Dorothy Graham

Software Test Consultant

In testing for more than thirty years, Dorothy Graham is coauthor of four books—Software Inspection, Software Test Automation, Foundations of Software Testing, and Experiences of Test Automation: Case Studies of Software Test Automation. Dot was a founding member of the ISEB Software Testing Board, a member of the working party that developed the first ISTQB Foundation Syllabus, and served on the boards of conferences and publications in software testing. A popular and entertaining speaker at conferences and seminars worldwide, she has been coming to STAR conferences since the first one in 1992. Dot holds the European Excellence Award in Software Testing and is the first recipient of the ISTQB Excellence Award. Learn more about Dot at DorothyGraham.co.uk.

Speaker Presentations

Monday, September 30, 2013 - 8:30am

Half-day Tutorials

Management Issues in Test Automation

Many organizations never achieve the significant benefits that are promised from automated test execution. Surprisingly often, this is due not to technical factors but to management issues. Dot Graham describes the most important management concerns the test manager must address for test automation success, and helps you understand and choose the best approaches for your organization—no matter which automation tools you use or your current state of automation.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - 8:30am

Half-day Tutorials

Patterns in Test Automation: Issues and Solutions SOLD OUT

NEW

Testers often encounter problems when automating test execution. The surprising thing is that many testers encounter the very same problems, over and over again. These problems often have known solutions, yet many testers are not aware of them. Recognizing the commonality of these test automation issues and their solutions, Seretta Gamba and Dorothy Graham have organized them into a set of test automation patterns. A pattern is a general, reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - 1:00pm

Half-day Tutorials

Collaboration Techniques: Forgotten Wisdom and New Approaches SOLD OUT

NEW

In our increasingly agile world, the new buzzword is collaboration—so easy to preach but difficult to do well. Testers are challenged to work directly and productively with customers, programmers, business analysts, writers, trainers, and pretty much everyone in the business value chain. Testers and managers have many touch points of collaboration: grooming stories with customers, sprint planning with team members, reviewing user interaction with customers, troubleshooting bugs with developers, whiteboarding with peers, and buddy checking.

Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - 11:30am

Test Automation

Intelligent Mistakes in Test Automation

A number of test automation ideas that at first glance seem very sensible actually contain pitfalls and problems that you should avoid. Dot Graham describes five of these “intelligent mistakes”—automated tests will find more bugs more quickly; spending a lot on a tool must guarantee great benefits; it’s necessary to automate all of our manual tests; tools are expensive so we have to show a substantial return on investment; and testing tools must be used by the testers. Dot points out that automation doesn’t find bugs; tests do.