STAREAST 2017 - Agile Testing
Sunday, May 7
Real-World Software Testing with Microsoft Visual Studio® (3–Day)
Fundamentals of Agile Certification—ICAgile (2–Day)
Fundamentals of DevOps Certification—ICAgile (2-Day)
Monday, May 8
Better Test Design for Great Test Automation
VideoWhen we discover—often late in an automation effort—that the automated tests are cumbersome and costly to maintain, we often view this as a technical problem for the automator to solve. However, an often-overlooked cause is the role that testers who designed these tests play in making automation scalable and maintainable. In this interactive tutorial for both testers and automation engineers, Hans Buwalda explores how better test designs will result in much improved test automation and can make the difference between automation success and failure. See why successful automated...
Test Attacks to Break Mobile and Embedded Software
VideoIn the tradition of James Whittaker’s book series, How to Break Software, Jon Hagar applies the testing “attack” concept to 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 must be...
Implement BDD with Cucumber and SpecFlow
NewWe’ve all been there. We work incredibly hard to develop a feature and design tests based on written requirements. We build a detailed test plan that aligns the tests with the software and the documented business needs. And when we put the tests to the software, it all falls apart because the requirements were changed without informing everyone. But Mary Thorn says help is at hand. Enter behavior-driven development (BDD) and Cucumber and SpecFlow, two tools for running automated acceptance tests and facilitating BDD. Mary explores the nuances of Cucumber and SpecFlow, and shows you how to...
Building Your Mobile App Quality and Test Strategy
Let’s build a mobile app quality and testing strategy together. Whether you have a web, hybrid, or native app, building a quality and testing strategy means (1) knowing what data and tools you have available to make agile decisions, (2) understanding your customers and your competitors, and (3) testing your app under real-world conditions. Jason Arbon guides you through the latest techniques, data, and tools to ensure your mobile app quality and testing strategy is awesome. Leave this interactive session with a strategy for your very own app—or one you pretend to own. The information Jason...
Test Automation Strategies for the Agile World
Sold Out!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 often best 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...
Testing Cloud Services
VideoCloud 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, Jeroen Mengerink focus on testing SaaS systems, linking relevant IaaS and PaaS capabilities along the way. He will discuss how to test...
Tuesday, May 9
Selenium Test Automation: From the Ground Up
Selenium expertise, the industry-standard tool for testing web applications, is a much sought after skill in today’s world of test automation. Many believe it is a must-have tool for test engineers. If you want to learn Selenium, then this tutorial is a great start. Cheezy Morgan shows you how to build test automation using Selenium. But he doesn’t stop there. He uses his years of experience to show you how to build automation that is clean and easy to maintain. Cheezy introduces other tools that work with Selenium to help manage the data used to drive your tests, work with JavaScript...
Agile Testing: Team Tactics that Deliver the Goods
Video Sold Out!Let’s face it—agile testing is different. Challenges exist in successfully integrating within the teams themselves. Scrummerfall continues to run rampant. The dichotomy of testing v. quality and balancing both the team’s and your focus still exists. Delivering value is both an imperative and a challenge. In this dynamic workshop, join agile coaches Mary Thorn and Bob Galen to explore the tools, techniques, and mindset you need to bring to the table to successfully test in agile contexts. Mary and Bob examine risk-based testing, iterative test planning, exploratory testing, agile...
Agile Test Team Leadership: From Concept to Product
Sold Out!Today, many agile organizations are making a terrible error. They are assuming there is no place for test management and leadership in agile, self-directed team contexts. We beg to differ with this view and believe a strong need exists for testing leadership in agile organizations—just not the way we’ve typically approached it. Join Mary Thorn and Bob Galen as they explore what excellent test team leadership looks like in agile contexts. Explore the aspects of self-directed teams and the implications to your previous leadership styles. Look under the covers of Scrum and see where you...
Integrating Automated Testing into DevOps
Sold Out!In many organizations, agile development processes are driving the pursuit of faster software releases, which has spawned a set of new practices called DevOps. DevOps stresses communications and integration between development and operations, including rapid deployment, continuous integration, and continuous delivery. Because DevOps practices require confidence that changes made to the code base will function as expected, automated testing is essential. Join Jeffery Payne as he discusses the unique challenges associated with integrating automated testing into continuous integration/...
Wednesday, May 10
What Really Happens When You Deliver Software Quickly
VideoThe current trend in testing is to move away from traditional manual testing and toward test automation. To keep up with the rapid pace of continuous delivery today, test teams are urgently reskilling and reshaping themselves. Sally Goble shares her experience of what happened to the test team at the Guardian when the engineering team began the process of delivering software fast and at will—deploying software up to 400 times a day. Sally shares why her team reevaluated the role of testing in the software development cycle, what prompted the Guardian’s controversial decision to...
Pairing: The Secret Sauce of Agile Testing
VideoFinding time to learn test techniques, mentor other testers, grow application knowledge, and cross-train your team members is a daunting task with a complicated recipe. What if you could do these things while testing and finding bugs? Enter Pair Testing. What’s that? Well, maybe you’ve heard of pair programming. It’s like that—only you’re testing rather than programming. And it’s the secret sauce of agile testing because it makes your routine, bland testing so much more fun! Testers on Jess Lancaster’s team use pair testing not only to make better software but also to foster better...
Use Docker to Enhance Your Testing
Wonder how you can make your testing more efficient? Join Glenn Buckholz as he explores Docker, a technology that allows rapid development and deployment via containers. First, he explains exactly what composes a container, and discusses the differences between a container and an image. Once this is clear, Glenn demonstrates how Docker solves the problem of what he calls the state capture problem. When a test case produces a failure, the developer and testers often expend significant effort reproducing the issue so the developer can see the issue and fix it. Glenn demonstrates how Docker...
Effective Test Estimation
VideoWe have experience with testing projects, both large and small. Sometimes our test estimates are accurate—and sometimes they’re not. We often miss deadlines because there are no defined criteria used to create our estimates. Sometimes we miss our schedules due to crunched testing timelines. Shyam Sunder briefly describes the different test estimation techniques including Simple, Medium, Complex; Top Down, Bottom Up; and Test Point Analysis. To assist in better estimating in the future, Shyam has prepared test estimation templates and guidelines, which can significantly help...
Service Virtualization: What Testers Need to Know
VideoUnrestrained access to a trustworthy and realistic test environment—including the application under test and all of its dependent components—is essential for achieving “quality @ speed” with agile, DevOps, and continuous delivery. Service virtualization is an emerging technology that provides teams access to a complete test environment by simulating the dependent components that are beyond their control, still evolving, or too complex to configure in a test lab. Arthur Hicken covers the ABCs of service virtualization—what it is and how it impacts Access, Behavior, Cost, and Speed....
Agile Testing at Scale
Over the past twenty years, Mary Thorn has had the opportunity to work at many startups, creating several QA/test departments from scratch. For the past ten years, she has done this in agile software companies. Recently Mary moved from leading small agile test organizations to leading a large agile test organization. She has learned how to lead agile testers and agile testing in large contexts. Mary takes you through what she has learned, identifies the keys to transitioning your test organization as it grows, and discusses the techniques required to lead it through the changes. Agile...
Deliver Enterprise Quality in an Agile and DevOps World
VideoEnterprises are adopting agile and DevOps methodologies because they focus on minimizing the latency of software delivery and the distance between “aha” and “ka-ching.” Jacob Ukelson says that judicious adoption of these methodologies can increase both velocity and quality, but inappropriate adoption can be disastrous—from an end-to-end quality perspective. Agile’s focus on iterative development and user involvement already has affected testing by increasing the emphasis on testing by developers themselves, component test automation, and by embedding testers in agile teams. DevOps...
Continuous Context Driven Test Improvement
Classical test process improvement is often not today’s best solution. With virtualization, SOA, web, cloud, mobile, and integration with social media, the way we develop, test, and manage has drastically changed. Jeroen explores why Agile, context-driven testing, SCRUM, continuous integration/development and DevOps require a flexible and pragmatic context-driven approach to test improvement. Context-driven test improvement is organized on two levels. [1] The improvement architecture level starts by clarifying the goal, scope, and context. This results in the improvement approach, a...
Microservices Testing Strategies: The Good, the Bad, and the Reality
Software development is trending toward building systems using small, autonomous, independently deployable services called microservices. Leveraging microservices makes it easier to add and modify system behavior with minimal or no service interruption. Because they facilitate releasing software early, frequently, and continuously, microservices are especially popular in DevOps. But how do microservices affect software testing and testability? Are there new testing challenges that arise from this paradigm? Or are these simply old challenges disguised as new ones? Join Tariq King as he...
Applying Agile Principles to Test Automation Development
Why do test automation implementations often result in budget and schedule overruns and often diverge from the test objectives they were meant to support? Because test automation is a form of software development—but rarely is treated as such. Lee Barnes discusses how the application of software development practices, specifically agile principles, to test automation efforts helps ensure a reliable and maintainable solution that is closely aligned with both testing AND business objectives. Benefits of incorporating agile practices in test automation development include: increased customer...
When the System Creaks: Lessons Learned in Agile Maintenance
We often talk about agile in terms of development of new systems, sometimes called greenfield projects. These scenarios present us with a “cleaner” version of agile. But Jim Peers is asking the question: What about agile methodologies when applied to the maintenance of a mature product? A mature product brings into play many more variables—addition or upgrading of features, addressing technical debt, bug fixing, security and accessibility concerns, and working with an aging codebase. And each variable brings its own challenges. By necessity, these scenarios can force us to adapt our work...
The DevOps Challenge: Now Is the Time to Be a Champion of Quality
VideoSoftware failures continue to make news headlines daily. Yet all the industry hype we hear is about DevOps, a set of practices that seems to exclude quality and testers. Does quality matter? Will it become part of the equation? We must take notice of exclusionary movements and become champions of quality. Lisa Dronzek shares voke’s DevOps survey data to provide insight about the realities and unintended consequences of this movement. Whether you are all-in or just feeling left out, join Lisa to explore DevOps—its challenges and its risks. Lisa explains why and how testers need to...
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 11
Owning Quality: The Culture of Empowerment at Riot Games
VideoAt Riot Games, the League of Legends team faces the challenge of delivering content patches to a global audience on a tight timeline—every two weeks. By employing the tenets of the company’s core values (the Riot Manifesto), QA representatives work to ensure the highest possible quality player experience by working closely with developers in dynamic and challenging embedded roles. Jane Jeffers describes the five parts of the Riot Manifesto—Player Experience First; Challenge Convention; Focus on Talent and Team; Take Play Seriously; and Stay Hungry, Stay Humble—and how each is...
Rediscover Exploratory Testing
The testing community is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea when it comes to exploratory testing. Although exploratory testing has been around for ages, it often leads to more confusion than clarity. Is exploratory testing an activity—something that you do? Or is it an approach—a way or a style of doing something? Isn’t all testing exploratory? When do you do it? How do you do it properly? How does it relate to the entire software lifecycle? To answer these questions, Ingo Philipp outlines the most common confusions and controversies on this topic. He explains what exploratory...
Anyone Can Cook—Is the Same True for Test Automation?
Manual testing is becoming less needed as more companies realize the time and money to be saved by automating testing. But let’s face it. Test automation is scary and still new to many QA organizations, many of whom are unclear about where to begin. Do you need a degree or significant development training to write automated tests? What are the programming basics and required tools that a tester needs to know? Leo Laskin answers these questions with data on untrained Selenium and non-technical users and the time it took them to learn Selenium. Discover the programming basics needed to be...
An Agile Testing Dashboard: Metrics that Matter
VideoHas your organization moved to agile but your metrics have not? Do you spend multiple hours each week generating separate sets of metrics for your agile squad, management, and C-level executives? Do you find yourself questioning the things you measure and actions you take as a result of those measurements? Prachi Maini introduces you to a set of lean but comprehensive metrics that show the efficiency and effectiveness of the squads, the primary activities of the squad, and that of the overall project. Learn the key evaluators for measuring quality of code, quality of quality...
Navigating the Nuances of Detailed Test Strategy Creation
VideoSoftware testers face a major challenge when designing test strategies and their related tests that effectively find software failures. With many techniques available, it is sometimes difficult to immediately apply them to real-life situations. What initially seems like a straightforward effort often turns into something resembling a winding road with no end. A test strategy may seem good at first, but once the testing begins, it may fail. Randy Rice believes there are ways to define a workable and flexible test strategy that will lead to tests that are creative and effective. Test...