STAREAST Virtual 2021 - Tutorials

AI has been rapidly changing the way we approach software testing. Traditional test automation is time-consuming to create and breaks down easily in the presence of change. Thankfully, AI is helping testing teams create less procedural, more resilient tests that are able to self-heal in the presence of modern, rapidly changing, highly dynamic production systems. This sounds great, but you may be asking yourself: How do I get started? What additional skills do I need to learn? What tools are available for me to start using, right now? Join Dionny Santiago as he breaks down different AI...

Many organizations invest a lot of effort in test automation at the system level but then have serious problems as their product matures and changes over time. 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 added value? Chris Loder explains the critical issues you need to know to get a good start, and he will share his extensive experience in building great automation. He covers the most important management issues you should address for test automation success,...

Hiring and team-building are two significant issues faced by every quality manager or director. However, what happens once you have hired your team? How do you keep valued members on board and help struggling members to become better, all while continuing to manage your organization and meet deliverables? During this highly interactive workshop, you will learn how to differentiate content, process, and products by learning more about employee readiness, interest, and lived experiences. You will participate in a role-playing game and will work as a team to practice each of these skills. The...

Docker is one of the hottest technologies in our industry today. It lets you create and manage containers—like virtual machines but smaller and faster. They can provide on-demand, disposable test environments that start quickly, repeatably, locally or in the cloud. When you want, you can tear down the environment and recreate a pristine copy within seconds. And since the process is automated, anyone on the team can use the same commands to get their own systems. When you finish testing, those containers can be deployed directly into production. At each stage, the environments for...

There are lots of tools out there to support security testing activities. You’ve probably seen some of the acronyms used to describe them when looking at marketing material or reading about application security - SAST, DAST, IAST, RASP, etc. But the question is always which tools to use where within your testing process. This is particularly important in a DevOps model where continuous testing is used to continuously validate code as it changes. Selecting the wrong tools or using them at the wrong place can impact your delivery process significantly. In this tutorial, Jeffery Payne...

Exploratory testing is where the art and science of software testing meet and fills in the gap between automation, unit testing, and story testing. Exploratory testing is unique. Unlike other test techniques, exploratory testing values the individual tester’s expertise and perspective, centering the testers’ intuition and knowledge of software as the test basis. Explore the science and the art of exploratory testing, getting hands-on with exploratory testing by exploring real applications and playing testing games designed to challenge and deepen your skills. The respected instructor...

Avoiding siloed development is a tricky business. It’s so easy for agile teams to fall into the rut of testers only doing traditional testing activities and programmers strictly doing their time-worn coding activities. But there are actually many places testers can contribute value on a cross-functional team. Rob Sabourin will share a number of examples of how testing skills can be applied to a wide variety of activities in an agile project. For instance, testers are among the most skilled team members in story grooming, elicitation, and exploration. Risk analysis in self-organized agile...

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. Byron Katz 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, robust, and easy to maintain. You will be introduced to practices and principles that apply to the whole team. You will write Selenium scripts in two languages, Python and Java, and will...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...