STAREAST - Conference List Schedule | TechWell

Conference archive

Conference Schedule

Sunday, April 29

Registration Desk Hours—7:30am–10:00am
7:30 am to 10:00 am
Continental Breakfast—7:30am–8:30am
7:30 am to 8:30 am
Multi-day Training Classes Begin—8:30am–5:00pm
8:30 am to 5:00 pm
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Performance, Load, and Stress Testing (2-Day)
Dawn Haynes
8:30 am to 5:00 pm

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.

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Foundations of DevOps—ICAgile Certification (2-Day)
Gene Gotimer
8:30 am to 5:00 pm

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.

 

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Mobile Application Testing (2-Day)
Matthew Grasberger
8:30 am to 5:00 pm

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.

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Python® for Testers (2-Day)—SOLD OUT
Kristoffer Nordström
8:30 am to 5:00 pm
This is a course for testers who are frustrated by the laborious and manual work that makes up day-to-day test work, anyone who has tried or wants to try scripting and programming in order to help them focus more on the sapient test activities and let the computer do the repetitive work. During the course we will work with a strong focus on practical knowledge and learning by doing with much hands-on coding. This so that attendees can work independently with Python after the course. A large amount of exercises are built to give the opportunity to build simple but powerful tools using Python, which gives a deeper understanding of the opportunities that the language offers.
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Security Testing for Test Professionals (2-Day)
Jeffery Payne
8:30 am to 5:00 pm

Explore security testing in an interactive workshop setting. This course is appropriate for software development and testing professionals who want to begin doing security testing as part of their assurance activities. 

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Agile Tester Certification (2-Day)
Mike Sowers
8:30 am to 5:00 pm

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.  

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Software Tester Certification - Foundation Level (3-Day)
Claire Lohr
8:30 am to 5:00 pm

Accredited training for the ISTQB® Certified Tester—Foundation Level (CTFL) certification. ISTQB is the only internationally accepted certification for software testing and has granted more than 500,000 certifications in more than 110 countries around the world. In this three-day course, learn what it takes to be a successful software tester and learn about the relationship of testing to development, test levels, black-box methods, white-box testing, exploratory testing, and more. This course is appropriate for those new to the testing profession and those seeking certification in software testing. 

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Requirements-Based Testing Workshop (3-Day)
Richard Bender
8:30 am to 5:00 pm

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.

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JMeter Performance Testing Workshop (2-Day)
Patrick J. Quilter Jr.
8:30 am to 5:00 pm

Appropriate for developers, test engineers, performance engineers, and more,  this two-day hands-on workshop teaches how Apache JMeter™ is used to test performance on static and dynamic resources, as well as on Web dynamic applications.

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Agile Test Automation—ICAgile (2-Day)—SOLD OUT
Rob Sabourin
8:30 am to 5:00 pm

Explore the many ways automation supports agile testing in this two-day course with real-world, vendor-neutral examples of agile test automation approaches and tools. In addition, successful attendees are awarded the ICAgile Certified Professional in Agile Test Automation (ICP-ATA).

Lunch—12:00pm-1:00pm
12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Training Classes Continue—1:00pm–5:00pm
1:00 pm to 5:00 pm
Registration Desk Hours—4:00pm–6:00pm
4:00 pm to 6:00 pm

Monday, April 30

Registration Desk Hours—7:00am–4:30pm
7:00 am to 4:30 pm
Continental Breakfast—7:30am–8:30am
7:30 am to 8:30 am
Multi-day Training Classes Continue—8:30am–5:00pm
8:30 am to 5:00 pm
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Tutorial MA Critical Thinking for Software Testers Preview
Michael Bolton
8:30 am to 4:30 pm

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

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Tutorial MB Develop WebDriver Automated Tests—and Keep Your Sanity Preview NEW
Jim Holmes
8:30 am to 4:30 pm

Many 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...Read more

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Tutorial MC Implement BDD with Cucumber and SpecFlow Preview
Mary Thorn
8:30 am to 12:00 pm

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...Read more

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Tutorial MD Testing Transformation: The Art and Science for Success Preview NEW
Jennifer Bonine
8:30 am to 12:00 pm

Technologies, testing processes, and the role of the tester have evolved significantly in the past few years with the advent of agile, DevOps, and other new technologies. It is critical that we testing professionals evaluate ourselves and continue to add tangible value to our organizations. In your work, are you focused on the trivial or on real game changers? Jennifer Bonine describes critical elements that help you artfully blend people, process, and technology to create a synergistic relationship that adds value. Jennifer shares ideas on mastering politics, maneuvering core vs. context...Read more

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Tutorial ME Build Your Mobile App Quality and Test Strategy Preview
Jason Arbon
8:30 am to 12:00 pm

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 the awesomeness of your mobile app quality and testing strategy. Leave this interactive session with a strategy for your very own app—or one you pretend to own. The...Read more

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Tutorial MF System-Level Test Automation: Ensuring a Good Start Preview
Dorothy Graham, Chris Loder
8:30 am to 12:00 pm

Many organizations invest a lot of effort in test automation at the system level but then have serious problems later on. As a leader, 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? This tutorial covers both “theory” and “practice”. Dot Graham explains the critical issues for getting a good start, and Chris Loder describes his experiences in getting good automation started at a number of companies. The tutorial covers the most important management issues you must address for...Read more

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Tutorial MG Test Design for Fully Automated Build Architecture Preview NEW
Melissa Benua
8:30 am to 12:00 pm

Imagine this … As soon as any developed functionality is submitted into the code repository, it is automatically subjected to the appropriate battery of tests and then released straight into production. Setting up the pipeline capable of doing just that is becoming more and more common and something you need to know about. But most organizations hit the same stumbling block—just what IS the appropriate battery of tests? Automated build architectures don't always lend themselves well to the traditional stages of testing. In this hands-on tutorial, Melissa Benua introduces you to...Read more

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Tutorial MH Instill a DevOps Testing Culture in Your Team and Organization Preview NEW
Adam Auerbach
8:30 am to 12:00 pm

The DevOps movement is here. Companies across many industries are breaking down siloed IT departments and federating them into product development teams. Testing and its practices are at the heart of these changes. Traditionally, IT organizations have been staffed with mostly manual testers and a limited number of automation and performance engineers. 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 even embrace coding to stay relevant and add greater value to the business. DevOps really...Read more

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Tutorial MI Get Ready for the Big Time: Load and Performance Testing Preview NEW
Amber Race
8:30 am to 12:00 pm

Does your application have what it takes to handle the number of customers you expect—or hope for? Does it provide a quick, responsive experience for your users all the time? Amber Race explores the performance testing tools and techniques you need to help ensure that your application is ready for the load from real users. If you are just getting started as a performance tester and wondering how to begin, Amber takes you through the basics and reviews the different facets of load and performance testing. Learn how to analyze your application for potential issues, create tests using a...Read more

Lunch—12:00pm-1:00pm
12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Full-Day Tutorials Continue—1:00pm–4:30pm
1:00 pm to 4:30 pm
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Tutorial MJ Agile Testing: Team Tactics that Deliver the Goods Preview
Bob Galen, Mary Thorn
1:00 pm to 4:30 pm

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 vs. 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 must 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

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Tutorial MK Exploratory Testing: New Skills for Learning and Discovery Preview NEW
Maaret Pyhäjärvi
1:00 pm to 4:30 pm

The 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...Read more

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Tutorial ML Create Your Testing Transformation Roadmap Preview NEW
Isabel Evans
1:00 pm to 4:30 pm

Are you being asked to transform your testing processes and practices? Of course, you are. Do you want to transform your testing? Of course, you do. However, before you leap into a transformation project—Stop. Think. Do you know why you need to transform? Do you have goals and objectives? Do you know where you are headed and where you might end up? Isabel Evans leads you through some important questions about test transformation and explores the range of answers you might want to consider. Since these will be different for each person, Isabel will discuss and demonstrate some problem-...Read more

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Tutorial MM Dominoes of Automating Testing Preview NEW
Angie Jones, Paul Merrill
1:00 pm to 4:30 pm

Many initiatives to automate testing fail because teams focus too heavily on mastering the use of tools and frameworks, and not enough on understanding the foundational principles of a solid test automation strategy. Join Angie Jones and Paul Merrill for this interactive tutorial that requires no coding, no tools, and no laptops. Instead, let's knock down some dominoes! Learn the basic principles of good test automation by setting up dominoes in a way that solves puzzles. Angie and Paul share how to decide what to automate, how to organize test automation not only to reduce risk but also...Read more

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Tutorial MN Unit Testing: What Every Developer and Tester Should Know Preview
Tariq King
1:00 pm to 4:30 pm

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...Read more

Registration Desk Hours—Closes at 4:30pm
4:30 pm

Tuesday, May 1

Registration Desk Hours—7:30am–5:00pm
7:30 am to 5:00 pm
Continental Breakfast—7:30am–8:30am
7:30 am to 8:30 am
Multi-day Training Classes Continue—8:30am–5:00pm
8:30 am to 5:00 pm
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Tutorial TA What Testers Must Know about Git and GitHub Preview
Wilson Mar
8:30 am to 4:30 pm

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....Read more

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Tutorial TB A Rapid Introduction to Rapid Software Testing Preview
Michael Bolton
8:30 am to 4:30 pm

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...Read more

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Tutorial TC Fundamentals of Testing REST APIs Preview NEW SOLD OUT
Lianne Klaver
8:30 am to 4:30 pm

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...Read more

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Tutorial TD Selenium Test Automation: From the Ground Up Preview
Titus Fortner
8:30 am to 4:30 pm

Knowledge of Selenium, the industry-standard tool for testing web applications, is a much sought after skill in today’s world of test automation. If you want to learn Selenium, then this full-day tutorial provides a great start. Titus Fortner 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. Titus introduces other tools that work with Selenium to help manage the data used to drive your tests, evaluate JavaScript-heavy applications, manage your test...Read more

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Tutorial TE Influence Diagrams: A New Way to Understand Testing Preview
Isabel Evans
8:30 am to 12:00 pm

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 way to understand and manage the complexities of key interactions among testers, developers, and business stakeholders. In the past few years, Isabel has used influence diagrams as a tool to analyze the...Read more

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Tutorial TF Test Automation Strategies for the Agile World Preview SOLD OUT
Bob Galen
8:30 am to 12:00 pm

With many organizations adopting agile practices, the test automation landscape has changed. Bob Galen explores current disruptors to traditional automation strategies, and discusses relevant and current adjustments that must be made when developing an automation business case. Open source tools are becoming incredibly viable and often best their commercial equivalents―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 up with incremental...Read more

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Tutorial TG The Impact of IoT on Testing: What’s in Store Preview
Jennifer Bonine
8:30 am to 12:00 pm

No longer just a futuristic concept, the Internet of Things (IoT) has a strong presence in today’s world. If your business is not prepared for it, you’re already behind. With the proliferation of connected “things”—devices, appliances, cars, and even clothing—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 demand...Read more

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Tutorial TH Testing Today's Web Applications: Tools You Can Use Preview NEW
Alan Page
8:30 am to 12:00 pm

If 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...Read more

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Tutorial TI Web Security Testing: The Basics and More Preview
Jeffery Payne
8:30 am to 12:00 pm

Web applications are often security critical or serve as front-ends for security critical applications, making web testing for vulnerabilities an essential part of software testing. Unfortunately, most software testers have not been taught how to identify web security issues while testing applications. Join Jeffery Payne as he shares what you need to know to security test web-based applications as part of your overall testing process. Learn about the most common web security vulnerabilities and how they are introduced into web code and exploited by hackers. Explore test techniques for...Read more

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Tutorial TJ Technical Test Automation Challenges: Patterns and Solutions Preview
Dorothy Graham
8:30 am to 12:00 pm

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 with relative ease. Other solutions that have worked well are patterns, 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 the patterns that help solve them. These are not development or code patterns—this is a code-free tutorial. Using a set of patterns developed with Seretta Gamba, Dot looks...Read more

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Tutorial TK Quality and Testing Measures and Metrics Preview
Mike Sowers
8:30 am to 12:00 pm

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...Read more

Lunch —12:00pm-1:00pm
12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Full- and Half-Day Tutorials Continue—1:00pm–4:30pm
1:00 pm to 4:30 pm
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Tutorial TL Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Skills for the Testing World Preview NEW
Jason Arbon, Tariq King
1:00 pm to 4:30 pm

Software continues to revolutionize the world—impacting nearly every aspect of our work, family, and personal life. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are playing key roles in this revolution through improvements in search results, recommendations, forecasts, and other predictions. AI and ML technologies are being used in platforms for digital assistants, home entertainment and automation, medical diagnosis, customer support, and autonomous vehicles. Testing practitioners are recognizing the potential for advances in AI and ML to be leveraged for automated testing—an...Read more

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Tutorial TM Agile Test Team Leadership: From Concept to Product Preview SOLD OUT
Bob Galen, Mary Thorn
1:00 pm to 4:30 pm

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...Read more

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Tutorial TN Integrating Automated Testing into DevOps Preview
Jeffery Payne
1:00 pm to 4:30 pm

In many organizations, agile development processes are driving the pursuit of faster software releases, which has spawned a set of new practices—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/continuous...Read more

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Tutorial TO Data Analytics and Machine Learning Preview NEW
Ken Johnston, Eun Chang
1:00 pm to 4:30 pm

Do you have access to lots and lots of test, development, app, and service data—really big data—from client and cloud service log files, test execution results, and more? Then, you have a great opportunity to begin using data analytics and machine learning (ML) to gain new product quality insights. Bring your laptops and your sense of discovery as Ken Johnston and Eun Change introduce analysis techniques and ML tools to help you develop new and potentially groundbreaking insights. First, they present a fast-paced statistics primer for those with no prior data exploration experience and...Read more

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Tutorial TP Test Estimation in the Face of Uncertainty Preview NEW
Rob Sabourin
1:00 pm to 4:30 pm

Anyone who has ever attempted to estimate software testing effort realizes just how difficult the task can be. The number of factors that can affect the estimate is virtually unlimited. The keys to good estimates are understanding the primary variables, comparing them to known standards, and normalizing the estimates based on their differences. This is easy to say but difficult to accomplish because estimates are frequently required even when we know very little about the project—and what we do know is constantly changing. Throw in a healthy dose of politics and a bit of wishful thinking,...Read more

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Tutorial TQ Using Docker Containers for Automating Web Testing Preview NEW
Gene Gotimer
1:00 pm to 4:30 pm

Vagrant and Docker are automation tools that are popular in the DevOps world. Vagrant provides a simple, consistent interface to create virtual machines on your local system and in the cloud. Docker lets you control containers—similar to virtual machines but smaller and faster with less overhead. These tools provide on-demand, disposable test environments that are delivered quickly, in a known state, locally or in the cloud. Systems under test, test tools, infrastructure, and even pre-populated data are all candidates for virtualization and containerization. When required, the...Read more

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Tutorial TR How to Break Software: Robustness Edition Preview
Dawn Haynes
1:00 pm to 4:30 pm

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. Dawn shows you how—by expanding basic tests and incorporating specific...Read more

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Tutorial TS Better Test Design for Great Test Automation and DevOps Preview
Hans Buwalda
1:00 pm to 4:30 pm

Test automation is an essential element in agile and DevOps processes. Your test designs can make or break automation efforts throughout the entire CI/CD pipeline. Automation must find problems in a build, run without a hitch, and be easily maintained. If tests are badly structured and unnecessarily detailed, an automation engineer will have a hard time automating them—even with great tools. Hans Buwalda explores how testers (both technical and non-technical) can design or restructure tests to make them suitable for automation. These tests will be able to run seamlessly with the CI/CD...Read more

Welcome Reception—4:30pm–5:30pm
4:30 pm to 5:30 pm

Wednesday, May 2

Registration Desk Hours—7:00am–5:30pm
7:00 am to 5:30 pm
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Bonus Session B1 Shift Happens: The Role of Continuous Testing in DevOps Preview
Alex Martins, CA Technologies, Jason Warfield
7:15 am to 8:15 am

You’ve heard about Continuous Testing, now it’s time to get serious about it. Building code fast, with minimal defects means testing early and testing often. The old ways of testing won’t cut it in this Agile environment where your competitors are rushing to deliver better features to win your customers away. Join testing expert Alex Martins of CA Technologies and be prepared to be shifted into high gear with their practical testing advice, examples and anecdotes that will ground you in the principles, tools and approach to Continuous Testing.Read more

Continental Breakfast—7:30am–8:30am
7:30 am to 8:30 am
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STAREAST 2018 Virtual Conference
8:30 am to 6:00 pm

Wednesday, May 2 | 8:30am–5:30pm ET and Thursday, May 3 | 8:30am–5:30pm ET

REGISTER NOW

The STAR EAST Virtual Conference streamed live on May 2-3 from Orlando, Florida but will also be available on-demand until August 1, 2018. The Virtual Conference featured presentations and interviews that could be streamed straight to your desktop—including the latest testing solutions and networking...Read more

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Keynote K1 Transformation from QA to Engineering: Testing in the Fast Lane Preview
Jennifer Scandariato, iCIMS
8:30 am to 9:45 am

Are 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...Read more

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Keynote K2 What’s Our Job When the Machines Do Testing? Preview
Geoff Meyer, Dell EMC
10:00 am to 11:00 am

After its highly hyped introduction decades ago and followed by a long, quiet “winter,” artificial intelligence (AI) has slowly crept back into our consciousness. While our Siri and Alexa assistants entertain us, machine learning (ML) has brought new conveniences into our lives with solutions including Nest and Netflix. Today, AI brings us to the tantalizing brink of the autonomous vehicle. The sea change of this 4th Industrial Revolution has begun to disrupt industry after industry. The emerging capabilities of these fascinating machines demand our attention as AI starts to be applied in...Read more

Networking Break • Visit the Expo—10:30am–2:00pm
10:30 am to 2:00 pm
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Industry Technical Presentation ITP1 Agile Accessibility Explained Preview
Dylan Barrell, Deque Systems Inc.
11:30 am to 12:30 pm
Accessibility is, quite simple. So why do agile teams struggle to achieve it? Dylan Barrell, CTO of Deque Systems, will talk about the challenges organizations face when implementing accessibility and will give you the agile practices that make accessibility an integral part of the development process. Jump start your career by becoming the expert in agile accessibility transformation.Read more
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Industry Technical Presentation ITP2 Supercharge Selenium – Automate & Test In-Sprint Preview
Dale Ellis, TurnKey Solutions
11:30 am to 12:30 pm
See how to leverage Machine Learning for Selenium script creation and maintenance, allowing for in-sprint automation Augment Selenium with Object Recognition engines and Keyword-driven frameworks to drive script reusability Implement Test Data Management that auto-builds and auto-maintains test data sets via referential access of application metadataRead more
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Industry Technical Presentation ITP3 The About Face: Getting Serious About DevOps With Continuous Testing Preview
Adam Auerbach, EPAM Systems, Alex Martins, CA Technologies
11:30 am to 12:15 pm

• Companies are waking up to the fact that testing must occur during all stages of development • Consequently, they are seeking new tools and solutions to achieve Continuous Testing • Testing is the linchpin for Agile companies to achieve their goal of Digital TransformationRead more

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Concurrent Session W1 IT Poetry: Distilled Learning from Our Experiences Preview
Sue Uyetake, SurveyGizmo
11:30 am to 12:30 pm

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...Read more

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Concurrent Session W2 Migrating from Test Cases to Real-World Telemetry Measures Preview
Ken Johnston, Microsoft
11:30 am to 12:30 pm

Ken Johnston sees today’s software ecosystem in the light of Everything as a Service (EaaS). Operating systems like Windows, Android, and Chrome OS all ship regularly like a service. Browsers automatically update every few weeks, and apps are constantly updating through all the app stores. Although getting a test to pass once and signing off has gone by the wayside for software testing, still we run test cases over and over again. Ken shares how Microsoft took millions of test cases—yes, actually millions—and turned the important ones into measures based on real world telemetry. Massive...Read more

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Concurrent Session W3 Automated Testing: Beyond the Basics Preview
Jim Holmes, Guidepost Systems
11:30 am to 12:30 pm

You've been through some initial test automation training or bootstrapping, and now, a few months down the road, you find you’re spending a lot of time chasing intermittent test failures and maintaining your codebase. You're frustrated and losing trust in the automated tests. Sound familiar? Jim Holmes helps you find approaches that may save your sanity—all based on his years of experience and hard knocks. Beyond the test automation basics like waits, find logic, or basic page objects, Jim takes a dive into more advanced test automation approaches and methods—custom-designed APIs...Read more

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Concurrent Session W4 AI-Driven Testing as a Service: Fad, Fiction, or Future? Preview
Tariq King, Ultimate Software
11:30 am to 12:30 pm

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are leading to a new generation of software, which is becoming self-adaptive, autonomous, and smart. Academic researchers and industry practitioners are investigating how these new AI and ML technologies can be leveraged to improve software testing and testing services. A handful of testing-as-a-service (TaaS) vendors already offer services that use AI bots to perform some functional and performance testing. How well do they live up to their claims? Can they be used as an effective substitute or supplement for human testers...Read more

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Concurrent Session W5 Thirteen Patterns of Testers Thriving in Agile Teams Preview
Shaun Bradshaw, Zenergy Technologies, Inc
11:30 am to 12:30 pm

For many, testing in agile teams remains one of the great mysteries of the agile world. In some organizations, testers are marginalized; in others, testers are active, engaged, and highly valued. So, what’s up? In this interactive session, Shaun Bradshaw explores the mindset and practices of “fully empowered” agile testers on high-performance agile teams. Throughout his agile coaching experience, Shaun has seen it all—from totally dysfunctional teams to those running like well-oiled machines … and everything in between. He’ll share real-world tactics to help you guide your team...Read more

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Concurrent Session W6 Automated Security Scanning for Your Delivery Pipeline Preview
Matthew Grasberger, Coveros, Inc.
11:30 am to 12:30 pm

Agile development and DevOps depend on an automated pipeline to build, test, and deploy code quickly. Security is all too often viewed as a manual task that is too difficult to automate and something to be left for later—not a good decision! Matt Grasberger says that, by leveraging automated security scans with open source scanners, you can reduce the risk of security vulnerabilities, get the most out of your pipeline, and increase software quality. Matt thoroughly explains and demonstrates several ways to implement automated security scans. Discover how to quickly test endpoints...Read more

Lunch in the Expo—Meet the Speakers 12:30pm–1:30pm
12:30 pm to 1:30 pm
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Industry Technical Presentation ITP4 Your Path To Promotion and Visual AI Preview
James Lamberti, Applitools​: AI-powered Visual Testing and Monitoring
12:40 pm to 1:40 pm

Join this session to learn:

Evolution of manual testing role in the era of digital transformation Prove your ROI in the age of test automation: emerging career paths for manual testers Leverage technology to your advantage: best practices of getting started with Visual AIRead more
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Industry Technical Presentation ITP5 Autonomous Testing: Journey Beyond Continuous Testing Preview
Raj Rao, AutonomiQ
12:40 pm to 1:40 pm
Learn why continuous testing falls short of its promise What is autonomous testing How can enterprises leverage autonomous testing to accelerate DevOpsRead more
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Industry Technical Presentation ITP6 Implementing a Test Automation UFT Framework in a DevOps World Preview
John O’Bryant, Healthesystems, Sneha Crews, Checkpoint Technologies
12:45 pm to 1:30 pm

This presentation will provide: • Benefits of a robust test automation framework • Details on the key components of a proven framework • Tips to implement a UFT automation frameworkRead more

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Industry Technical Presentation ITP7 Quality, Not Compromise: Best Practices for Continuous Testing in DevOps Preview
Nico Krüger, Perforce Software
1:45 pm to 2:45 pm
When, how, and what to automate for successful continuous testing. How to implement test case reviews without slowing progress. Ways to streamline work handoffs in the testing process.Read more
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Industry Technical Presentation ITP8 Advanced ISTQB Certifications for Test Automation and Security Testing Preview
Andrew Pollner, ASTQB - American Software Testing Qualifications Board
1:45 pm to 2:45 pm
Introducing the Advanced Specialist track How Test Automation certification improves your automation efforts Why Security Testing certification is not just about penetration testingRead more
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Industry Technical Presentation ITP9 5 Stages of Digital Quality Maturity Preview
Amir Rozenberg, Perfecto
1:45 pm to 2:30 pm

• What are the blockers hurting organizations from modernizing their devOPS and testing approach to become agile • How to embed quality across the SDLC, step by step, pragmatically • Breaking down the dev-OPS wall by introducing production insight as current sprint activityRead more

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Concurrent Session W7 Make Your Team Awesome—Yes, You Can! Preview
Maaret Pyhäjärvi, F-Secure Oyj
1:45 pm to 2:45 pm

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...Read more

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Concurrent Session W8 Mindmapping: A General Purpose (Test) Planning Tool Preview
Bob Galen, Zenergy Technologies
1:45 pm to 2:45 pm

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...Read more

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Concurrent Session W9 Continuous Testing vs. Test Automation: Three Key Differences Preview
Wayne Ariola, Tricentis
1:45 pm to 2:45 pm

The past few years have brought a sea change in the way applications are architected, developed, and consumed—increasing both the complexity of testing and the risk of software failures. Given the trends that impact both architectures (cloud, microservices, and APIs) and processes (DevOps, agile, and continuous delivery), how can software testing keep pace with modern application delivery? Enter continuous testing. Wayne Ariola explores the three main differences between continuous testing and test automation. He explores why and where traditional test automation falls short in today’s...Read more

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Concurrent Session W10 Machine Learning Heralds the End of Selenium Preview
Jason Arbon, test.ai
1:45 pm to 2:45 pm

Selenium has been the cure for free and low-cost browser testing for years, and—in the world of agile, mobile, DevOps, and browserless interfaces—it is showing its age. Comparing Selenium to what’s coming, Jason Arbon says that machine learning and data analytics will become the new standard for test automation. With Selenium, test engineers suffer from the pains of broken element identification; broken, buggy, and partially implemented mobiletest capabilities; exploding costs of building abstraction layers on their apps; brittle test code when the application under test changes;...Read more

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Concurrent Session W11 Agile Testing in Large Scale Organizations Preview
Mary Thorn, Mary Thorn Consulting
1:45 pm to 2:45 pm

Mary Thorn has had the opportunity in the past twenty years 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 where 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

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Concurrent Session W12 Elegant Test Weapons for a More Civilized Age Preview
Melissa Benua, mParticle
1:45 pm to 2:45 pm

Software 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...Read more

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Industry Technical Presentation ITP10 Where has the Release Manager Gone - Implementing DevOps with Continuous Integration Preview
Michael Faulise, tap | QA
3:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Attendees will learn how to implement DevOps strategy with automation of Release management Integration of the DevOps methodology with critical technology and CI processes will be discussed Understanding of what DevOps roles are required along with CI SDETsRead more
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Industry Technical Presentation ITP11 Fully Tested: From Design to MVP in 3 Weeks Preview
Dan Giordano, SmartBear Software
3:00 pm to 4:00 pm
How to speed up your development with a design first mind set Virtualizing services and dependencies to enhance collaboration between developers & testers End-to-End testing strategies for an immature productRead more
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Industry Technical Presentation ITP12 Digital Transformation Requires Continuous Testing Preview
Ingo Philipp, Tricentis
3:00 pm to 3:45 pm
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Concurrent Session W13 Building a Modern DevOps Enterprise Testing Organization Preview
Adam Auerbach, Lincoln Financial Group
3:00 pm to 4:00 pm

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...Read more

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Concurrent Session W14 The Four Cs and One T of Requirements “Testing” Preview
Evgeny Tkachenko, EPAM Systems
3:00 pm to 4:00 pm

It is important to know that written requirements are good, but few employ a practical, repeatable approach for “testing” their requirements. Evgeny Tkachenko says his company has introduced a requirements analysis step which is done before coding of functionality begins. Checking for requirements completeness, clearness, correctness, consistency, and testability helps ensure that developers create the right features the first time. To demonstrate this process, Evgeny presents examples of buggy requirements and plays games with participants who solve logic puzzles to practice...Read more

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Concurrent Session W15 Selenium Hacks: Improving Your Skills Preview
Andrew Krug, Lazy Coder
3:00 pm to 4:00 pm

Although 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...Read more

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Concurrent Session W16 Machine Learning and Data Science for Quality and Performance Engineering Preview
Gopal Brugalette, SAP Concur
3:00 pm to 4:00 pm

Managing the quality and performance of complex systems requires more than simply executing test cases and running load tests. You need to perform careful analysis of test results and production metrics. The sheer amount of data generated in production and testing makes analysis a huge challenge that is often left wanting. With the magic of machine learning (ML) and the application of data science techniques, you have the opportunity to derive valuable and actionable information from big data. Gopal Brugalette shares the basic concepts behind ML, covering clustering,...Read more

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Concurrent Session W17 Test Management in Agile—What Happened to All My Testers? Preview
Jeffery Payne, Coveros, Inc.
3:00 pm to 4:00 pm

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...Read more

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Concurrent Session W18 How to Test Serverless Cloud Applications Preview
Glenn Buckholz, Coveros, Inc.
3:00 pm to 4:00 pm

Cloud providers are now offering serverless technology, introducing significant changes to how applications are structured and, importantly, tested. The serverless cloud makes certain parts of testing serverless applications opaque. Glenn Buckholz explains the boundaries of each cloud provider’s black box service to expose what can and cannot be tested ahead of time, and what can be evaluated locally and what requires the cloud provider’s platform. Join Glenn as he focuses on answering key testing questions for serverless cloud applications: How and where do I do unit testing? What...Read more

Networking Break • Visit the Expo—3:30pm–6:30pm
3:30 pm to 6:30 pm
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Keynote K3 Lightning Strikes the Keynotes Preview
Rob Sabourin, AmiBug.com
4:15 pm to 5:15 pm

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

Reception in the Expo Hall—5:30pm–6:30pm
5:30 pm to 6:30 pm
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Bonus Session B2 Autonomous Testing - Journey Beyond Continuous Testing Preview
Raj Rao, AutonomiQ
6:45 pm to 7:45 pm

Continuous Testing has been employed for some time now, but has it reached its limit in terms of effectiveness? Most companies still report that testing is still a bottleneck and not fully integrated into the DevOps cycle. The time it takes to code and maintain tests and generate test data are the primary reason that continuous testing has not been fully effective. With autonomous testing you get zero-touch test case creation and coding, lights-out test execution, and automatic impact analysis with self-healing tests. This approach requires a fundamental shift away from traditional human powered test case creation and execution. In Autonomous testing, the system is application aware and updates scripts automatically. By leveraging autonomous testing, enterprises will be able to remove testing as the DevOps bottleneck, achieve integrated quality in the DevOps process, speeding software delivery with higher quality and at a lower cost.Read more

Thursday, May 3

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Bonus Session B3 What is service virtualization and are you scaling it effectively? Preview
Chris Colosimo, Parasoft
7:15 am to 8:15 am

Join product manager Chris Colosimo as he discusses service virtualization and how to get started and scale with the technology. He will walk you through a variety of deployment options and show you how to:

Create powerful virtual services in your own local environment that will allow you to develop and test in isolation. Enable teaming by collaborating and sharing test artifacts and tie these artifacts together with test cases and data into an environment template. Implement continuous testing as part of your DevOps pipeline by dynamically deploying environments as a part of your CI process.Read more
Continental Breakfast—7:30am–8:30am
7:30 am to 8:30 am
Registration Desk Hours—8:00am–5:30pm
8:00 am to 5:30 pm
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Keynote K4 The Next Big Thing: Testing AI and Machine Learning Applications Preview
Angie Jones, Twitter
8:30 am to 9:30 am

Our world is changing. Artificial intelligence is being employed in many walks of life—from virtual assistants and robots to self-driving cars. How does this new way of life impact software testing? What is our role … and will we have one in the future? Of course! And it’s a very exciting time to be in testing because there’s not enough known about how to systematically test these AI- and ML-driven applications. Angie Jones gives an overview of why it’s extremely important that we comprehensively test these applications and how today’s tester can prepare and build the skillset for this new...Read more

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Industry Technical Presentation ITP13 The future of test automation: resolving the quality/velocity dilemma using AI Preview
Oren Rubin, Testim
9:45 am to 10:45 am

Key Takeaways:

Current challenges of test automation How to leverage AI to overcome software quality pitfalls Steps teams need to take now to be prepared for the future of testingRead more
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Industry Technical Presentation ITP14 Evolving Software Quality in the Enterprise Preview
Marc Ray, Zephyr
9:45 am to 10:45 am
Integrating quality management across delivery programs Increase visibility of and availability of quality management assets Maximize software delivery velocity and team collaborationRead more
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Industry Technical Presentation ITP15 Unlock Hidden Potential from Manual Tests by Adding Artificial Intelligence to API Testing Preview
Chris Colosimo, Parasoft
9:45 am to 10:30 am

Learn how to: • Automatically create meaningful API tests that can validate your applications without requiring a UI or knowledge of the API • Convert manual testing activities into meaningful API test cases with assertions and validations to ensure your APIs work as intended • Leverage these tests within the powerful Parasoft SOAtest solution to build intelligent scenario tests that can be extended to cover more application logic, and can reproduce and expose defects to be easily shared with dev and test teamsRead more

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Concurrent Session T1 Leave Behind Us vs. Them: Transforming a Product Team Preview
Jason Wick, MakeMusic
9:45 am to 10:45 am

For 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...Read more

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Concurrent Session T2 Machine Data Is Everywhere: Use It for Testing! Preview
Tom Chavez, Splunk
9:45 am to 10:45 am

As more applications are hosted on servers, they produce immense quantities of logging data. Quality engineers should verify that apps are producing log data that is existent, correct, consumable, and complete. Otherwise, apps in production are not easily monitored, have issues that are difficult to detect, and cannot be corrected quickly. Tom Chavez presents the four steps that quality engineers should include in every test plan for apps that produce log output or other machine data. First, test that the data is being created. Second, ensure that the entries are correctly formatted and...Read more

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Concurrent Session T3 DevOps Tools for Winning Agility Preview
Kellyn Pot'Vin-Gorman, Delphix
9:45 am to 10:45 am

With a myriad of tools to choose from—open source, free, paid, and enterprise level—teams and organizations have seemingly endless options. Making the right tool decisions can impact the level of quality and success within DevOps projects. Kellyn Pot'Vin-Gorman discusses different tools, what tools work best together, and how—even in teams that are in silos—the right choices can make the difference between success and failure in DevOps implementations. Explore tools—such as Ansible, Jenkins, Maven, Delphix, Github, Liquibase, and Terraform—for automating builds and virtualization. Review...Read more

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Concurrent Session T4 Balancing Tech Know-How with Social Skills Preview
Marcia Buzzella, Independent Consultant
9:45 am to 10:45 am

Even 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...Read more

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Concurrent Session T5 Automated Testing for New-Gen Digital Interactions: Chatbots, Alexa, and Siri Preview
Sanil Pillai, Infostretch
9:45 am to 10:45 am

Today’s IT systems communicate with customers through multiple points of engagement and various interfaces, ranging from web, mobile, and voice to BOTs and apps like Alexa and Siri. Sanil Pillai says these systems need to provide seamless handoffs between different points of interaction—while at the same time providing relevant and contextual information quickly. To accomplish this, a team must be able to successfully pair device hardware capabilities and intelligent software technologies such as location intelligence, biometric sensing, and Bluetooth. Testing these systems and...Read more

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Concurrent Session T6 Exploratory Testing: Learn to Do It like a Bloodhound Preview
Susan Zampino, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company
9:45 am to 10:45 am

Let’s face it—dogs are born to sniff everything. Using their noses, they gather information from other dogs, people, and most everything. We teach dogs to use their noses to find bombs, predict seizures, locate cancer cells, detect drugs, and so much more. When dogs smell, they are not just recording an odor; they get an entire story. Although testers have fewer scent receptors than dogs, Susan Zampino says that we can learn how to gather information like a dog to drive our exploratory testing. Using active audience participation, Susan will stimulate participants to rely on their...Read more

Networking Break • Visit the Expo—10:30am–3:00pm
10:45 am to 3:00 pm
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Industry Technical Presentation ITP16 Shift-Up: How AI, Cognitive Computing, and Emotional Intelligence is transforming QA Preview
Michael Giacometti, Eggplant
11:15 am to 12:15 pm
Shift-Left and Shift-Right no longer guarantee an application's success. Testing is evolving. More focus is needed on features that are useful to your customer and how they feel about it. The relationship between Company and Customer is no longer transactional. Both need a deep, meaningful relationship. How do you test for that?Read more
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Industry Technical Presentation ITP17 Choosing Integrated Test Management and Requirements Traceability Solution in Jira Preview
Dr. Vladimir Belorusets, Bluescape
11:15 am to 12:15 pm

Learn how to enable visibility and end-to- end traceability of all testing activities within the Jira environment to deliver high-quality software to market faster. Gain practical insights on the benefits of using a test management tool like SynapseRT within Jira in a complex and challenging business environment

Key Takeaways:

Requirements for an efficient test management app Traceability triangle: stories, defects, and test cases Test plan reusability Integrating test automationRead more
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Concurrent Session T7 Testing in a Microservices and Continuous Delivery Environment Preview
Robert Williams, CA Technologies
11:15 am to 12:15 pm

The combination of microservice architectures and continuous delivery (CD) create a difficult scenario for integration and release testing. Even though microservices often introduce a huge number of integrations and transitive dependencies, testing still must be completed quickly to keep the pipeline flowing smoothly. Robert Williams surveys the techniques and tools available today for testing one or more microservices against a mix of real and virtualized dependencies in various stages of the CD pipeline. He explores structured testing around multiple versions of those services...Read more

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Concurrent Session T8 Use Path Analysis in Test Design for Better, Faster Testing Preview
Rob Sabourin, AmiBug.com
11:15 am to 12:15 pm

No question about it … software is highly complex maze, and it could take many lifetimes to manually test all the paths in a typical business app. Automation doesn’t help much because it’s not smart enough (yet) to design tests. Rob Sabourin shares his experiences testing complex application—some with more possible paths than particles of matter in the visible universe. Although programmers have applied path analysis to structural unit tests for years, path analysis has been mostly neglected in areas of end-to-end testing, workflow, process flow, usage scenarios, data flow, and system...Read more

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Concurrent Session T9 Not Your Parents’ Test Automation: Application of Non-Traditional Automation Preview
Paul Grizzaffi, Magenic
11:15 am to 12:15 pm

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...Read more

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Concurrent Session T10 Devices and Desires: How Do Humans Experience Software? Preview
Isabel Evans, Independent Consultant
11:15 am to 12:15 pm

We consume and still we desire more—more devices, more apps, more data, more bandwidth, more connectivity. The more we have, the more we want. We assume that to be true—those of us who work in the software industry. But is that true? To understand what is really required of our products, we need to design and test a pyramid of interlocking quality attributes that, together, make for an optimum experience. Isabel Evans discusses why and how we can evaluate UX and what is takes to deliver better UX to our customers. Isabel looks at the needs of the individual software user in conjunction...Read more

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Concurrent Session T11 Integration and Functional Testing Using Dockerized Dependencies Preview
Irene Dhong, Bazaarvoice
11:15 am to 12:15 pm

To emulate production-like conditions that cannot be tested on the unit level, many integration and functional tests need a realistic environment. However, performing these tests in a production-like environment is fraught with problems—test data management issues, tests that are difficult to execute repeatedly, and network traffic that causes long-running test execution times. Instead of having to deal with these problems and others, Irene Dhong employs Docker to simulate dependencies. Learn how you can take advantage of Dockerized dependencies for quick test writing, reusability...Read more

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Concurrent Session T12 Five Things We’ve Learned from 100,000 Bug Fixes Preview
Kristel Kruustük, Testlio
11:15 am to 12:15 pm

Since co-founding Testlio four years ago, Kristel Kruustük and her team of testers worldwide have worked with QA leaders and engineers at some of the world’s most innovative companies, including Lyft, Salesforce, Hotels.com, and Microsoft. During that time testers working with her testing-as-a-service company have identified 100,000 bugs and counting. Along the way, Kristel has learned there are five key traits and skills that make testers and test leaders great. In this eye-opening session, she talks about the tester’s mindset—curious, open, tenacious, and more—and how you can...Read more

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Industry Technical Presentation ITP18 Continuous Testing Made Awesome with Sauce Labs Preview
Leo Laskin, Sauce Labs
11:30 am to 12:15 pm

• Overview of how to run your automated Selenium tests in the Sauce Labs cloud • Decrease the amount of time it takes your suite to run by executing tests in parallel • Ensure your apps work all of the time with functional testing on real devicesRead more

Lunch in the Expo • Meet the Speakers—12:15pm–1:30pm
12:15 pm to 1:30 pm
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Industry Technical Presentation ITP19 All About Appium: What You Need to Know Preview
Jamie Moore, Mobile Labs
1:30 pm to 2:30 pm
Discover how Appium compares to other testing tools Learn how to overcome some of the most common Appium challenges Find out how to get the most out of Appium by leveraging a mobile device cloudRead more
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Industry Technical Presentation ITP20 Cognitive Quality Engineering Leveraging Bots Preview
Vinay Chandra, Deloitte, Jerry Keane, Charter Communications
1:30 pm to 2:30 pm
Provide an approach to predictive analysis using cognitive algorithms to derive testing insights Enable our clients to achieve accelerated and optimized quality through robotics Improve efficiencies by leveraging ChatBot and other interactive mediums as virtual testing resourcesRead more
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Concurrent Session T13 Release Automation: Yes, Testers Should Care Preview
Tracy Ragan, OpenMake Software
1:30 pm to 2:30 pm

Agile DevOps focuses on moving changes through the pipeline as quickly as possible, which means that more operational tasks—like software deployment—will occur earlier. As a result, testing teams will begin assuming more responsibility in managing those deployments in order to perfect reputability. Tracy Ragan provides an overview of release automation as it relates to testing and explains how automation is key to achieving faster and leaner testing cycles. She discusses why deploying new code across diverse environments can be really tricky and slow, and how properly implemented...Read more

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Concurrent Session T14 Testing Digital Interfaces: Chatbots, Home Assistants, Touch ID, Facial Recognition, and More Preview
Amir Rozenberg, Perfecto
1:30 pm to 2:30 pm

It seems almost everyday we see a product announced with a clever, new digital interface—and the rush has only just begun. From chatbots and motion sensors to facial recognition and voice integrations, these digital interfaces have a complex software side. Amir Rozenberg discusses the challenges we face now and explores a more challenging future to come for testers and testing. With concrete examples from the market, he offers new approaches for you to embed quality and test activities into the development cycle to tame the digital interface beast. With Amir, you’ll look at ways...Read more

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Concurrent Session T15 Manual Testers Can Thrive in a Test Automation World Preview
Jeanne Schmidt, Rural Sourcing Inc.
1:30 pm to 2:30 pm

As 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...Read more

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Concurrent Session T16 Embedding Performance Engineering into the CI/CD Pipeline Preview
Anjeneya Dubey, McGraw-Hill Education
1:30 pm to 2:30 pm

A difficult challenge organizations face when adopting continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) is ensuring that every build has been evaluated for performance. Although most organizations do performance testing, how they do it and when they do it define their readiness for deploying in fast-paced environments. Anjeneya Dubey’s team faced similar challenges and found ways to embed performance engineering as part of their CD pipeline. To achieve this objective, they made changes to processes, technologies, and culture. They added non-functional requirements to “normal”...Read more

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Concurrent Session T17 AR and VR for Mobile Apps: Are You Ready to Test? Preview
BJ Aberle, Float
1:30 pm to 2:30 pm

Augmented 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...Read more

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Concurrent Session T18 What's an API and How Do I Test It? Preview
Paul Merrill, Beaufort Fairmont
1:30 pm to 2:30 pm

API-based applications have become ubiquitous in the past few years. Yet many of us still really don't know what an API is from the inside out. Moreover, many of us don't know much about how to comprehensively test them! Join Paul Merrill to learn what everyone is doing and talking about related to APIs: microservices, REST, endpoints, requests, request methods, and responses. Paul demonstrates four free tools you can use to directly interact with a simple API: curl, the browser, Postman, and Java (with Rest Assured). Learn techniques for testing APIs at the service level and how to test...Read more

Networking Break • Visit the Expo—Closes at 3:00pm
2:30 pm to 3:00 pm
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Industry Technical Presentation ITP22 How Adaptavist Test Management (ATM) brought dramatic improvements in Loblaw Digital’s testing performance and experience Preview
Justin Watts, Loblaw Digital
3:00 pm to 4:00 pm
The capacity to conduct large scale automated testing Company-wide visibility of test results Radically increased productivity and reduced delivery timesRead more
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Concurrent Session T19 Make the Shift to Quality Engineering Preview
Melissa Tondi, EMS Software
3:00 pm to 4:00 pm

In the shift toward “continuous everything” in software development and delivery, we know that testing and testers must foster and support innovation within technology. Many of us just don’t know how to gauge that shift or, more importantly, know what needs to happen within our role to make it happen. Melissa Tondi explores the future of testing, what skills we should have/develop to ensure we are prepared for that future, and the traits of a quality engineer (QE)—where she believes many tester roles are shifting. Melissa walks you through what an innovation-oriented QE organization looks...Read more

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Concurrent Session T20 Influencing Stakeholders Using Fact-based Information Preview
Jennifer Bonine, tap|QA
3:00 pm to 4:00 pm

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...Read more

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Concurrent Session T21 Behavior-Driven Development: Real-World Mind Reading Preview
Kim Tatum, Deloitte Consulting
3:00 pm to 4:00 pm

Imagine this scenario: Business users are excited to finally get their hands on an implementation delivery that is on schedule, (mostly) on budget, and passed rigorous testing with flying colors. Unfortunately, when working with the new app or feature, the users realize that the way they described their needs didn’t translate into what they actually needed. Sound familiar? While she may not be able to offer telekinetic mind-reading tools, Kim Tatum is convinced that leveraging a behavior-driven development (BDD) approach helps bridge the gap between domain experts and technical teams. Join...Read more

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Concurrent Session T22 Open Source Tools for Performance Testing and Monitoring Preview
Kaushal Dalvi, Ultimate Software
3:00 pm to 4:00 pm

Are you finding it hard to make time for performance testing? Does your code end up shipping to production with little or no performance validation due to the lack of tools or expertise? Do you often wonder what system performance looks like in production to end users? Whether you are a test engineer, developer, or seasoned performance tester who has used traditional tools like LoadRunner, there are times when you need to get a quick read on the performance characteristics of your system and determine if there are any regressions. Join Kaushal Dalvi as he shares tips, tricks, and...Read more

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Concurrent Session T23 The Appium Framework: Create and Implement Your Mobile Testing Strategy Preview
Harry Roberts, Perfecto
3:00 pm to 4:00 pm

The trend in mobile apps today is who can deliver the best and the most new apps as quickly as possible to keep up with the competition. With this, the need for more and better testing seems to grow exponentially. Open source Appium is a unique mobile app testing framework that allows you to write a single test which executes for native or hybrid apps on different operating systems running simulators/emulators and real devices in parallel. Harry Roberts describes how to create and implement a successful mobile testing strategy using Appium across Android and iOS devices. After discussing...Read more

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Concurrent Session T24 API Testing: How to Write Tests, Integrate into CI, and Track What You're Testing Preview
Elise Carmichael, QASymphony
3:00 pm to 4:00 pm

Some developers and testers think that APIs, whether internally developed or not, should just work. Unfortunately, without a significant amount of focus on testing API services, one little flaw can spell disaster for your application—especially security vulnerabilities where hackers will target your application. Elise Carmichael discusses the risks of not fully testing APIs, how to be sure that all services are tested fully, and the types of negative testing you need to do on APIs. She shows you a method to organize your tests using Postman, a tool for REST web services testing....Read more

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Keynote K5 Testing Your Metal: Parallels between Testing and Heavy Metal Music Preview
Paul Grizzaffi, Magenic
4:15 pm to 5:15 pm

A self-proclaimed rock-a-holic, Paul Grizzaffi is greatly affected by music and quite the aficionado of heavy metal. Not only does he love music, he’s also an expert in testing and automation. The phrase “test your mettle” means to test one’s strength of spirit, what one is prepared to endure. In both testing and automation development, we often are tested by suboptimal situations and difficult challenges—unrealistic expectations, resistance to change, and the insistence that all existing test cases must be automated. In coping with challenges, many people find solace in listening...Read more

Testing & Quality Leadership Summit Reception—5:30pm-6:30pm (Summit Registration Required)
5:30 pm to 6:30 pm
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Leadership Summit Session Reception: Summit Kickoff: As a Leader, What Is Keeping You Up at Night? Preview
Jeffery Payne, Coveros, Inc.
5:30 pm to 6:30 pm

Kickoff the Testing & Quality Leadership Summit with a reception and some networking.Read more

Friday, May 4

Registration Desk Hours—7:30am–3:00pm
7:30 am to 3:00 pm
Continental Breakfast—8:00am–8:30am
8:00 am to 8:30 am
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Testing & Quality Leadership Summit
8:30 am to 4:30 pm

At the 2018 Testing & Quality Leadership Summit, program chair Jeffery Payne brings together senior industry leaders 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

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Women Who Test
8:30 am to 5:00 pm

Women Who Test is a full-day event on Friday, May 4 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

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Bonus Session B4 The Workshop on Regulated Software Testing (WREST) Preview
Griffin Jones, Congruent Compliance, Jim LeBaron, MasterControl
8:30 am to 4:30 pm

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 Griffin Jones and Jim LeBaron. 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

Lunch—12:00pm–1:00pm
12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Testing & Quality Leadership Summit, Women Who Test, & WREST Bonus Session (cont.)
1:00 pm to 4:30 pm