STAREAST Virtual 2021 - Career & Personal Development
Tuesday, April 27
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...
Quality and Testing Measures and Metrics
To be most effective, leaders—including development and testing managers, ScrumMasters, product owners, and IT managers—need metrics to help direct their efforts and make informed recommendations about the software’s release readiness and associated risks. Because one important evaluation activity is to “measure” the quality of the software, the progress and results of both development and testing must be measured. Collecting, analyzing, and using metrics are complicated because developers and testers often are concerned that the metrics will be used against them. Join Mike Sowers as he...
Wednesday, April 28
10 Ways You Can Thrive in Your Testing Career
PreviewFor many testers, their careers are directed by others. Without proper thought and consideration about where we want to go, we could end up somewhere we don’t want to be. Rob Lambert will explore some of the ways you can instead learn to thrive in your testing, tech and management career—learning, improving, helping others, accepting help, and building a diverse set of in-demand skills. He will share ten ways he’s uncovered to enjoy your journey as you progress through your career: paint a picture for the future, build a simple knowledge management system, seek out diverse ideas,...
Achievement Unlocked: How Gamification Drives Organizational Culture Change
Do you track your steps each day to see if you can hit your goal? Do you count the number of “Likes” associated with a recent LinkedIn post and compare it to others? Or do you just keep track of how many tasks you moved to done on your personal Kanban Board? These are all examples of games we use in our daily lives to influence and change our behaviors (both consciously and subconsciously). If we use games to influence how we think and act as individuals, why not use games to influence how we think and act as organizations? This interactive session explores how gamification in the...
From Hardware to Software: Cisco's DevOps Journey
DevOps was born of a simple problem - a lack of culture / sharing in a company, especially between the world of developers and the operations teams. Now that everything is becoming programmable and the world of technology is moving very fast, this gap exists between all functions within a company. In this session, I will talk about the last 4 years at Cisco, where I started and ran a company initiative to move our DevOps culture forward through community management, organizing unconferences and sharing best practices. I will also provide an update about where we are in our DevOps journey...
The F Word: Great Feedback in Dev Teams
After presenting my session “Eight Ways to Ruin Your 1-on-1s” at Stareast and SQuADCon in 2019, attendees told me one particular area of discussion needed more attention: feedback. This session will be the session everyone knows they should attend but would like to avoid! Providing feedback is a necessary skill for individuals, teams, and organizations to grow, yet studies suggest 69% of managers are uncomfortable communicating with their employees and 37% of business leaders are afraid to give performance feedback. Although these numbers only address managers, we all need to show...
Psychological Safety: Bad News Does Not Smell Good with Time!
We have lived through the traditional Command and Control culture where leaders used to “shoot the messenger”. Leaders would say, “Don’t Bring Me Problems, Bring Me Solutions!”. If leaders cannot handle the truth nobody will tell them the truth. High-Performance Teams build complex business solutions with high quality. Most often they are successful on their first try but sometimes they need to learn from experimentation. In these cases, it is better to deliver bad news than bad product. For team members to share bad news they must feel safe to share reality. If Organizational Culture does...
Thursday, April 29
Valuing the Customer: Wagile Product Development
PreviewDo your new products launch with mediocre market reception? If so, your innovation process might be to blame. Traditional waterfall processes become bureaucratic while Agile systems have not delivered on their promises, either. New product development fails due to poor product designs and misunderstanding of the markets. Enter “Wagile” New Product Development. Wagile is a hybrid product development process that engages customers throughout the product design cycle while ensuring project execution meets internal requirements for scope, schedule, and budget. Implementing wagile leads...
Shift from Manual to Automation
PreviewIn today's market, good QA employees are hard to find. What if you need to do more but still have manual testers on the payroll. There are two options: Lay them off or train them up. Laying them off then means you have to find someone to fill their position who can do the automation but at the same time, all of that valuable product knowledge walks out your door. We had the same problem. We decided to train them up. We didn't have a budget for bringing in training or sending our QA's out to coding classes. Instead we took the few of us who had software development degrees/experience...
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UX Testing in Agile Development
PreviewUX Design takes place prior to the development phase. UX Testing, using data, takes place after the product is already built (e.g. using tools like Google Analytics). Kimberly Snoyl will give us her take on UX Testing and the possibilities it has. As a tester, her work is to make sure the designed product is built correctly according to the requirements in the development phase. "In my opinion, testing focuses too much on functionality instead of ensuring the end user is happy with the product and can use it effectively and efficiently." In this interactive talk I will give my take...
Creating a QA Department Out of Nothing
We will discuss the following areas that need to be addressed as you take on the opportunity. You could write the test cases in word or excel but why when there are so many free tools or minimally expensive tools out there. We will discuss the different tools available and how to compare and write a proposal to deliver to management. After a certain amount of time you will need help. Should you hire contractors, full time employees, or a mix of both? We will discuss the pros and cons. As you are hiring and then have the people secured it’s important to put the right people on the right...
Friday, April 30
Planting the Seeds of a Healthy Organization
Nurturing a strong, vibrant engineering culture takes work. There's no magic bean you can plant and then expect caring and collaboration to spring, fully-embodied, from the ground. What are the seeds that grow into a healthy organization? How do you plant them, care for them, and let them bloom into a self-sustaining culture that people love to work in - and that excels at getting things done? Melissa has been an engineering leader (and a gardener) for quite some time, and is excited to share her experiences in planting and tending to blossoming teams of software professionals that,...
The Year of Change!
We interrupt your regularly scheduled life to bring you 2020 AND 2021! Over a year of unprecedented unknowns and uncertainty. Many of us have faced countless challenges in our personal lives and in our careers and frankly, it is hard to not feel STUCK! In order to get unstuck, we must learn what to do to bring about personal change. How can we identify the changes we want to make and then find new ways to make those changes? Let’s talk about the steps we need to take to intentionally shift our mindset and habitual patterns that may be holding us back. Join Alison for this interactive...
Creative Trespassing: How to Quiet Imposter Syndrome and Start Believing in Yourself!
Many of us have an inner voice telling us we lucked out and that’s the only reason we’re leading the team or running the meeting and, if people got a closer look, surely they would see: WE ARE A FRAUD. That’s normal; the problem is when we believe it. Tania Katan, bestselling author, creative disruptor, and champion of women will show you how to transform imposter syndrome into impossibly awesome! Sharing her personal experiences and offering a blend of inspiration and practical advice, Katan will offer a guide to help you move beyond self-doubt and use creativity as fuel for a freer and...
Panel—Career Superpowers
Let’s discuss and define the most important career superpowers for women. Hear what industry professionals, leaders, and idea disruptors think the important career superpowers are for women in 2021 and going forward.