STAREAST 2017 - Test Automation Engineer
Sunday, May 7
Fundamentals of DevOps Certification—ICAgile (2-Day)
Fundamentals of Agile 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...
Plan, Architect, and Implement Test Automation within the Lifecycle
VideoIn test automation, we must often use several tools that have been developed or acquired over time with little consideration of an overall plan or architecture and no consideration for how to integrate those tools. As a result, productivity suffers and frustrations increase. Join Mike Sowers as he shares experiences from multiple organizations in creating an integrated test automation plan and developing a test automation architecture. Mike discusses both the good (engaging the technical architecture team) and the bad (too much isolation between test automators and test designers)...
BIG Testing: The Five Keys to Test Automation at Scale
Video NewTest automation has become a must, especially in agile and DevOps projects with their goals of continuous integration and fast deployment. We know that test automation is a deciding factor in achieving competitive strength, as it contributes to faster time-to-market and higher quality-to-market in software delivery. Even though powerful automation technologies like Selenium are available, they alone do not give you scalability in testing big and complex systems with their many components, workflows, and configurations. To help you learn how to achieve scalability in automated...
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...
Technical Test Automation Challenges: Patterns and Solutions
VideoNote: We will be working online with the wiki during this tutorial, so please bring a laptop, tablet, or similar web-enabled device.
Many organizations find that test automation does not work as well as they thought it would. In many cases, these failures are due to generic technical reasons, which can be fixed relatively easily. Solutions that have worked well for others are patterns; these test automation patterns are common to automation efforts at any level with whatever tools you are using. Dot Graham focuses on often-neglected technical issues—i.e., non-management issues—and...
White Box Testing: What Every Tester Should Know
NewDo you want to take your testing skills to the next level? Are you trying to stay relevant on an agile team where testing is shifting to the left of the project timeline? Do you want to help your organization reap the full benefits of testing earlier? Join Tariq King as he explores the fundamentals of white box testing so can you find bugs as soon as they happen and do more thorough, targeted testing during software development. Learn how to apply white box testing techniques such as testing by looking, automated unit testing, mocking, and code coverage analysis. This introductory session...
Tuesday, May 9
Fundamentals of Software Test Design
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...
The Impact of IoT on Testing: What’s in Store
NewNo longer just a futuristic concept, the Internet of Things (IoT) has a strong presence in our world even today. If your business is not prepared for it, you’re already behind. With the proliferation of connected “things”—devices, appliances, cars, and even clothes—Jennifer Bonine says that the stage is set. IoT apps are here to stay. Testing, product management, and development teams must address developing and testing in this paradigm. Testers, accustomed to traditional platforms, are now asked to test on more complex devices and more advanced platforms. Testers must keep up with the...
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...
System-Level Test Automation: Ensuring a Good Start
Video NewMany organizations invest a lot of effort in test automation at the system level but then have serious problems later on. As a manager, how can you ensure that your new automation efforts will get off to a good start? What can you do to ensure that your automation work provides continuing value? Dot Graham describes the most important management issues you must address for test automation success, particularly when you are new to automation. Dot helps you understand and choose the best approaches for your organization—no matter which automation tools you use. Focusing on system...
Security Testing for Test Professionals
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...
End-to-End Testing with the Heuristic Software Test Model
You have just been assigned a new testing project. Where do you start? How do you develop a plan and begin testing? How will you report on your progress? Paul Holland shares new test project approaches that enable you to plan, test, and report effectively. Paul demonstrates ideas, based on the Heuristic Software Test Model from Rapid Software Testing, that can be directly applied or adapted to your environment. In this hands-on tutorial, you’ll be given a product to test. Start by creating three raw lists (Product Coverage Outline, Potential Risks, and Test Ideas) that help ensure...
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/...
Human Factors for Test Automation: How People Affect Project Success
Video NewSuccessful test automation is not just about selecting and implementing tools and a technical infrastructure. People in teams make the changes that are required. People ensure the success or failure of the automation project. Understanding and managing expectations, attitudes toward change, teamwork, motivation, and communication are all vital if automation projects are to succeed. Isabel Evans identifies and discusses human factors around automation, teamwork, and human behavior to enable you to understand resistance to change, overcome mistrust of automation, and moderate...
Wednesday, May 10
World-Class Test Automation: You Can Build It Too
Join Chris Loder as he describes the test automation framework they have created from the ground up at Halogen Software. Chris shares the environment they have put together to run in virtual machines, physical hardware, and mobile devices—with Jenkins keeping track of it all. He explains their use of the keyword driven and page object approaches, and how that has allowed a high rate of automated test case development from all members of the quality team. At Halogen, they run 6,000 unique regression web tests daily—quickly and consistently. Chris shows how they built their automation with...
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...
AI and Machine Learning for Testers
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the most important technology for software testers to understand today. All software will soon have AI-powered components, and they are unlike anything you’ve ever tested before. As risky as AI can be, it is a powerful weapon for testers to solve some of their most painful testing challenges today. The web was great, mobile is interesting, but AI will truly change the way you build and test all software. Jason Arbon gives a brief introduction to AI and machine learning (ML) so you can nod your head knowingly when the topics come up. Explore how products that...
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...
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...
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...
The Future of Mobile Testing: Hybrid Code, Business Intelligence, and Device Farms
All organizations doing mobile development have critical decisions in common—selecting which devices to support and how to test their products across the growing range of devices. With the segregation of device brands, organizations are forced to support at least three code bases (Apple, Android, and Windows). This makes it three times more challenging for testing organizations to keep up with the minimum required testing efforts for their products. Ardy Signey says that test leadership has to look beyond conventional testing strategies and become more innovative. Companies that already...
Building a Performance Test Capability from Scratch
Have you ever been dragged into a production emergency that severely drains deadlines, budgets, morale, and weekends only to find out—yet again—that the problem is related to application stability and performance under load? Building a culture that embraces proactive and well-planned performance testing is no small feat. Tom Poirier shares a journey that begins with clarifying enterprise performance requirements, performing competitive analysis, cost-justifying purchases, and closing the deal with senior management. Tom walks through practical challenges including technical difficulties,...
Test Automation at the Speed of Agile: Making It Work Every Build
Join Danny McKeown, Paychex’s lead test enterprise automation architect, to see how a small tools group supports nearly one-hundred agile teams as they move toward achieving continuous delivery. Take part in the conversation to understand how Paychex is progressing in the third year of its agile transformation. Danny describes how this IT-wide initiative has impacted how the tools group supports so many teams and changed its own practices to provide more timely support. With the goal of increasing velocity, a solid automation strategy has become a powerful enabler. Danny describes how...
Appium, Test-Driven Development, and Continuous Integration
VideoJames Koch demonstrates how to apply test-driven development and continuous integration using Appium, an industry leading open-source automation tool. Appium was inspired by Selenium for web browser testing. Their philosophy—Why do anything different for mobile? Appium allows you to run tests without having to add any third party framework or extension into your application, so you are testing the same application you are shipping! With faster release cycles, the need for quality testing is more necessary than ever. Tools like Appium leverage continuous integration and test-driven...
Test Data Management and Its Role in DevOps
VideoOptimize 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...
Be More Effective: Test Automation below the UI
To maintain optimal product quality of large-scale enterprise systems, the regression test suite usually increases in size over time. Whether using automated or manual regression, this brings an additional maintenance and infrastructure cost that tends to get way out of hand, often defeating the purpose of regression suites. Sharing a case study, Ashish Mehta and Sohail Farooqui provide insights into analyzing enterprise application defects with associated gaps in relevancy and effectiveness of an existing regression suite. Ashish and Sohail implemented an automated solution to test...
The Cloud’s Impact on Testing: Are You Ready?
Cloud computing continues to grow rapidly, and as everything moves to the cloud, testing must adapt and move to the cloud as well. The cloud enables building solutions that scale larger and faster than before—back when adding capacity in data centers took weeks or months. Now applications can be deployed to cloud servers not in days but minutes. The cloud enables new approaches that increase testing efficiency and quality while decreasing total testing time. Tom Chavez discusses the migration of applications to the cloud, and the new tools and services there—from web browser functional...
Infrastructure Testing: The Ultimate “Shift Left”
VideoOrganizations worldwide are continually required to make significant investments in upgrading, re-engineering, and protecting their IT infrastructure. However, unlike application software development, many companies lack a structured quality assurance approach for infrastructure testing. Creating an infrastructure quality practice is an answer, but it's not without its challenges. However, if your company is interested in avoiding headline-grabbing outages, rooted in deployment problems with infrastructure—server, network, storage, middleware, telephony, hardware, IT security,...
Improving Accuracy and Confidence in Workload Models
The most critical component in capacity planning and performance engineering is the Workload Model, which defines the workflows, throughputs, and target performance your system must support at peak loads. As critical as it is, it can be difficult and particularly challenging to predict loads for new applications, features, or events. A typical approach starts with a wild-guess worst-case scenario—but overestimates waste time and money, and force you to engineer applications and infrastructure to support unrealistic loads. Low estimates can result in terrible customer experiences, lost...
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...