STAREAST 2017 - Developer
Sunday, May 7
Fundamentals of Agile Certification—ICAgile (2–Day)
Monday, May 8
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...
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...
Applying Emotional Intelligence in Your Testing
As test managers and test professionals, we're constantly dealing with fragile egos, highly-charged situations, and pressured people playing a high-stakes game under conditions of massive uncertainty. We're often the bearers of bad news and are sometimes perceived as critics, activating people's primal fear of being judged. The concept of emotional intelligence (EI), popularized by Harvard psychologist and science writer Daniel Goleman, has much to offer test managers and testers. Key EI skills include self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. Julie...
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...
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/...
Requirements Engineering for Testers
VideoTesters often participate in requirement reviews, review requirements for testability, and then use requirements—in the form of user stories—as the basis of test cases. In an agile environment, most testers contribute to the development of user stories and acceptance criteria. Erik van Veenendaal says that unfortunately many testers have little knowledge or skill in requirements engineering. What level of quality and detail is realistic to expect for requirements and user stories? What does testability really mean? How can testers help improve requirements? Erik illustrates...
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...
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....
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...
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...
Optimize Performance Testing Using Cloud and DevOps
VideoTraditional performance testing practices don't scale when you begin delivering software using cloud computing and DevOps. Troy Marshall shares how Ellucian transformed their performance testing program using the same principles DevOps uses to deliver software. It isn't enough just to automate the execution of performance tests. You must continually optimize every step—from building the performance test tool infrastructure, configuring test scripts and scenarios, collecting metrics, and reporting results. In addition, by using cloud computing to implement performance testing, you...
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...