STAREAST 2023 - Test Leadership
Monday, May 1
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...
Tuesday, May 2
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 Jeff Pierce as he...
Holistic Performance Testing for Modern Applications
With the advent of frameworks like Angular, React, and Vue, the landscape of application performance has changed significantly in terms of testing and measurement. Gone are the days of measuring response time as a single value based on back-end performance. In modern web and mobile applications, additional layers need to be peeled apart at the front end to truly understand its performance characteristics. Traditional approaches to performance testing are no longer sufficient to provide a delightfully responsive user experience. Join Kaushal Dalvi as he details new developments in the...
Wednesday, May 3
Debunking the QA KPI Myths and Make KPI Great Again
Everyone is focused on data and metrics to make major decisions. When it comes to software quality, KPI metrics can become a myth. Sometimes it works, sometimes you miss it. KPI metrics help determine the health of the product, as well as provide guidance for continuous improvement. In this session, Lisette will share what KPI have worked based on her experiences, and discuss how you can determine what KPI will work for your organization. Key takeaways from this session include:
Determining the purpose of QA KPI for your needsAdapting the KPI Metrics to your organizational...
Introduction to Test Orchestration
PreviewThis session will be an introduction to test orchestration: the process, execution, and monitoring of automated tests to drive the quality of your product. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that will save us, but being successful at test automation often requires making changes to more than just how the tests are executed. We also need to consider our process/workflow around software testing. What's our branching strategy? When and where do we deploy? Who reviews the failed tests? And in addition to evaluating our process/workflow around testing, we also need to consider...
.jpg%3Fitok=4fIsZqFR&sc=eb7032c2f53adb0ba1bc8aa28bb7bf82)
Data Science and System Testing: Lessons Learned from a Four-Part Workshop Series
During fall 2022, Big Data Florida ran a series of four workshops on the intersection of data science and system testing. The first was on “Testing Big Data Systems,” which provided the basis for subsequent meetings. The second event was on “Testing Machine Learning (ML) Models,” the third was on “Testing Artificial Intelligence (AI) Applications,” and the fourth was on “Leveraging AI and ML in Testing.” Participants were an interdisciplinary group drawn from data science, testing (hardware, software, and integrated systems), and interested researchers and professionals. This session...
Implementing a Whole Team Quality Approach to Software Development in a Startup Environment
PreviewMost startups are working within tight budgets and timelines. Getting the product working and out the door is the main goal, while quality tends to fall by the wayside. This can cause a backlog in needed testing, automation, and even added tech debt. Even when QA exists, there is often a “throw it over the wall” mentality. In order to tackle this issue early on at Highlight, we focused on a Whole Team Quality approach of software development. By looking at everything through a lens of quality, including business requirements, it has helped to ensure that we are releasing high...
Delivering Quality with the Correct Strategy
PreviewUsually we find that clients don't include quality inside their delivery process. But what happens when the release to production is ready and suddenly things are not working as expected? Quality calls! This process should start earlier and be included within the delivery process from the very beginning; even, during the initial call with the client to understand what they expect from us. This is where quality strategy lives: from the evaluation of client's requirements/expectation, going through the team that you will work with, planning the stages where the quality shall be...
Modern Test Automation Strategies - A Panel
Love it or hate it, test automation drives a large part of our day-to-day lives as testers. But writing and maintaining software automation doesn't HAVE to be painful! Learn from a panel of automation experts - including Janna Loeffler, Adam Auerbach, and more - about how their teams have built reliable automation tooling and infrastructure that can stand the test of time. Moderated by Melissa Benua, the panel will answer YOUR questions and help you address the challenges that we all face when scaling our test automation to match modern continuous delivery needs. You don't have to...
Thursday, May 4
Feature Flags - The Good, The Bad, and How to Prevent The Ugly
PreviewMore and more companies are using feature flags to get all types of changes – new features, configuration changes, bug fixes, and experiments – into production in a safer, faster, and most importantly, a sustainable way. Software companies that shift to deploying with feature flags benefit from low risk releases, faster time to market, higher quality, and in general happier teams. Sounds great, right? But what happens when your system isn’t implemented correctly, or worse, tested properly? This session will take attendees on a journey of why teams use Progressive Delivery, and the...
Automatic Canary Analysis: Critical Success Factor for Release Pipeline
Netflix began streaming services with a small-scale microservice ecosystem. As our global reach grew, so did the complexity of the underlying ecosystem. Membership Lifecycle Ecosystem is a cluster of services that handles all the backend business logic related to membership, signup, billing, and payments. This ecosystem consists of 100+ internal microservices and a similar number of external partners and payment processors - spanning across multiple teams. Each team has an asynchronous release cadence and the quality of each release has a direct impact on the quality of the ecosystem and...
Eating the Elephant: Being the First QA
PreviewCongratulations, you have landed a position as the first QA Engineer at an exciting new company! Now what? Between trying to adjust to a new work environment and trying to establish quality driven rituals and habits, being the first QA for a new and/or small company can be a monumental and sometimes overwhelming task. In this session, we will discuss how communication, compartmentalization, and automation can make an immediate impact for your once QA-less team. First, we will examine how the simple act of being vocal and concise about risks and concerns can go a long way towards...
Small QA Team Survival Strategies
Are you and your team having trouble managing your workload? Is your Dev to QA ratio completely out of whack? Do you need help convincing management that one or two extra hands would make a difference? Amanda will draw from her experience on teams of various sizes to provide examples of how to organize the QA workload into manageable pieces without losing your sanity. She will also give advice on how to outsource to other non-QA team members that can assist with getting stories to done and avoid potential bottlenecks. We’ll also discuss ways to get developer assistance with unit and...
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? Tariq King will moderate this panel discussion 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.
Building Something from Nothing: How Changes in the Healthcare Industry Kickstarted a Testing Revolution for Medicaid Agencies
Every person in the United States will, in every stage of their life, interact with the Healthcare industry. In 2005, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) initiated a modernization act which had a ripple effect for states. The State of Vermont, along with every other state and territory, needed to begin upgrading legacy systems - systems that are 30, 40, or even 50 years old - and bring Medicaid into the future. Given that Vermont’s legacy systems have no historical documentation of as-is process flows, no future-state, no requirements, no documentation of code or set up,...
Representation Matters for Women of Color in Tech
PreviewHow can you see yourself in a technical position; but there's no one who looks like you. This is one of many challenges Women of Color (WOC) experience in the tech field. The tech field is majority white men. As a Gen-X black woman, Lettie Ar-Rahmaan wasn’t encouraged to enter the tech field. Therefore, she struggled between service and technology. In the end, her passion for technology won and she's found success in technology from developer, QA tester, test manager, and now a product manager. The memories of being told she's not good enough came to her as she wrote her book,...
Successfully Converting Manual Test Teams into Test Automation Engineers
The need to convert manual test teams into test automation engineers is in large demand in many companies. This request is most prevalent in organizations using Agile Scrum that have short sprint cycles. In implementing solutions to this demand, Andy Sidney has found two effective strategies that have worked at two different companies in the past five years. In both situations the strategies were challenged by the Scrum teams and the QA teams because it would slightly modify the Scrum process, and initially increase the workload for the QA testers until the learning curve diminished. Once...
Women in QA: Challenges Faced by Women at Work and How to Solve Them
One of the major concerns faced by working women in technology these days is work‐life prioritization and resource management. Many women tech leaders have to make bolder decisions in life, leading to a career break or ending their professional careers early in their life due to their personal commitments towards their families. However, there can be a “best‐fit” for these women who seek support from their organizations, especially leadership and their teams. There are a lot of organizations that support women to grow and become impactful tech leaders, while also providing programs to...
Ukrainian Lessons Learned: How to Build Continuous Testing and Project Management from the Trenches
PreviewOn the 24th of February, life in Ukraine changed dramatically, and it hasn't stopped. Projects had to be delivered according to release schedules and Business Continuity Plans (BCP) had to be built in parallel with deploying shelters and evacuating teams to safe zones. Despite risk mitigation plans, the war was such a critical factor that the existing hierarchal management structure began to show inefficiency. As two Directors of Software Quality in a company with 14,000 employees in Ukraine, Maryna will share their approach to governance of software quality, release management, and...
Agile and Earned Value Management
PreviewThe Agile Earned Value Management (A-EVM) approach provides effective scope variance analysis, comprehensive performance reporting, and predictability that aid in keeping the program on time and on budget. A-EVM is an adapted implementation of the traditional EVM method. In A-EVM, we use the agile framework artifacts as inputs, use traditional EVM calculations, and value delivery is expressed in traditional EVM metrics. The A-EVM approach leverages the iteration or program increment time-boxes, in place of the traditional PMI Release, to provide boundaries around a set of epics or...
Transformation to an Agile Based Performance Testing Model
The Transformation to an Agile Based Performance Testing Model session will take attendees through an IT transformational effort from waterfall delivery to agile, and from project management to product management. This session will chronical the real-world transformational journey of a manager and a six-person horizontal capacity and performance testing team that created a new testing model that balances the performance testing needs for nearly 20 product teams. Attendees will learn how this small team was built, and the roles and skills necessary to staff this new testing model....
Unplugged Tech Woman's Essential Survival Guide
Women have made great progress in the technology industry, however, challenges remain. In this session, we will delve into the obstacles that women face in the tech industry, and provide effective solutions to overcome them. Janna, an experienced woman in technology, will share her personal experiences and insights on what it takes to succeed in this field. She will provide practical advice and tips on how to navigate the unique challenges faced by women in technology. Janna will also discuss how to build a successful career in tech by showcasing her own journey and the strategies that...