STAREAST Virtual+ 2020 - Quality Assurance
Customize your STAREAST 2020 experience with sessions covering quality assurance for software developers or testers.
Monday, May 4
Better Test Design for Great Test Automation
Test automation is an essential element in modern system development. And test design can make or break automation efforts throughout the entire CI/CD pipeline. We want automated tests to find problems in a build quickly, run without a hitch, and be easily maintained. However, if tests are badly structured and unnecessarily detailed, you may have a hard time automating them—even with great tools and great technical expertise. Hans Buwalda explores how testers, both technical and non-technical, can design or restructure tests to make them suitable for automation. In this session, you’ll...
How to Break Software: Robustness Edition
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...
Tuesday, May 5
Web Security Testing: The Basics and More
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...
Test Estimation in the Face of Uncertainty
PreviewAnyone 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...
Automation Framework Essentials
Automation is critical in today’s software delivery lifecycle, and yet many organizations struggle to keep their automation running. How can we mitigate difficulties and get consistent automation runs and results we can trust? The secret is implementing a solid automation framework, but that isn’t as easy as it seems. Chris Loder has built several automation frameworks over his career and has learned what works—and, more importantly, what doesn’t. This tutorial will cover what an automation framework is, the benefits of having one, and the keys to a successful framework, including...
Integrating Automated Testing into DevOps
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...
Quality and Testing Measures and Metrics
PreviewTo 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...
Thursday, May 7
AI in Testing: A Moderated Panel Discussion
Artificial intelligence is the newest trend in software testing. But what is it, and how will it impact the tester's role, both today and in the future? What do you need to do to embrace this emerging technology? Adam Auerbach will moderate this panel discussion—which will include Jason Arbon, Jennifer Bonine, and Tariq King—to give you an opportunity to hear the opinions of industry leaders about AI in testing. You will have a chance to drive the debate, so come prepared with all your AI questions.
Emotional Intelligence in Software Testing
PreviewEmotional intelligence has risen to a high level of prominence in corporate and cultural conversations. Quality professionals have a unique opportunity to benefit their teams by refining their nontechnical skills in the categories of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. Honing these skills can mitigate real-world challenges in the QA workplace, such as schedule pressures and rapidly changing priorities; feeling unheard or silenced; facing blame, disrespect, or lack of trust; or feeling left out of the loop on information critical to your...
Before and After You Say ‘I Do’ to Docker
PreviewDocker is the most popular containerized solution being used in the software industry for development. Like any other test automation tool, however, implementation can get complicated, tricky, and unmaintainable if all you understand is the record-and-playback features or think it is the same as using a virtual machine. Whether you are already using Docker for your automation needs or plan to start using it soon, join Aprajita Mathur as she shares her journey of using Docker for testing complex and constantly evolving data analysis pipelines. She will discuss basic concepts of...
Conquering BDD: How One Team Is Making it Work
PreviewBehavior-driven development, or BDD, has been a buzzworthy term in the testing and development community for several years. At first glance, the elements of BDD seem simple: Testing scenarios! Living documentation! Automation! Reports! That sounds great, so why isn't everyone doing it? Upon a deeper dive, the implementation of BDD needs a lot of forethought and planning, and teams must approach it for the right reasons. Christine Ketterlin Fisher will detail the evolution of one team in its shift to BDD. BDD was selected to help modernize the work that the business analysts, manual...
A Seismic Shift in Software Testing: Rise of the Machines
PreviewEven sophisticated businesses struggle with software testing. End-to-end (E2E) testing, though vital, has remained a costly and inconsistent method of catching bugs. But there’s a light at the end of this tunnel. Advances in machine learning (ML) have increased test execution speed and stability. Now, technologies are emerging that allow machines to analyze live user traffic to produce test cases—using data to focus E2E testing on what users care about. In time, these technologies will be stitched together to allow machines to own the entire E2E testing process. This seismic shift...
Achieving Intelligent Test Execution
If you ask a business leader which features in a given software release are most critical (and which potential failures keep them up at night), chances are they'll be related to the UI. But with many testing teams spending up to 80% of their time on regression testing, how can you make time for the resource-intensive tests that verify these high business value features? Many testers struggle to understand what questions to ask the business and business leaders related to this topic. Additionally, testers struggle with understanding how to identify risk areas and partner with their...
Empowering Manual Testers to Automate
PreviewHow do you get manual testers to be able to write their own automated tests for UI and functional testing? The key is to implement high-level language that testers can immediately recognize while keeping the messy details of Selenium and Python out of sight. Not only does this create tests that are implemented in the business language, but it also keeps those tests viable, even when application implementation details change. Tom Izard's team implemented a framework using Selenium, Python, UI navigation, application navigation, and business language, using only open source tools. He...
Thursday, May 14
Tool Builders for Life
There is a secret power behind the tools we use every day to get our jobs done in the technical realm. Throughout our lives and careers, we can apply these tools to a host of problems that need solving, not only in our work but in our every day lives. In this talk, Jaimee will share how the practice of being a tool builder by trade equipped her with the skills needed to build a ladder to climb out of a very dark place and into a completely new career working with people she loves working with, doing the most fulfilling work of her life.
Breaking the Glass Ceiling and our Biases
Gender bias exists not only in our workplace, but also in our personal lives. Companies and communities have been working hard to be more inclusive and diverse, yet this is a very difficult problem to solve. Why? Is it just a matter of time or can there be other factors involved? Let's take a dive into what is preventing women from progressing or reaching the top and how we can help bring the balance. To go beyond mere stereotypes, we will get familiarized with the basics of how our brain operates, how biases form, and other factors that contribute to a gender-biased system. We will work...