STAREAST Virtual 2021 - Exploratory Testing
Monday, April 26
Critical Thinking for Software Testers
Critical thinking is the kind of thinking that specifically looks for problems and mistakes. Regular people don't do a lot of it. However, if you want to be a great tester, you need to be a great critical thinker. Critically-thinking testers save projects from dangerous assumptions and ultimately from disasters. The good news is that critical thinking is not just innate intelligence or a talent—it's a learnable and improvable skill you can master. Michael Bolton shares the specific techniques and heuristics of critical thinking and presents realistic testing puzzles that help you practice...
Tuesday, April 27
X-Ray Vision For Testers: How to Analyze Things
How do we go about understanding something complex? How do we move from confusion to clarity? What strategies and approaches can we use to identify and reason about things that matter? When we’re dropped into a testing situation, how do we make sense of it all? How can we rapidly achieve a deeper understanding of things that we know little or nothing about? How can we develop skills to make us more powerful testers? The answer to these questions is analysis - the study of things and ideas by examining their elements and structure. In this one-day tutorial, Michael Bolton will lead...
Wednesday, April 28
Can Mobile Accessibility Testing be Automated via AI?
Did you know that 20% of federal ADA & 508 lawsuits now mention violations in mobile apps? There’s legal precedence now on maintaining compliance across all digital properties. As an example, the DOJ ruled against H&R Block, citing non compliance of both their web and mobile apps. Same fate for Dominos Pizza. Does your organization have an ADA compliance strategy for your mobile applications? Attend this session if you want to learn about the ABCs of accessibility testing. We will cover the WCAG 2.0 and 2.1 standards. Discuss whether you should target Level A, Level AA, or Level...
Testing a Data Science Model
Laveena has heard from other senior testers that they know of data science teams but no testers testing the models. How do we have enough confidence what is produced is good enough? A model is a statistical black box, how to test it so we understand its behaviors to test is properly. Main aim would be to help inspire testers to explore data science models. Laveena invites you to her talk where she will share her journey of discovering data science model testing and find the following takeaways useful not just for testing a data science model but day to day testing too. Key takeaways:
...Thursday, April 29
The Theatre of Exploratory Testing: Going Off Script
PreviewAsk a handful of testers to define exploratory testing. Some will respond that it’s simply poking around - try something, see what breaks, and then try something else. Many will identify it as an iterative process of learning and experimentation. But ask about what makes exploratory testing hard, and you find that practitioners are challenged in knowing where to start, what to test, when to stop, and how to know if they’ve found a bug. What makes for good exploratory testing? Join Philip as he examines the techniques of the actors of the Commedia dell'Arte, the 16th century approach...
Tales of Testing in Production
Software testing challenges us to find faster and more effective ways to assess risk to our users and the systems that support those users. Those faster and more effective risk assessments require compromises between available time, equipment capacity, market viability, and our desire to provide great results to our users. This talk uses experiences from 6 years of maintaining, testing, and delivering the Jenkins git plugin as a way to highlight the complications and the compromises involved in software testing in production environments and in widely varied environments. This is an...