Personal Improvement

Tutorials

Jennifer Bonine, tap|QA, Inc.

Mon, 10/13/2014 - 8:30am

Have you ever needed a way to measure your leadership IQ? Or been in a performance review where the majority of time was spent discussing your need to improve as a leader? If you have ever wondered what your core leadership competencies are and how to build on and improve them, Jennifer Bonine shares a toolkit to help you do just that.

ML Innovation Thinking: Evolve and Expand Your Capabilities SOLD OUT

Jennifer Bonine, tap|QA, Inc.

Mon, 10/13/2014 - 1:00pm

Innovation is a word frequently tossed around in organizations today. The standard clichés are do more with less and be creative. Companies want to be innovative but often struggle with how to define, implement, prioritize, and track their innovation efforts. Using the Innovation to Types model, Jennifer Bonine will help you transform your thinking regarding innovation and understand if your team and company goals match their innovation efforts. Learn how to classify your activities as "core" (to the business) or "context" (essential, but non-revenue generating).

MP Jon Bach: On Testing NEW

Jon Bach, eBay, Inc.

Mon, 10/13/2014 - 1:00pm

Jon Bach has been in testing for twenty years. Is testing in 2014 different from testing in 1994? If you’ve been in the business that long, maybe you’ve seen it move from a little bit of automation and tooling to almost total automation and tooling. Maybe you’ve seen lab setups go from hours of loading OS images on “boat anchor” boxes to virtual, on-demand, scalable cloud provisioning in seconds. Maybe you think testing is dead because we live in a DevOps world where it’s good enough to run a happy path checklist.

TO Getting Your Message Across: Communication Skills for Testers SOLD OUT NEW

Thomas McCoy, Australian Department of Social Services

Tue, 10/14/2014 - 1:00pm

Communication is at the heart of our profession. No matter how advanced our testing capabilities are, if we can’t convey our concerns in ways that connect with key members of the project team, our contribution is likely to be ignored. Because we act solely in an advisory capacity, rather than being in command, our power to exert influence is almost entirely based on our communication skills. With people suffering information overload and deluged with emails, it is more important than ever that we craft succinct and effective messages, using a range of communication modalities.

Concurrent Sessions

W5 Growing into Leadership

Peter Walen, Gordon Food Service

Wed, 10/15/2014 - 11:30am

Pete Walen is not going to tell you how to be a good test manager. Instead, Pete shares ideas on becoming a true leader. While some managers certainly are leaders, testers of all varieties and experience levels can become leaders. Developing technical leadership skills, regardless of job title, involves overcoming our own uncertainties, self-doubts, and perceptions. Learning to foster relationships while perfecting our craft is a challenge for everyone, particularly when others look to us to be an expert—even when we don’t feel like one.

W11 Adventures of a Social Tester

Martin Nilsson, House of Test

Wed, 10/15/2014 - 1:45pm

If we know that good co-worker relationships can positively impact our success, why don’t we take a systematic approach to relationship building? Martin Nilsson shares how building personal relationships has helped develop his personal competency. Even though Martin’s technical skills are high, his greatest successes as a tester have come from his ability to build relationships. He shares how a focused effort at building rapport resulted in greater cooperation. When he was mistaken for a test lead during a project, Martin learned that having coffee with someone can trump an email.

T1 “Rainmaking” for Test Managers

Julie Gardiner, Redmind

Thu, 10/16/2014 - 9:45am

The dictionary defines a rainmaker as “an executive (or lawyer) in the unsentimental world of business with an exceptional ability to attract clients, use political connections, increase profits, etc.” Simply put, a rainmaker is someone who gets things done. Is this relevant to testing? Absolutely! It is too easy to get stuck in the status quo and to avoid trying something new because everything works well as it is. But what we do can always be made better.