Conference Schedule
Sunday, May 7
Many testers attempt to apply what they know to mobile testing, and while that may work for some functional testing, it often leaves many critical features untested. Critical errors that go untested can mean a swift end to a mobile application. Learning how to identify common issues in mobile applications and how to test the unique aspects of a mobile application is the only way to be truly successful. This two-day course will cover usability across multiple platforms and resolutions, network and security testing, creating application unit tests, mobile UI automation, and performance testing for various devices over various networks and carriers.
DevOps combines development, testing, and operations and includes continuous integration, automated testing, continuous delivery, and rapid deployment practices. Because DevOps practices require confidence in nearly all changes, automated testing is an essential ingredient that is integrated into the process and relied upon for enforcement of quality gates and to ensure overall delivery quality. This two-day course will teach you how to avoid the common mistakes of DevOps implementations and to leverage DevOps best practices. Test professionals, operations engineers, developers, project managers, and business owners will all benefit from this curriculum.
Delivered by leading experts in the testing industry, Software Tester Certification—Foundation Level is an accredited training course to prepare you for the ISTQB® Certified Tester—Foundation Level CTFL) exam. ISTQB® is the only internationally accepted certification for software testing and has granted more than 450,000 certifications in more than 110 countries around the world. In this three-day course, you’ll learn the basic skills required of a software test professional and how testing fits into software development. This course is appropriate for those new to the testing profession and those seeking ISTQB® certification in software testing.
Enable High-Quality Software through Visual Studio® Testing Tools
This course provides students with real world software testing techniques and technical skills using the latest Microsoft Test Manager 2017®, Visual Studio 2017®, and Team Foundation Server 2017® tools. We will cover manual testing features such as test case management, execution and reporting, and how Visual Studio® makes these processes powerful and organized. You will learn about the newly released Visual Studio® Web Test Manager and be introduced to automated testing with Visual Studio®.
Agile software practices are being employed within many development organizations worldwide, and as a result, many testers struggle to understand the agile development process and their place in it. In Agile Tester Certification, both novice and experienced testers learn the fundamentals of agile development, the role of the tester in the agile team, and the agile testing processes. Learn technical and team skills testers need for success in the world of agile development, as well as the techniques of Test-Driven Development (TDD), Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD) and Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) during this two-day course. All participants are expected to have experience in or knowledge of agile development fundamentals.
Designed for system testers, system designers, system tuners, software engineers, QA professionals, and project leaders, this course provides an introduction to the complexities of software performance testing and delivers testing skills that participants can immediately apply back on the job.
If your testing efforts are not achieving the payback you and your organization expect, this course is for you. Requirements-Based Testing (RBT) delivers a proven, rigorous approach for designing a consistent and repeatable set of highly optimized test cases. Companies employing RBT practices have achieved twice the requirements coverage with only half the tests they previously maintained.
Monday, May 8
Critical thinking is the kind of thinking that specifically looks for problems and mistakes. Regular people don't do a lot of it. However, if you want to be a great tester, you need to be a great critical thinker. Critically thinking testers save projects from dangerous assumptions and ultimately from disasters. The good news is that critical thinking is not just innate intelligence or a talent—it's a learnable and improvable skill you can master. Michael Bolton shares the specific techniques and heuristics of critical thinking and presents realistic testing puzzles that help you practice...Read more
Whether you are new to testing or looking for a better way to organize your test practices, understanding risk is essential to successful testing. Dale Perry describes a general risk-based framework—applicable to any development lifecycle model—to help you make critical testing decisions earlier and with more confidence. Learn how to focus your testing effort, what elements to test, and how to organize test designs and documentation. Review the fundamentals of risk identification, analysis, and the role that testing plays in risk mitigation. Develop an inventory of test objectives to help...Read more
When 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...Read more
In 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...Read more
We’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...Read more
Influence diagrams provide a simple-to-create and easy-to-understand approach to address the complexities of real-life problems. As testers, we may want to find more bugs, but this may have an unintended consequence for developers. Developers now have more defects to debug, which affects their capacity to deliver new functionality. Isabel Evans has found that influence diagrams provide a means of understanding and managing the complexities of key interactions among testers, developers, and business stakeholders. In the past few years, Isabel has used influence diagrams as a practical tool...Read more
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...Read more
In 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...Read more
Test 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...Read more
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...Read more
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...Read more
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, Jeroen Mengerink focus on testing SaaS systems, linking relevant IaaS and PaaS capabilities along the way. He will discuss how to test...Read more
Note: 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...Read more
Do 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...Read more
Tuesday, May 9
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...Read more
With Git and GitHub, testers today have unprecedented visibility into both development and DevOps code. GitHub provides powerful online collaboration, code review, code management, and version control services. GitHub's domination of social coding makes it the new business card for professionals indicating their creativity, popularity, capability, and tenacity. Today’s testers need to learn about and use Git and GitHub. In this hands-on tutorial Wilson Mar presents material available nowhere else and a unique explanation of tools, repositories, and GUI programs used by pro developers who...Read more
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...Read more
Communication is at the heart of our profession. If we can’t convey our concerns in ways that connect with key members of the project team, our contribution is likely to be ignored—no matter how advanced our testing capabilities are. Because we act in an advisory capacity rather than being in command, our power to exert influence is almost entirely based on our communication skills. Join Julie Gardiner as she draws on techniques from psychology and marketing to help you get your message across. With people suffering information overload and deluged with emails, it is more important than...Read more
No 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...Read more
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...Read more
Many 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...Read more
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...Read more
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...Read more
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...Read more
Have you ever worked on a project where you felt testing was thorough and complete—all features were covered and all 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 attacks, Dawn...Read more
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/...Read more
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...Read more
Testers 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...Read more
Successful 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...Read more
Wednesday, May 10
Service virtualization has become a must-have tool for anyone testing complex web applications. It gives developers and testers 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. Being able to cut dependencies lets you test earlier, more easily and for less money.
We’ll explore what the boundaries of service virtualization are – what you can virtualize and what you cannot, what’s the best way to approach the problem, and who should be involved. We’ll even look at the many free solutions, from open-source to community editions. We’ll explore what the basic needs are, what you can’t do with free, how to craft a successful deployment strategy that will last, and how to scale your work from just a few people on a single team to a full enterprise.Read moreAvailable On-Demand Until August 9, 2017 Wednesday, May 10 | 8:30am–5:30pm ET and Thursday, May 11 | 8:30am–5:30pm ET
REGISTER NOWThe STAR EAST Virtual Conference streamed live on May 10-11 from Orlando, Florida but will also be available on-demand until August 9, 2017. The Virtual Conference featured presentations and interviews that could be streamed straight to your desktop—including the latest...Read more
No matter what the language, “I don’t know” might just be the most difficult words to say. We avoid them, afraid of coming across as hesitant or unsure. Colleagues expect us to be firm and certain, providing definitive answers. However, in the past years, I grew increasingly doubtful. I had a hard time being sure of anything. “You're rejecting certainty,” someone said. “That's skepticism. You're a tester, embrace it!” That seemed like a good idea, but this left me with a new challenge: How do I embrace skepticism, and can it improve my testing? In hopes of finding clues to help my...Read more
The 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...Read more
This session covers areas different areas namely test automation for 3rd party products and in-house built apps, Performance testing, SOA testing, QMO Implementation, Global test delivery team and sophisticated Metrics dashboard. Purpose of this session is to help you provide ideas that you can try in your respective organizations to transform testing to the next level.Read more
This presentation shares 5 key lessons learned from the journey. These lessons are common across organizations and share pragmatic insight into how to successfully transition into a highly effective, efficient and quality-driven testing environment to drive better business outcomes.
If you’re responsible in any way for the outcome of your application development and deployment, you can’t miss this session.
3 Things You’ll Learn:
What to do and not do when automating your application testing How record and playback will kill your productivity (and what to do about it) Why test data management is the oxygen of the testing process (and how to get it on demand)Read more• Benefits delivered in increased coverage and test case reduction • Optimized test cases in Gherkin formats to drive a test automation framework for BDD testing • Creation of a “Single Source of Truth” document for maintenance and communication across testing groups • Adoption of combinatorial test design at enterprise scaleRead more
Whether you are in an independent testing team and need to communicate formally or in an agile context communicating face-to-face, it can be difficult to do your job well when you are telling people what they don’t want to hear. Dot Graham presents examples of different types and styles of communication, including Virginia Satir’s communication interaction model, that can help you get your points across without rancor. Dot examines criticism—what it is, different types, and the DASR (Describing, Acknowledging, Specifying, and Reaffirming) model for sharing criticism. Since testers are...Read more
Acceptance testing is often thought of as the little brother of system testing and, in many projects, it ends up as a little phase at the end. Having worked in system testing for most of her testing career, Bettina Faldborg found it was a bigger jump than you might think to move to acceptance testing. She had this overwhelming urge to test it ALL. Like most testers, she did not assume that what has been tested before was done well enough, but that is one of the preconditions to accept going into an acceptance test. With regard to acceptance testing Bettina presents four basic...Read more
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...Read more
Finding 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...Read more
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...Read more
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...Read more
Sprint is going through a testing transformation. Like most organizations, their testing department is expected to deliver results at higher velocity and quality, yet with 50% less resources. While testing must become more agile, they look at testing as a critical step in their journey to achieve continuous delivery. To make this a reality, Sprint is turning to value-added solutions to provide synthetic generation of test data to reduce time-wasting processes, and to optimize their test cases to realize maximum test coverage. See how Sprint is accomplishing these goals to make sure their continuous testing practices become a powerful enabler to speed testing cycles and overall quality.Read more
We 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...Read more
Unrestrained 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...Read more
So you want to build an effective testing team and you’re asking yourself, “Where do I begin?” Greg Paskal, a quality assurance engineer with thirty years of testing experience, shares seven keys to building a successful testing team. Learn the fundamentals every tester should know and how to build on them to achieve an effective manual and automated testing strategy. Greg shares his Minimal Essential Testing Strategy (METS)—coupled with proven experience—to help you build an amazing testing organization. He also provides specific instruction through each, including fundamentals...Read more
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...Read more
Enterprises 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...Read more
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...Read more
• Why are we in the Perfect Storm? • Why Software Testing Must Fundamentally Change • The Role of the Tester will be ElevatedRead more
Historically, testers have served as the last line of defense and have been tasked with identifying and driving software defect resolution before promoting code into a production environment. Kevin Dunne explains that in this model, testers have been responsible for testing the code produced by the developers and getting the code—whether good, bad, or mediocre—customer ready. Without proper alignment from the development team, code was often pushed out to testing without much thought or evaluation, leaving testers improperly blamed for leaked defects or slippages in their timelines. With...Read more
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...Read more
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...Read more
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...Read more
Software 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...Read more
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...Read more
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...Read more
Thursday, May 11
Until 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...Read more
One of the roadblocks on the journey from Waterfall to Agile is enabling the team to actually execute continuous integration, continuous testing, and continuous delivery. As a result, software quality is suffering as agile teams release products that are not up to par.
Join us as we explore the challenges faced by teams implementing DevOps as they struggle to achieve the Agile dream. We will also demonstrate a working process that ensures continuous testing and continuous delivery of high quality software.Read more
At 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...Read more
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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...Read more
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...Read more
In this fast-paced data-driven world, the fallout from a single data quality issue can cost thousands of dollars in a matter of hours. To catch these issues quickly, system monitoring for data quality requires a different set of strategies from other continuous regression efforts. Like a race car pit crew, you need detection mechanisms that not only don’t interfere with what you are monitoring but also allow for strategic analysis off-track. You need to use every second your subject is at rest to repair and clean up problems that could affect performance. As the systems in race...Read more
DevOps and regulatory compliance are two critically important ingredients in today’s connected organization. The first—DevOps—enables you to move quickly and respond to change in an era where change is increasing at an exponential rate with no sign of slowing down. The second—regulatory compliance—ensures that your organization takes the appropriate steps to follow relevant laws surrounding your software development lifecycle and appears to require adding burdensome processes and controls. At first glance, these two ideas seem to be incompatible, but they actually go together like peanut...Read more
With all the hype about DevOps, continuous integration, continuous delivery, and lean startups, test engineers tend to be forgotten. The notion that testers are not needed anymore is, well, false. Testing is needed today more than ever since applications are more dynamic with more integration points, which increase code complexity and make it more difficult to release quality software. Matt Robbins shares an experience in his organization which resulted in the elimination of testers—at least for a time—and what he learned and did to stay relevant until the organization finally...Read more
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,...Read more
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...Read more
James 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...Read more
Do you often have to wait for the availability of the right test data to complete your testing? Now imagine you are using continuous integration and continuous delivery with agile and DevOps, and your test data is not available when you need it. This is a challenge and a bottleneck for the rollout of true DevOps. The key to efficient test data management (TDM) is to streamline and automate the test data management process to deliver the test data in minutes, use correct datasets for test improvement and coverage, and secure the test data automatically, enabling shorter test cycles...Read more
The challenge for test teams in organizations that want to use blockchain technologies is to not only test chaincode that manages the execution of transactions on their blockchain networks but also to test the provision and scalability of the blockchain networks themselves. James Hunter presents new approaches that are emerging to test blockchain technology, supply-chain business processes and transactions, and APIs from multiple perspectives; to simulate the behavior of consensus within a blockchain network; and to test integrations at scale without affecting the distributed ledger. James...Read more
• Why data represents the most significant bottleneck in the SDLC • Best practices for securing and delivering test data • How to integrate cutting-edge TDM technologies into DevOps initiatives • How industry leaders are leveraging a platform-based approach to TDMRead more
The software landscape is evolving rapidly to deliver higher quality software at an ever greater pace. Testing must keep up, and that means moving away from a traditional core IT approach. Shifting to an adaptive IT model calls for new practices that encourage accelerated communication, collaboration, integration, measurement, and automation. Whether you label this digital transformation or not, understanding the details of the journey is an essential part of every organization's criteria in becoming a digital enterprise. Join Julie Gardiner and Jonathon Wright as they explore what digital...Read more
Traditional 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...Read more
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...Read more
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...Read more
In her more than thirty years in the IT industry, Isabel Evans says she has learned more from her failures than she has from her successes. Why is this? And what has she learned? That making mistakes is the way to learn, and that allowing yourself to be wrong allows you to grow. Join Isabel to enjoy her greatest failures, and learn not to make the same mistakes she has made. Recently, someone described Isabel as unusual in the technology industries as she is an “elderly woman,” so she has taken as her motto Bob Dylan’s line: “I was so much older then—I’m younger than that now.” Isabel...Read more
Organizations 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,...Read more
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 Paychex assesses progress with a maturity lens. Their always-evolving automation framework serves web and mobile team requirements. He shares an HTML5 mini-case study, describing how adopting responsive web changed practices. Embedding quality in multiple daily builds has not come without its challenges, and Danny describes the lessons learned and their next steps. This interactive session will encourage participants to share their experiences as well—so come ready!Read more
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....Read more
Has 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...Read more
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...Read more
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Software 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....Read more
Kickoff the Testing & Quality Leadership Summit with a reception and some networking.Read more
Friday, May 12
Women Who Test is a full-day event on Friday, May 12 for women to network with other women who work in software testing. It is also a day to learn from and be inspired by each other. The program will cover testing topics and will support women’s personal and career journeys and include content like: reengineering your life, growing your personal brand, setting goals, discovering your career superpowers, and how to problem-solve when you are a female in the tech industry where your gender is out numbered 7:3. Join women test engineers, managers, CEOs, and consultants for some truly inspiring talks and fascinating group work. Registration is free for conference attendees, but you must reserve your seat in advance.Read more
At the 2017 Testing & Quality Leadership Summit, program chair Jeffery Payne brings together senior industry leaders—Rod Jardine and Glen Hellman—for an interactive exchange of ideas and experiences. Each of these leaders brings a unique perspective to the table and will provide Summit participants with lessons learned and practical techniques for leading teams, addressing management challenges, and gaining senior management buy-in.Read more
Join us at The Workshop on Regulated Software Testing (WREST)—a free, full-day bonus session held on Friday after the conference concludes. A unique peer workshop, WREST is dedicated to improving the practice of testing regulated systems. We define regulated software as any system that is subject to an internal or external review. WREST relies on its attendees to make the workshop a success. There are no formal presentations, only experience reports with plenty of time designated for facilitated discussion. We hope to learn from each other by hearing the success and (especially!) failure stories of real practitioners who test regulated software. Have a problem you want input on solving? You can bring that to the workshop as well—just be prepared to participate! WREST is hosted by John McConda and Bill Moseley. NOTE: Limited seats are available. Reserve your seat when you register online for the conference or by contacting the Client Support Group at 888.268.8770 or [email protected]Read more