STAREAST Virtual 2021 - Tester
Wednesday, April 28
The Human Factor of Testing
What does a crash in your app mean if it just happens to one person? Not a lot, usually! But what does it mean if that app is their only way to communicate with the outside world? Or--what does even a minor defect in your app mean when it’s supposed to be safeguarding the health of your community? It can degrade your user's trust and make them less likely to use your app. There are many defects that are easy to categorize as low priority but how does the context of the app change your reaction to defects? This is the human factor of testing—the way that our users and their use cases...
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,...
Don’t Be Scared of AI! It’s Here to Stay and So are You
AI is here to stay and we know it’s going to change our world. There is so much information about AI that, it’s hard to know where to start, what to learn , what to ignore and what to believe. How do we tester’s cope up with this new technology and will this technology bring an end to our field of work? Join Aprajita Mathur as she shares basics of AI and where this technology stands today, what problems are being solved by it and why AI is not just about “ Test Bots” or “Robotics”. She will discuss how testers add/can add value in AI, what testing skills are transferable when working with...
Serverless Testing: Executing Long Running Test Automation
PreviewThe goal in most test automation is for it to run fast, fail fast, and get answers fast. But not all testing can, or should, be instant. Systems that use long running processes or workflows by design require polling-style testing that could take minutes, hours, or even days. In this session, Douglas will demonstrate using AWS Lambda functions with DynamoDB to create a serverless test monitor for polling long-running systems. He will also explain the benefits of using a serverless approach to create an “always available” testing tool to free up resources for other critical tasks....
Automation Using Geb/Spock/Groovy and a Geb Page Object Generator
PreviewSuze will go over the general introduction to the Geb/Spock/Groovy Automation solution as a layer of abstraction over Selenium/JUnit4/Java. She will also teach the technique and advantages of Page Object Modeling where she will demonstrate a simple Geb Page Object and the associated test that runs against the google.com web search pages. Suze will then introduce a tool that she created that reads web pages and creates the application page's Geb Page Object and a test class that contains some basic tests. She will discuss the advantage this gives that allow you to accelerate your...
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...
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
Things I Wish I Knew Before Becoming a Test Engineer
Being a test engineer comes with unique challenges. It is unlike other engineering positions because of its holistic approach. As the subject matter expert in your field, you are expected to know your product's details from end to end, but there are process changes and culture changes that would have made my life a lot easier. There are processes that each company I have worked at does differently, and in this talk, I will share them with you so that you understand what to do and what not to do. Through my testing experience, I have learned foundational concepts that I wish I had known...
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...
.jpg%3Fitok=VG5r55zT&sc=f1a698721137e69e1d3ea8affc6fcdb9 "kimberly snoyl")
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...
Accessibility in the Enterprise: The Relationship of A11y and ROI
As we build more and more things on the web, accessibility is gaining much more visibility. But what does it actually mean to you and your company? It means we HAVE to be cognizant of everyone, all the time, with no exceptions as we do our part in building awesome, accessible user experiences to people of all levels of ability while being mindful of our users' diversity of disability. Accessibility on the web is not a nice-to-have, but a requirement: leaving out at least 20% of your audience can be detrimental to your organization's return on investment and bottom line. Not sure what to do...