case...

You have just been assigned to a new testing project. So, where do you start? How do you develop a plan and begin testing? How will you report on your progress? In this hands-on session, Paul Holland shares test project approaches based on the Heuristic Software Test Model from Rapid Software Testing. Learn and practice new ways to plan, execute, and report on testing activities. You’ll be given a product to test and start by creating three raw lists—Product Coverage Outline, Potential Risks, and Test Ideas—that help ensure comprehensive testing. Use these lists to create an initial set of...

With the adoption of agile practices in many organizations, the test automation landscape has changed. Bob Galen explores current disruptors to traditional automation strategies, and discusses relevant and current adjustments you need to make when developing your automation business case. Open source tools are becoming incredibly viable and beat their commercial equivalents in many ways―not only in cost but also in functionality, creativity, evolutionary speed, and developer acceptance. Agile methods have fundamentally challenged our traditional automation strategies. Now we must keep up...

Many software systems are required to process huge combinations of input data, all of which deserve to be tested. Since we rarely have time to create and execute test cases for all combinations, our fundamental problem in testing is how to choose a reasonably-sized subset that will find a large percentage of defects and can be performed within the limited time and budget available. Lee Copeland says that pairwise testing is the most effective—but not well-understood—test design technique to deal with this problem. The answer is not to attempt to test all combinations of all values for all...

Large-scale and complex testing projects can stress the testing and automation practices we have learned through the years, resulting in less than optimal outcomes. However, a number of innovative ideas and concepts are emerging to better support industrial-strength testing for big projects. Hans Buwalda shares his experiences and presents strategies for organizing and managing testing on large projects. Learn how to design tests specifically for automation, including how to incorporate techniques like keyword testing and behavior-driven development. Discover what roles virtualization and...

Many organizations find that test automation does not work as well as they thought it would. In many cases, these failures are due to technical reasons, which can be fixed relatively easily. These test automation patterns are common to automation efforts at any level with whatever tools you are using. Dorothy Graham focuses on often-neglected technical issues—things that are not management issues—and the patterns that help solve them. Using a set of patterns developed...

As testers, we know that we can define many more test cases than we will ever have time to design, execute, and report. The key problem in testing is choosing a small, “smart” subset—from the almost infinite number of tests available—that will find a large percentage of the defects. Join Lee Copeland to discover how to design test cases using formal black-box techniques, including equivalence class testing, boundary value testing, decision tables, and state-transition diagrams. Explore examples of each of these techniques in action. Don’t just pick test cases randomly. Learn to selectively...

Today’s software applications are often security critical, making security testing essential in a software quality program. Unfortunately, most testers have not been taught how to effectively test the security of the software applications they validate. Join Jeffery 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...

In the tradition of James Whittaker’s book series “How to Break Software,” Jon Hagar applies the testing “attack” concept to the domain of mobile and embedded software systems. First, Jon defines the environments of mobile and embedded software. He then examines the issues of software product failures caused by defects found in these types of software. Next, Jon shares a set of attacks against mobile and embedded software based on common modes of failure that teams can direct against their software. Like different kinds of software design patterns, attacks are test design patterns that...

Cloud computing is rapidly changing the way systems are developed, tested, and deployed. New system hosting capabilities—software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS)—are forcing us to review and revise our testing processes. At the same time, cloud computing is affording us opportunities to employ new test tooling solutions, which we call testing as a service (TaaS). In this technical session, Martin Pol and Jeroen...

Have you ever worked on a project where you felt testing was thorough and complete—all of the features were covered and all of the tests passed—yet in the first week in production the software had serious issues and problems? Join Dawn Haynes to learn how to inject robustness testing into your projects to uncover those issues before release. Robustness—an important and often overlooked area of testing—is the degree to which a system operates correctly in the presence of exceptional inputs or stressful environmental conditions. By expanding basic tests and incorporating specific robustness...

To be most effective, test managers must develop and use metrics to help direct the testing effort and make informed recommendations about the software’s release readiness and associated risks. Because one important testing activity is to “measure” the quality of the software, test managers must measure the results of both the development and testing processes. Collecting, analyzing, and using metrics are complicated because many developers and testers are concerned that the metrics will be used against them. Join Mike Sowers as he addresses common metrics—measures of product quality,...

After the first wave of open source test automation tools like Fitnesse and Watir, we are now in a stronger, second wave led by Selenium-based frameworks. This powerful swell, fueled by a major shift toward web-based applications on desktops and mobile devices, is changing how corporations tackle software test automation. Add in a desire to replace old-guard, commercial tools in favor of newer technology with lower costs, we may have a perfect storm. However, with different technologies come new challenges....

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 an agile environment is much different from classic testing on waterfall projects. Testers must be involved in all aspects of software development. Jeroen Mengerink shows you how professional testers can become key contributors in agile projects. First, he explains how to pair with and help the members of your agile team by identifying the test skills each of them needs to learn for the team to create a better quality product. Because agile development starts with user stories, there is an increased importance of end-to-end testing. Jeroen shows how to use mind mapping to...

As products like Anki’s OVERDRIVE race car game and others such as Fitbit and Skylanders pop up all over, we testers need to be prepared for the wave of Internet of Things (IoT) products. Although the IoT doesn’t necessarily require new testing methodologies, it does require creativity when it comes to the tools we need to get our testing and QA work done. Jane Fraser describes and demonstrates the tools Anki’s teams use to develop and test their games, especially OVERDRIVE. From test consoles that can change game parameters on the fly, to test fixtures that can change vehicles from race...

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...

Many levels of estimation are practiced in agile, including budgeting, high-level estimation, and task planning (detailed estimation). That might seem like an anathema to agile, but it is not. Mike Harris shares a case study that provides an approach that “checks the box” for standard corporate...

Until recently, the Internet of Things (IoT) was just an idea that techies talked about. Unlike innovations in the past, development and testing of the IoT is significantly more elaborate. After introducing the technology of wearables and IoT, Gauri Arondekar delves into the components and architectures that make it work. Focusing on tools and solutions that accelerate the testing processes, Gauri shares the success story of an end-to-end testing strategy for a leading...

In today’s environment of plummeting software delivery cycle times, test automation becomes a more critical and strategic necessity.  How can we possibly keep up with software delivery's explosive pace while retaining satisfactory test coverage?  How do we keep the reins on costs and reduce risk?  Carl Nagle maintains that the long-term solution is a greater level of “sustainable” test automation.  The Software Automation Framework Support (SAFS) method separates test...

Thirty years ago when Cem Kaner coined the term “exploratory testing,” it was largely ignored for almost a decade. Since then, the idea of exploratory testing has moved through recognition, controversy, hostility, tolerance, and acceptance. Yet questions remain: Is exploratory testing an activity? or is it a technique? or is it an approach? If the purpose of testing is to notice and reveal new information when the landscape of the product is poorly known, described, or understood, then isn't all testing...

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...

Asad Faruqui and Moni Mau say that their old regression automation used to take three-to-four days of execution time as they ran against different browser versions, locales, and currencies. They wanted to make the automation framework more efficient so features could go to market faster. Symantec explored Selenium Grid which could reduce the run time by offering some parallelism, but Asad and Moni wanted even more efficiency. They explain how they created both a...

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...

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...

Mobile devices are taking over the world and quickly outpacing the use of traditional desktop machines. But how should we test them? Jonah Stiennon has spent the past two years working with a team of open source contributors at Sauce Labs to establish Appium as the industry standard for cross-platform mobile test automation. A Node.js application, Appium uses a superset of the JSON wire protocol, the same protocol on which Selenium is built, to automate both iOS and...

Joe Colantonio shares how combining your existing automated tests with scalable automated visual testing can help you dramatically increase coverage, reduce maintenance, and substantially boost test robustness, efficiency, and ROI. Joe includes real-life use cases—automating cross-browser UI validation, adding full UI regression coverage to existing automated tests, handling dynamic content in visual tests, and more—to help you release faster and better, automatically...

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...

Join Danny McKeown, Paychex’s lead test enterprise automation architect, to learn how to climb the testing maturity curve and increase predictability and reuse, all while accelerating repeatable and reliable testing. Learn how Paychex iteratively built a well-defined web and mobile app test automation architecture. By evolving the areas of strategy, environment pre-conditions, continuous integration, and understanding their IT users, Paychex executes a mature program...

GitHub is the repository for the vast majority of today’s open-source software. And that is why many interviewers look at applicants’ public GitHub.com accounts to assess their interests, popularity, helpfulness, and consistency. To collaborate with developers, today’s testers need git and a GitHub account. Unfortunately, esoteric command lines often confuse those new to the tool. Join Wilson Mar as he provides advice on how to be immediately productive. He begins with...

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,...

How would you like to be in this position? Development sends the final release candidate for multiple systems with a user base of one million just a day before the production release, and you are expected to sign off on the overall software quality. Rahul Shah is responsible for providing QA sign-off for a dozen applications every week and is accountable for reporting the overall quality of functional, regression, automation, cross-browser, mobile, and performance testing...

How well do you know your data? Organizations are discovering the value in their data—as evidence of what they have done and a clue to how they can improve the bottom line. With the increase in analytics, it is no secret that there are more eyes on the data. And analyzing data can give valuable insight into patterns that drive efficiencies or errors. It is important to use this information and make sure it is being used correctly. However, excavating the data is not always...

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...

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.

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,...