STAREAST 2018 - Career/ Personal Development
Sunday, April 29
Requirements-Based Testing Workshop (3-Day)
Agile Tester Certification (2-Day)
Python® for Testers (2-Day)—SOLD OUT
Foundations of DevOps—ICAgile Certification (2-Day)
Security Testing for Test Professionals (2-Day)
Agile Test Automation—ICAgile (2-Day)—SOLD OUT
Monday, April 30
Critical Thinking for Software Testers
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...
Develop WebDriver Automated Tests—and Keep Your Sanity
Preview NewMany teams go crazy because of brittle, high-maintenance automated test suites. Jim Holmes helps you understand how to create a flexible, maintainable, high-value suite of functional tests using Selenium WebDriver. Learn the basics of what to test, what not to test, and how to avoid overlapping with other types of testing. Jim includes both philosophical concepts and hands-on coding. Testers who haven't written code should not be intimidated! We'll pair you up to make sure you're successful. Learn to create practical tests dealing with advanced situations such as input validation,...
Implement BDD with Cucumber and SpecFlow
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. Mary Thorn says help is at hand. Enter behavior-driven development (BDD), and Cucumber and SpecFlow, tools for running automated acceptance tests and facilitating BDD. Mary explores the nuances of Cucumber and SpecFlow, and shows you how to...
Exploratory Testing: New Skills for Learning and Discovery
NewThe skill to self-manage our testing work and our learning—making learning and discovery a habit—is what differentiates skilled exploratory testing from simply putting random testing activities together. Maaret Pyhäjärvi says that exploratory testing treats test design, test execution, and learning as parallel, mutually supportive activities—with the goal of discovering things that we don’t realize we don’t know. Exploratory testing frames our thinking about the system and engulfs the idea of creating artifacts to support testing. Join Maaret to experience exploratory testing hands-on and...
Unit Testing: What Every Developer and Tester Should Know
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 on the project timeline? Do you want to help your organization reap the full benefits of testing earlier? Then join Tariq King to explore the fundamentals of unit testing so you can find bugs as soon as they happen and do more thorough, targeted testing during software development. This introductory session is for everyone—of all programming skill levels. Learn how to apply program-based techniques such as testing by looking, automated unit...
Tuesday, May 1
What Testers Must Know about Git and GitHub
Skill with Git is a prerequisite for most software jobs today. This is because the vast majority of software developed is stored in Git-based repositories such as GitHub, GitLab, and BitBucket. GitHub's domination of social coding makes it the new business card to demonstrate your creativity, popularity, capability, and tenacity. “Configuration as code” is a standard DevOps practice so testers must know how to set up and use Git to obtain and update versions of their infrastructures. In this hands-on tutorial, create your own website and learn the GitHub markdown used to format documents....
A Rapid Introduction to Rapid Software Testing
You're under tight time pressure with barely enough information to proceed with testing. How do you test quickly and inexpensively—yet still produce informative, credible, and accountable results? Rapid Software Testing, adopted by context-driven testers worldwide, offers a field-proven answer to this all-too-common dilemma. In this one-day sampler of the approach, Michael Bolton introduces you to the skills and practice of Rapid Software Testing through stories, discussions, and “minds-on” exercises that simulate important aspects of real testing problems. The rapid approach isn't just...
Fundamentals of Testing REST APIs
New Sold Out!Just getting started on your application programming interface (API) testing journey? Need to better understand APIs and how to effectively test them? Join Lianne Klaver for this introductory tutorial as he discusses API concepts, examples, test strategies, and techniques. Lianne describes the message architecture of REST APIs and discusses elements such as API resources, verbs, states, headers, and tokens. She shares examples and demonstrations of REST APIs in operation to give you a better understanding of how they work. Then learn by doing with exercises that enable you to recognize...
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Testing Today's Web Applications: Tools You Can Use
Preview NewIf you are a software tester in 2018, chances are you're testing a website or web application. Whether you are testing in a browser, within a web “wrapper” framework like Electron, or even a web app wrapped in a mobile application, your customers are using web apps and websites constantly—and they want them to work well. Our challenge in test, of course, is to test as thoroughly and efficiently as we can, given our time and resource constraints. Long time software testing veteran Alan Page demonstrates some of his favorite free or inexpensive tools for testing web apps and shares...
Quality and Testing Measures and Metrics
To be most effective, leaders—including development and testing managers, ScrumMasters, product owners, and IT managers—need metrics to help direct their efforts and make informed recommendations about the software’s release readiness and associated risks. Because one important evaluation activity is to “measure” the quality of the software, the progress and results of both development and testing must be measured. Collecting, analyzing, and using metrics are complicated because developers and testers often are concerned that the metrics will be used against them. Join Mike Sowers as he...
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. Mary Thorn and Bob Galen beg to differ with this view and believe a strong need exists for testing leadership in agile organizations—just different from the way we’ve typically approached it. Join Mary and Bob 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...
Wednesday, May 2
Transformation from QA to Engineering: Testing in the Fast Lane
PreviewAre you being asked to shorten your testing timelines? Do you feel pressured to increase your test automation coverage but don’t have the time, staff, or budget? How do you as a leader upgrade your team’s skills and technical abilities and still meet your daily release deliverables—without bringing in external resources? Join Jennifer Scandariato as she shares her journey in transforming her company’s QA department into a test engineering center of excellence, where manual testers are now automation engineers who apply automation technologies to expedite and streamline the testing...
IT Poetry: Distilled Learning from Our Experiences
What Sue Uyetake calls IT Poetry—or distilled learning—is a great communications approach. A way of distilling “What Is” statements as a troubleshooting tool and a way to lighten the moment, IT Poetry has resonated with Sue and her teams. See how you can use IT Poetry to diffuse charged situations with no blame attached, get to the root cause of issues in a retrospective, or help resolve many of the little problems that crop up and can ruin your day. Join Sue as she sheds a new light on some highly charged and negative workplace situations. With examples from her own experience and those...
Make Your Team Awesome—Yes, You Can!
The key to creating high-performing teams is psychological safety—the ability to be vulnerable in front of others even when they hold diverse viewpoints, and the opportunity to take risks and trust that everything will be OK. However, creating this safety is easier said than done. Maaret Pyhäjärvi shares her story of working with software development and test teams to enable them to be awesome. She explains how to reinforce the positive while enabling great software product development by empowering others in your team. Maaret explores how to be brave when others are not, and how to care...
Mindmapping: A General Purpose (Test) Planning Tool
MindMapping is a general technique of organizing your thoughts, aligning your ideas, and breaking things down. It’s uses are, in fact, mind blowing. But in this session, join Bob Galen, as he takes you on a visual tour of mindmapping as applied in the software testing space. We’ll be using a free tool and be creating maps to illustrate test case design, test idea generation, sprint-level test planning, and release-level test planning using mindmaps. Along the way, you’ll also gain some new insights into risk-based testing with an agile twist, as we explore the 3-Amigos metaphor. You’ll...
Elegant Test Weapons for a More Civilized Age
PreviewSoftware Engineering as a discipline is always evolving. The technologies and tools that were in vogue yesterday are passé today and gone altogether tomorrow. Despite this high churn, there are a number of skills that software testers, in particular, possess that are eternally useful. They cut across time and tools and even job titles. Melissa will help software testers look past technologies and titles to explore the skills that they may already possess that are in high demand. She will explain some of the hottest job titles and technologies in the market today, and go in-depth...
Building a Modern DevOps Enterprise Testing Organization
The DevOps movement is front and center across enterprises. Companies with mature systems are breaking down siloed IT departments and federating them into product development teams and departments. Testing and its practices are at the heart of these changes. Traditionally, development organizations have been filled with mostly manual testers and a limited number of automation and performance engineers. Adam Auerbach says this has to change. To keep pace with development in the new “you build it, you own it” environment, testing teams and individuals must develop new technical skills and...
Selenium Hacks: Improving Your Skills
PreviewAlthough Selenium has become the open source standard for simulating user interactions with the browser, Andrew Krug likes to think of it as more than one tool in your toolbelt. Andrew says Selenium is like the Craftsman Bolt-On tool—with one battery and one grip, it can become a circular saw, drill, jig saw, or even a tire inflator. He’ll cover thirty or more Selenium hacks in this fast-paced session. Find out how you can employ Selenium for security testing, visual testing, email testing, easy content testing, performance testing, load testing … you get the drift. Briefly...
Test Management in Agile—What Happened to All My Testers?
Substantial confusion exists about the roles and responsibilities of test management when using an agile software development process. Agile seeks to streamline project management and leadership under the role of a ScrumMaster. But what does this mean for test managers? How do they stay involved in the process? What role do they fill? Is it possible that test managers are no longer needed? Join Jeffery Payne for a collaborative dialog to discuss the pros and cons of a variety of test management models he has seen used by companies who have adopted agile. Learn how to best position yourself...
Thursday, May 3
Leave Behind Us vs. Them: Transforming a Product Team
PreviewFor most of his career in test/QA, Jason Wick found the prevailing sentiment to be us vs. them—testers vs. developers or the project team vs. the business. And this mindset does not work on a cross-functional product team where everyone must share goals and be willing to put the team goals ahead of all other agendas. During his past year of leading a product delivery team, Jason Wick has discovered that establishing this team goals mindset is no easy task. However, with hard work—and, yes, some setbacks—his team members have indeed transformed from a group of people doing work into...
Balancing Tech Know-How with Social Skills
PreviewEven today, communication breakdowns are a primary cause of software project failures. Marcia Buzzella’s research shows that increasing the success rate of projects across agile, DevOps, and waterfall methods requires a balance of social and technical capabilities. Social interactions enable us to assess situations and course correct in ways machines cannot. By strengthening your individual social capabilities (i.e., improving communication techniques and building supportive relationships), you can help transform how testing activities are perceived and help stakeholders understand...
Not Your Parents’ Test Automation: Application of Non-Traditional Automation
Most software organizations have a test automation initiative—some just beginning and others humming right along. Typically, these initiatives focus on traditional automation—using a software package to automate test cases or user stories. However, if you use only the traditional approaches to automation, you will miss opportunities to exploit the complete powers of automation. Paul Grizzaffi shares real-world examples where non-traditional automation or “automation assist” approaches, including high volume automated testing, have provided high business value testing in his company. He...
Manual Testers Can Thrive in a Test Automation World
PreviewAs technology organizations seek to automate more testing, manual software testers may feel that they have little or no role in test automation. And QA managers struggle with how to engage their manual testers on automation projects. Jeanne Schmidt provides tips on how manual testers can become the testing guides for the whole team. They can assess tests are appropriate to automate, create comprehensive and safe test data, report automated test results, and lead the automation test process strategy. Jeanne offers practical guidelines on how testers can learn test automation...
AR and VR for Mobile Apps: Are You Ready to Test?
PreviewAugmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) mobile apps are going to dominate the technical landscape for the next few years. Compared to current mobile apps, testing this new AR and VR technology will require more preparation, more effort, and new tools. BJ Aberle breaks down the methods and tools he uses to test AR and VR applications. Explore test environment requirements and discover the types of test data you’ll need to prepare for AR and VR testing. Learn about Google’s Tango AR platform and BJ’s experiences testing AR apps, including the Tango-based Cydalion app for the...
Influencing Stakeholders Using Fact-based Information
With all the open source tools available on the market it can be overwhelming as to which ones might meet your needs and which ones will work best in your environment to create a high performing team and metrics dashboard. Join Jennifer as she explains the relationship of data, your environment, and how a hub and spoke model can link all your different data sets and tools together. She identifies opportunities for applying test data analytics across the engineering and test landscape, ranging from high-value test cases to dynamically generated regression test suites. She will review ways...