STAREAST 2017 - Leadership
Tuesday, May 9
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...
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...
Changing Lives with Software Testing: The PLATO Testing Story
Aboriginal people across Canada face an unemployment rate more than twice the national average. Meanwhile, vacant IT positions continue to rise across the country, with an additional 218,000 new openings expected by 2020. Denis Carignan shares how PLATO Testing is building a network of Aboriginal software testers across Canada to help solve these problems. Students begin with intensive lab-based training, followed by an immersive internship, and end with full-time employment at PLATO Testing as professional software testers. As this initiative grows, so does the ability to capture large...
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
Step Aside: Stop Leading from the Front
VideoUntil now, test leadership has mostly been about you—your ability to manage testers and testing, your artful problem solving skills, your gift of keeping a clear head during chaos, and your mastery in directing teams toward project goals. The better you led your teams and the more they accomplished, the more successful you became. But if you look back, you may notice that while you grew and strengthened, your teams did not. What if there were a better model by which to lead? One that creates more skillful leaders who inspire with vision, lead by example, while preparing a new...
Adapting Test Teams to Organizational Power Structures
Scapegoats, spin-doctors, white knights, and sycophants—have you found your test team playing these roles? Organizations, both large and small, often have distinct cultures and power structures with significant but insidious impact on how individual testers and teams are expected to operate. Sometimes the difference between doing what sponsors and stakeholders request and doing what is really needed becomes blurred. John Hazel helps you learn how to recognize the cultural characteristics of different types of software development teams, and how they drive expectations for the test team....
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 12
Agile Leadership to Empower Your Team
Empowering leadership used to be about delegating authority to subordinates. Today it’s about enabling and facilitating teams and staff to help them solve their own problems. Join Rod Jardine, an expert in agile leadership techniques, for an interactive discussion of how to apply agile best practices and principles to management and leadership of your staff and your teams. Learn tips and tricks to motivate employees to step up and lead, empower teams to reach new heights, and become a servant leader for your organization. Take home practical, effective methods for applying agile leadership...
Intentionality: Leading an Intentional Culture
As leaders we get the culture we tolerate. What are the steps to create an intentional culture of high performance? The basis of leadership and influencing others depends on understanding that humans make logical decisions illogically. What are the hidden forces that overcome competence, intelligence, and character when choosing our leaders? Learn about the real decision maker of the human mind and how to model this behavior to influence others and create loyal, motivated followers.
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...
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 2017 and going forward.
Building your Personal Brand for Success
Building the right personal brand is one of the critical success factors in today’s workplace. Organizations develop a brand and image, but not many individuals think about their personal brand and how it can affect their career. As we interact with people, we want to influence them to support our efforts—approving projects, budgets, and funding; supporting our next career move; or recommending us for that promotion or raise we want. As a professional, it is critical to understand how you are being perceived by your “target audience.” During this interactive session Jennifer shares...
Wrap-up and Ongoing Informal Discussion with Speakers and Attendees
This concludes the Women Who Test events.