Software Testing

Tutorials

MA The Challenges of BIG Testing: Automation, Virtualization, Outsourcing, and More

Hans Buwalda, LogiGear

Mon, 09/28/2015 - 8:30am

Large-scale and complex testing projects can stress the testing and automation practices we have learned through the years, resulting in less than optimal outcomes. However, a number of innovative ideas and concepts are emerging to better support industrial-strength testing for big projects. Hans Buwalda shares his experiences and presents strategies for organizing and managing testing on large projects. Learn how to design tests specifically for automation, including how to incorporate techniques like keyword testing and BDD. Discover what roles virtualization and the cloud can play—and the potential pitfalls of such options. Hans also describes the major challenges with global teams including time zones and cultural differences, and offers seven common problem “patterns” in globalization and what you can do to address them. Among the other takeaways from this class are tips to make your automation more stable and recommendations on how to deal with the numerous versions and configurations common in large projects.

MB A Rapid Introduction to Rapid Software Testing

Michael Bolton, DevelopSense

Mon, 09/28/2015 - 8:30am

You're under tight time pressure with barely enough information to proceed with testing. How do you test quickly and inexpensively, yet still produce informative, credible, and accountable results? Rapid Software Testing, adopted by context-driven testers worldwide, offers a field-proven answer to this all-too-common dilemma. In this one-day sampler of the approach, Michael Bolton introduces you to the skills and practice of Rapid Software Testing through stories, discussions, and “minds-on” exercises that simulate important aspects of real testing problems. The rapid approach isn't just testing with speed or a sense of urgency; it's mission-focused testing that eliminates unnecessary work, assures that the most important things get done, and constantly asks how testers can help speed up the successful completion of the project. Join Michael to learn how Rapid Testing focuses on both the mind set and skill set of the individual tester, using tight loops of exploration and critical thinking skills to help continuously re-optimize testing to match clients' needs and expectations. NOTE: Participants are strongly encouraged to bring a Windows-compatible computer to the class.

MC Selenium Test Automation: From the Ground Up

Dave Haeffner, The Selenium Guidebook

Mon, 09/28/2015 - 8:30am

Want to learn how to use Selenium from the ground up? Join Dave Haeffner as he shows you how to start from scratch and build a well-factored, maintainable, resilient, and parallelized set of tests that will run locally, on a continuous integration server, against a Selenium Grid, and in the cloud. These tests will work reliably and across all your browsers, while exercising relevant functionality that matters to your business. This session is for anyone—whether just getting started or experienced—who wants to use Selenium successfully in their organization and boost their career. Learn a repeatable baseline approach for Selenium test automation—regardless of your context. And if you are new to programming, don't sweat it. The core programming concepts you need to know will be covered in an approachable way as well. At the tutorial’s conclusion, you'll leave knowing how to get started on your journey and what it takes to successfully implement Selenium in your organization.

MD Six Essential Skills for Modern Testers NEW

Bart Knaack, Professional Testing

Mon, 09/28/2015 - 8:30am

Testing as a profession is becoming more and more demanding. We must adapt to faster development lifecycles, get to know about exploratory testing, and use different ways to add greater value to our projects. Bart Knaack believes that if we are to rise to this challenge, we need to learn additional skills—requirements engineering, database manipulation and monitoring using SQL, usability heuristics, exploratory testing, visual notation techniques for test preparation, and creation of test data. By mastering these skills, we will not only become better testers but we also can mentor others in their work. These skills enable us to improve software quality by means other than just testing. Come and learn about these skills and what is expected of a tester in today’s environment. Practice these skills and start off in the right direction for further improvement. Want to broaden your horizon? Join Bart and learn in a funtastic way.

MG Exploratory Testing Explained

Paul Holland, Doran Jones, Inc.

Mon, 09/28/2015 - 8:30am

Exploratory testing is an approach to testing that emphasizes the freedom and responsibility of testers to continually optimize the value of their work. Exploratory testing is the process of three mutually supportive activities—learning, test design, and test execution—done in parallel. With skill and practice, exploratory testers typically uncover an order of magnitude more problems than when the same amount of effort is spent on procedurally-scripted testing. All testers conduct exploratory testing in one way or another, but few know how to do it systematically to obtain the greatest benefits. Even fewer can articulate the process. Paul Holland shares specific heuristics and techniques of exploratory testing that will help you get the most from this highly productive approach. Paul focuses on the skills and dynamics of exploratory testing, and how it can be combined with scripted approaches.

MH Take a Test Drive: Acceptance Test-Driven Development

Jared Richardson, Agile Artisans

Mon, 09/28/2015 - 8:30am

The practice of agile software development requires a clear understanding of business needs. Misunderstanding requirements causes waste, slipped schedules, and mistrust within the organization. Jared Richardson shows how good acceptance tests can reduce misunderstanding of requirements. A testable requirement provides a single source that serves as the analysis document, acceptance criteria, regression test suite, and progress-tracker for any given feature. Jared explores the creation, evaluation, and use of testable requirements by the business and developers. Learn how to transform requirements into stories—small units of work—that have business value, small implementation effort, and easy to understand acceptance tests. This tutorial features an interactive exercise that starts with a high level feature, decomposes it into stories, applies acceptance tests to those stories, and estimates the stories for business value and implementation effort. The exercise demonstrates how big requirement stories can be decomposed into business-facing stories, rather than into technical tasks that the business does not understood.

MI The Keys to Agile Testing Maturity

Mary Thorn, Ipreo

Bob Galen, Velocity Partners

Mon, 09/28/2015 - 8:30am

You’ve “gone agile” and have been relatively successful. So, how do you know how well your test team is really doing? And how do you continuously improve your test practices? When things get rocky, how do you handle the challenges without reverting to old habits? The path to high-performance agile testing isn’t easy or quick, and it helps to have a guide. So consider this tutorial your guide to ongoing, improved, and sustained high-performance agile testing. Join Bob Galen and Mary Thorn as they share lessons from their most successful agile testing transitions. Explore actual team case studies for building team skills, embracing agile requirements, fostering customer interaction, building agile test automation, driving business value, and testing at-scale—all building agile testing excellence. Examine the mistakes, adjustments, and successes, and learn how to react to real-world contexts. Leave with a better view of your team’s strengths, weaknesses, and where you need to focus to improve.

MJ Applying Emotional Intelligence to Testing

Julie Gardiner, Hitachi Consulting

Mon, 09/28/2015 - 8:30am

As test managers and test professionals, we're constantly dealing with fragile egos, highly charged situations, and pressured people playing a high-stakes game under conditions of massive uncertainty. We're often the bearers of bad news and are sometimes perceived as critics, activating people's primal fear of being judged. The concept of emotional intelligence (EI), popularized by Harvard psychologist and science writer Daniel Goleman, has much to offer test managers and testers. Key EI skills include self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. Julie Gardiner discusses how EI can be useful in dealing with anger management, controlling negative thoughts, processing constructive criticism, and dealing with conflict—all within the context of the testing profession. Explore the concept of EI, assess your own levels of EI, and look at ways EI can help. This lively session is grounded in real-life examples, giving you concrete ideas to take back to work.

MK Rapid Software Testing Strategy

James Bach, Satisfice, Inc.

Mon, 09/28/2015 - 1:00pm

A test strategy is the set of ideas that guides your test design. It's what explains why you test this instead of that, and why you test this way instead of that way. Strategic thinking matters because testers must make quick decisions about what needs testing right now and what can be left alone. You must be able to work through major threads without being overwhelmed by tiny details. James Bach describes how test strategy is organized around risk but is not defined before testing begins. Rather, test strategy evolves alongside testing as we learn more about the product. We start with a vague idea of our strategy, organize it quickly, and document as needed in a concise way. In the beginning, we start small. In the end, the strategy can be as formal and detailed as you want it to be. If you’d like to focus on testing and not paperwork, this approach is for you.

ML High-Volume Combinatorial Test Automation NEW

Bj Rollison, Testing Mentor

Mon, 09/28/2015 - 1:00pm

Imagine you are assigned to test a feature with twenty independent parameters, with five possible states for each parameter. The total number of possible combinations is greater than a half trillion. At one test per millisecond, it would take more than 3,000 years to test all possible combinations. Bj Rollison explains that historical evidence shows that the vast majority of errors are caused by the interaction between two parameters. Pairwise testing is a systematic technique using powerful tools to efficiently produce a pairwise subset of all parameters. This technique quickly uncovers hard-to-find bugs while improving code coverage. Unfortunately, most discussions about pairwise tests only consider this technique on small-scale projects. However, its real power is revealed when we are faced with complex features that have multiple input parameters that interact. Bj introduces advanced modeling concepts to model input parameters. Using simple test framework, delegates will use a powerful, free tool to test a high volume of inputs.

Note: This hands-on tutorial assumes that delegates are familiar with the basic concepts of pairwise testing and a basic understanding of programming. Delegates are strongly encouraged to bring a laptop with Visual Studio or Visual Studio C# Express installed.

MN End-to-End Testing with the Heuristic Software Test Model

Paul Holland, Doran Jones, Inc.

Mon, 09/28/2015 - 1:00pm

You have just been assigned to a new testing project. So, where do you start? How do you develop a plan and begin testing? How will you report on your progress? In this hands-on session, Paul Holland shares test project approaches based on the Heuristic Software Test Model from Rapid Software Testing. Learn and practice new ways to plan, execute, and report on testing activities. You’ll be given a product to test and start by creating three raw lists—Product Coverage Outline, Potential Risks, and Test Ideas—that help ensure comprehensive testing. Use these lists to create an initial set of test charters. Employing “advanced” test management tools—Excel and whiteboards with Sticky Notes—you’ll create clear and concise test reports without using “bad metrics” (counts of pass/fail test cases, percent of test cases executed vs. plan). Look forward to your next testing project—or improve your current one—with new ideas and your new-and-improved planning, testing, and reporting skills.

TA Critical Thinking for Software Testers

Michael Bolton, DevelopSense

Tue, 09/29/2015 - 8:30am

Critical thinking is the kind of thinking that specifically looks for problems and mistakes. Regular people don't do a lot of it. However, if you want to be a great tester, you need to be a great critical thinker. Critically thinking testers save projects from dangerous assumptions and ultimately from disasters. The good news is that critical thinking is not just innate intelligence or a talent—it's a learnable and improvable skill you can master. Michael Bolton shares the specific techniques and heuristics of critical thinking and presents realistic testing puzzles that help you practice and increase your thinking skills. Critical thinking begins with just three questions—Huh? Really? and So?—that kick start your brain to analyze specifications, risks, causes, effects, project plans, and anything else that puzzles you. Join Michael for this interactive, hands-on session and practice your critical thinking skills. Study and analyze product behaviors and experience new ways to identify, isolate, and characterize bugs.

TB Testing under Pressure: A Case for Session-Based Test Management NEW

Jon Bach, eBay, Inc.

Tue, 09/29/2015 - 8:30am

The nature of exploration, coupled with the ability of testers to rapidly apply their skills and experience, make exploratory testing a widely used test approach—especially when time is short. Unfortunately, exploratory testing is often dismissed by project managers who assume that it is not reproducible, measurable, or accountable. If you have these concerns, you may find a solution in a technique called Session-Based Test Management (SBTM), developed by Jon Bach and his brother James. In SBTM, testers explore an area of a product, framing their testing in time-boxed “sessions” meant to create a meaningful and countable unit of work. In this hands-on tutorial (laptop required), Jon guides you through the mechanics of session-based testing to help you discover if it’s something valuable for your project. Through practical open-ended testing exercises, you may discover some surprising things about how you perform under pressure and can see how your colleagues respond to the same challenges.

Participants are required to bring a laptop computer to this tutorial.

TC Getting Started with Risk-Based Testing

Dale Perry, TechWell Corp.

Tue, 09/29/2015 - 8:30am

Whether you are new to testing or looking for a better way to organize your test practices, understanding risk is essential to successful testing. Dale Perry describes a general risk-based framework—applicable to any development lifecycle model—to help you make critical testing decisions earlier and with more confidence. Learn how to focus your testing effort, what elements to test, and how to organize test designs and documentation. Review the fundamentals of risk identification, analysis, and the role testing plays in risk mitigation. Develop an inventory of test objectives to help prioritize your testing and translate objectives into a concrete strategy for creating tests. Focus your tests on the areas essential to your stakeholders. Execution and assessing test results provide a better understanding of both the effectiveness of your testing and the potential for failure in your software. Take back a proven approach to organize your testing efforts and new ways to add more value to your project and organization.

TD User Experience Testing: Adapted from the World of Design

Parimala Hariprasad, Amadeus Software Labs

Tue, 09/29/2015 - 8:30am

Have you ever entered a room in a new office and started to look for switches? Were you able to switch on the right light on your first attempt? Did you blame yourself for the failure? If you did, you became a victim of false blame, cursing yourself for the poor design of products. Sharing why testers must be aware of the psychology behind product design, Parimala Hariprasad talks about how design concepts—affordances, signifiers, natural mappings, and gulfs of execution—can help you become a better tester. Parimala highlights how designers and testers, working together, lead both to designing explorable systems and helping to build great products that incorporate concepts like immediate feedback and visibility. Key takeaways include learning the basics of design thinking, understanding design case studies, familiarizing yourself with the concept of natural mappings, and applying these lessons to user experience testing.

TE Fundamentals of Test Design

Lee Copeland, TechWell Corp.

Tue, 09/29/2015 - 8:30am

As testers, we know that we can define many more test cases than we will ever have time to design, execute, and report. The key problem in testing is choosing a small, “smart” subset—from the almost infinite number of tests available—that will find a large percentage of the defects. Join Lee Copeland to discover how to design test cases using formal black-box techniques, including equivalence class testing, boundary value testing, decision tables, and state-transition diagrams. Explore examples of each of these techniques in action. Don’t just pick test cases randomly. Instead, learn to selectively choose a set of test cases that maximizes your effectiveness and efficiency to find more defects in less time. Then, learn how to use the test results to evaluate the quality of both your products and your testing. Discover the test design techniques that will make your testing more productive.

TJ How Testers Master Github and Git

Wilson Mar, Results Positive

Tue, 09/29/2015 - 8:30am

Github, the new business card for professionals working with software, enables anyone to contribute to existing projects and create new projects. That's why interviewers look to Github to gauge a potential hire's creativity, popularity, capability, and tenacity. To collaborate with developers, today’s testers need Github. Source code for most open source projects is stored on Github.com. That's where issues are filed. Project documents are written within Github as plain-text marked up with formatting codes, and then processed into html for display on github.io. Join Wilson Mar as he examines the major Github repositories testers are expected to know. In this hands-on tutorial, learn special tips testers use to markup text and raise issues. Gain skill at commenting and editing test code increasingly mingled among procedural code. Learn to fork repositories and pull them into a Git client; then using the appropriate text editor, compare changes, add, commit, and push code back into Github for developers to pull.

Note: Delegates are strongly encouraged to bring a Windows or Mac computer to this tutorial.

TN Rapid Software Testing: Reporting

James Bach, Satisfice, Inc.

Tue, 09/29/2015 - 1:00pm

Test reporting is something few testers take time to practice. But, it's a fundamental skill—and vital for your professional credibility and your own self-management. Many people think management judges testing by bugs found or test cases executed. Actually, testing is judged by the story it tells. If your story sounds good, you win. A test report is the story of your testing. It begins as the story we tell ourselves, each moment we are testing, about what we are doing and why. We use the test story, within our own minds, to guide our work. James Bach explores the skill of test reporting and examines some of the many different forms a test report might take. As in other areas of testing, context drives good reporting. Sometimes we make an oral report; occasionally we need to write it down. Join James for an in-depth look at the art of the reporting.

TP Testing Cloud Services

Martin Pol, Polteq Testing Services BV

Jeroen Mengerink, Polteq Testing Services BV

Tue, 09/29/2015 - 1:00pm

Cloud computing is rapidly changing the way systems are developed, tested, and deployed. New system hosting capabilities—software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS)—are forcing us to review and revise our testing processes. At the same time, cloud computing is affording us opportunities to employ new test tooling solutions, which we call testing as a service (TaaS). In this technical session, Martin Pol and Jeroen Mengerink focus on testing SaaS systems, describing relevant IaaS and PaaS capabilities along the way. They discuss how to test performance of the cloud itself and ways to take advantage of the resource elasticity afforded by cloud computing. Martin and Jeroen explore the risks―some traditional, others completely new—that arise when organizations implement cloud computing and describe the tests you must design to mitigate these risks.

Note: Delegates attending this tutorial will receive a free copy of the book Testing Cloud Services by Kees Blokland, Jeroen Mengerink, and Martin Pol.

Keynotes

K1 Things That Really Matter in Testing—Today and Tomorrow

Bj Rollison, Testing Mentor

Wed, 09/30/2015 - 8:30am

After a twenty-year career at Microsoft, Bj Rollison took some time to reflect on the software testing profession. Bj has seen many positive changes in our field through the years. Unfortunately, he also has seen too many of us still mired in trends and topics that make good fodder for debate but do very little to enhance our personal careers or the testing profession. Bj reflects on the “traditional” testing role and its evolution in the past twenty years, and shares his perspective on some hot button issues—the value of testing certifications, the impact of ISO standards on the industry, and the advance of test automation—within our profession. Additionally, Bj discusses his views on how practices such as exploratory testing, agile lifecycles, and the “schools of testing” affect our roles as software testers. Bj provides thought-provoking insights into these topics and other subjects that matter when building your career—and our profession.

K2 Testing the Internet of Everything

Paul Gerrard, Gerrard Consulting Ltd.

Wed, 09/30/2015 - 10:00am

Beyond the publicity and hype about the Internet of Things (IoT), a new term is emerging—the Internet of Everything (IoE). What are people talking about? Should you be interested? What does it mean to testers and development? Paul Gerrard shares his perspective on the scale, variety, ubiquity, complexity, and challenge of this technological wave that many believe will dominate our industry into the next decade. Right now, the IoT/IoE is very confusing. Although standards are emerging, many commercial applications are bleeding edge, speculative, or exploratory. While security and privacy concerns dominate the discussion today, significant functional, user experience, integration, and complexity challenges await us. The IoE brings broader societal risks that must be addressed by organizations, individuals, and their governments. Paul presents a seven-layer architectural model to help you make sense of it all. Take back a set of key questions you need to ask and recommendations for formulating your test strategy for the Internet of Everything.

K3 Lightning Strikes the Keynotes

Lee Copeland, TechWell Corp.

Wed, 09/30/2015 - 4:15pm

Throughout the years, Lightning Talks have been a popular part of the STAR conferences. If you’re not familiar with the concept, Lightning Talks consists of a series of five-minute talks by different speakers within one presentation period. Lightning Talks are the opportunity for speakers to deliver their single biggest bang-for-the-buck idea in a rapid-fire presentation. And now, lightning has struck the STAR keynotes. Some of the best-known experts in testing will step up to the podium and give you their best shot of lightning. Get multiple keynote presentations for the price of one—and have some fun at the same time.Lightning Strikes the Keynotes

K4 I Don’t Want to Talk about Bugs: Let’s Change the Conversation

Janet Gregory, DragonFire, Inc.

Thu, 10/01/2015 - 8:30am

It’s time to change the conversation about testing and quality―from bugs and poor requirements to products and solutions. Instead, Janet Gregory says testers and managers working in agile organizations need to learn more about the business, the market, and the customers. With that knowledge, we have the information necessary to identify key problems and formulate solutions that reduce uncertainty and increase product value. Janet challenges testers and test managers to lead the way to change how organizations talk about quality. She explores ways to measure value and focus on the positive rather than a more negative cost-of-quality perspective. In an agile organization testing is not a job or a phase or a department; testing is a crosscutting concern and a skill which is vital to every contributor on a project and to a product. Join Janet to learn ways to rethink your priorities and ways to optimize your test practices.

K5 The Survival Guide for Testers and Test Managers

Bart Knaack, Professional Testing

Thu, 10/01/2015 - 4:15pm

As we face new technologies, methodologies, and approaches, the roles and responsibilities of testers are evolving. To stay current, the test professional’s skill set must increase. Due to agile, the strict separation of developer and tester roles is fading. Teams, rather than just testers, are now responsible for quality. Emerging technologies—continuous integration, mobile, the Internet of Things, and cloud—are drastically changing testing. Formerly seen as the least technical IT activity, testing today is one of the most technically challenging. Bart Knaack describes the new skills testers need to develop for properly testing mobile apps and applications in the cloud. Bart examines the changing role of test management and draws conclusions on how to organize teams and departments for maximum productivity and value to the business. Because testing is changing under our feet, we all must grow and adapt to survive and thrive in this brave new world of testing.

Concurrent Sessions

W3 ROI Robbers in Test Automation

Greg Paskal, ARGO Data Resource Corporation

Wed, 09/30/2015 - 11:30am

Test automation effectiveness can be significantly compromised by over abstraction, improper object recognition, ineffective synchronization, poor data strategies, and more. In fact, Greg Paskal has identified more than a dozen common issues in test automation efforts that can rob you of potential value. Greg shares how your test automation development and maintenance are adversely impacted by these issues. Many automation frameworks are difficult to scale or expensive to maintain, resulting in little to no return on investment (ROI). Learn about the test automation N-Curve effect and how it is directly impacted by ROI robbers, resulting in an unsettling ride on the “ROI Roller Coaster.” Whether you're new to test automation or have years of experience, it's smart to consider what can hinder your results. Learn about the most common mistakes made in test automation and how to avoid—or overcome—these common ROI robbers.

W5 DevOps: Find Solutions, Not More Defects

Andreas Grabner, Dynatrace

Wed, 09/30/2015 - 11:30am

The promise of DevOps is that we can push new ideas out to market faster while avoiding delivering serious defects into production. Andreas Grabner explains that testers are no longer measured by the number of defect reports they enter, nor are developers measured by the lines of code they write. As a team, you are measured by how fast you can deploy high quality functionality to the end user. Achieving this goal requires testers to increase their skills. It’s all about finding solutions—not just problems. Testers must transition from reporting “app crashes” to providing details such as “memory leak caused by bad cache implementation.” Instead of reporting “it’s slow,” testers must discover “wrong hibernate configuration causes too much traffic from the database.” Using three real-life examples, Andreas illustrates what it takes for testing teams to become part of the DevOps transformation—bringing more value to the entire organization.

W6 Testing the Internet of Things

Jason Arbon, appdiff.com

Wed, 09/30/2015 - 11:30am

The Internet of Things (IoT) is here, and it brings new testing problems, complexity, and, in Jason Arbon’s opinion, a bit more fun. Tiny computers are embedded in everything from light bulbs and shoes to baby diapers. The tiny devices are attached to cattle, humans, cars, and trash cans. The number of IoT devices is set to explode into the tens of billions in the next few years. Consumers expect all these devices to simply work—and work well—with each other. It is easy to test a web app with a mouse and keyboard, or to test a mobile app with a few swipes, but IoT demands that testers determine how to vary the temperature, generate good and bad golf swings, and verify that this device plays well with all those other devices. The topics of security and privacy are more important than ever in this IoT world. Join Jason for a glimpse into the emerging and fun world of IoT testing.

W7 Snappy Visualizations for Communicating Test Results

Thomas Vaniotis, Liquidnet

Wed, 09/30/2015 - 1:45pm

Do you struggle to find the best words to explain testing coverage and status to your stakeholders? Do numbers and metrics make your stakeholders' eyes glaze over? Do you feel dirty giving metrics that you know are going to be abused? Words and numbers are powerful, but Thomas Vaniotis says that good visualizations can amplify their power and effectively communicate to busy or visually-oriented stakeholders. Learn a number of simple visualizations that you—even with few artistic skills—can create inexpensively. Take back visual tools for communicating testing status and product quality, working through test planning and management, discussing risk, and ideas to combine them into compound visualizations. Thomas demonstrates the use of these snappy visuals in real-world contexts and warns of some of their pitfalls. In most cases, the tools won't be special software but regular office supplies like markers, sticky notes, graph paper, walls—and a bit of creativity.

W8 Service and Network Virtualization: Keys to Continuous Testing

Clint Sprauve, HP

Todd DeCapua, HP

Wed, 09/30/2015 - 1:45pm

Many development and test organizations must work within the confines of compressed release cycles, various agile methodologies, and cloud and mobile environments for their business applications. So, how can test organizations keep up with the pace of development and increase the quality of their applications under test? Clint Sprauve and Todd DeCapua describe how service virtualization and network virtualization can help your team improve speed and increase quality. Learn how to use service virtualization to simulate third-party or internal web services to remove wait times and reduce the need for high-cost testing infrastructures. Take back techniques to incorporate network virtualization into the testing environment to simulate real-world network conditions. Learn from Clint and Todd how the combination of service and network virtualization allows teams to implement a robust and consistent continuous testing strategy to reduce defects in production applications.

W11 Test Strategies for Continuous Delivery

Melvin Laguren, Wrap Media

Wed, 09/30/2015 - 1:45pm

Classic testing methods and tools can’t keep pace with agile development practices and emerging continuous delivery models. Melvin Laguren describes how Macy's Ecommerce Merchant System uses a variety of tools to support its rapid delivery pipeline. A code coverage tool such as Karma determines if they need additional tests or if the existing tests provide satisfactory coverage. Using data analysis tools such as Code Maat with source code control, they have a robust approach to improve the code review process and easily identify necessary file changes to prevent issues in production. By incorporating these two tools, Melvin’s team members get real-time informative feedback that helps them make better testing decisions within their continuous delivery pipeline. Testers, developers, and all stakeholders have easy access to a dashboard reporting tool that showcases findings from unit, functional, and performance testing. Join Melvin to explore new tools and practices you can implement to smooth the road to continuous delivery in your systems.

W12 Test Automation: The Special Cases

Hans Buwalda, LogiGear

Wed, 09/30/2015 - 1:45pm

Many functional tests of dialogs and web pages are done through the user interface, and the expected results of each test are clear. However, Hans Buwalda recognizes that some applications are “special” and pose challenges for automated testing. For example, oil exploration applications frequently produce complex 3D graphics output that is not easy to describe in a test case, let alone write the automation code. A game may implement randomized behavior, and a test must know where that behavior is in that game and where it needs to go next.

W14 Put Models at the Heart of Testing

Paul Gerrard, Gerrard Consulting Ltd.

Wed, 09/30/2015 - 3:00pm

Models exist all around us. To the untrained, models appear rather esoteric. In fact, our brain is a fantastic modeling engine. How do you think we can move without collision, use language, reason, and make sense of our world? Paul Gerrard explains how models underpin the common test methods. We testers can use models at every level of our work—to simplify the testing problem, to scope the testing tasks, to communicate with stakeholders and peers, to inform test design/selection decisions, and to measure coverage or progress in our work.

W15 Enterprise Automated Regression Testing with the Robot Framework

Bryan Lamb, Experian

Wed, 09/30/2015 - 3:00pm

You know you need to automate your tests. You’ve attended countless sessions and witnessed many talented experts explaining how they’ve built their custom test automation frameworks. You’ve thought, “I wish one of those experts would just give me their framework so I could get down to the business of writing automated tests.” If you’re responsible for creating diverse, scalable automated tests but don’t have the time, budget, or a skilled-enough team to create yet another custom test automation framework, then Bryan Lamb says you need to know about the Robot Framework. He reveals how his team uses this powerful, free, open source, generic framework to create continuous enterprise automated regression tests. Join Bryan to get a look at Robot Framework—where to find, how to install it, how to create and run test cases locally or via a browser cloud, how to use pre-built or custom libraries, and even how to integrate it into a Jenkins build and deployment pipeline.

W16 Behavior-Driven Development and Testing Using Cucumber

Mary Thorn, Ipreo

Wed, 09/30/2015 - 3:00pm

We’ve all been there. We work incredibly hard to develop a feature and design tests based on written requirements. We build a detailed test plan that aligns the tests with the software and the documented business needs. And when we put the tests to the software, it all falls apart because the requirements were changed without informing everyone. But help is at hand. Enter behavior-driven development (BDD) and Cucumber—a tool for running automated acceptance tests and facilitating BDD. Mary Thorn explores the nuances of Cucumber and shows you how to implement BDD and agile acceptance testing. By fostering collaboration for implementing active requirements via a common language and format, Cucumber bridges the communication gap between business stakeholders and implementation teams. If you experience developers not coding to requirements, testers not getting requirements updates, or customers who feel out of the loop and don’t get what they ask for, Mary has answers for you.

W17 Putting Quality First through Continuous Testing

Adam Auerbach, Capital One

Wed, 09/30/2015 - 3:00pm

Capital One has a highly integrated environment, which creates many dependencies for its agile teams. Because these dependencies are often not completed until late in their sprints, Capital One faced prolonged integration and regression testing phases, and did not realize the expected improvements in quality or time to market. As technology leaders pushed for continuous delivery, testing needed to “shift left” and execute test in real time concurrently with development. Adam Auerbach shares Capital One’s experience implementing continuous testing. He explains the core principles of continuous testing, service virtualization, and the continuous integration/continuous delivery pipeline—and why testers need to understand and leverage these important concepts. Adam believes that testers need to learn basic development skills, including Ruby and Java, so they can take advantage of advanced automation practices. Because continuous testing is not easy and many companies have large populations of manual testers, Adam will provide a learning map to help you plan your personal and team’s transition.

T2 Improve Testing with a Zone Defense

Pamela Gillaspie, TestPlant

Thu, 10/01/2015 - 9:45am

At one time or another, every tester hears the dreaded question, “Why didn’t you guys catch these bugs?” We all have some standard responses, and they are most likely true). But what can we learn about our testing when we look beyond the easy answers? Pamela Gillaspie proposes that the key to improving your testing is determining the areas where bugs are slipping past your defenses. For her team, the practice is a lot like basketball. If you group the bugs into zones, you can devise a strategy to cover those zones more effectively. Some zones need a different testing approach than you’ve used; others might reveal a need for closer communication. Join Pamela as she shares her experience as defensive coordinator, addressing the developers’ playbook (What kinds of recurring problems do we see?), trick plays (The user is doing what?), and penalties (That wasn’t in the requirements!).

T3 Selenium: Practical Tips and Tricks

Andrew Krug, Revcontent

Thu, 10/01/2015 - 9:45am

Already using Selenium but have some unanswered questions? Want to learn how to use Selenium like a pro? Join Andrew Krug as he shares the best and most useful tips and tricks. Topics covered include headless test execution, testing HTTP status codes, blacklisting third-party content with a proxy server, repurposing your Selenium scripts to build an initial load testing suite, various ways to perform broken image checking, testing “forgot password” end-to-end, working with A/B testing (most notably, how to opt-out of it), testing file downloads (both the easy way and the hard way), how to add robust debugging output to your tests, and adding visual testing to your existing Selenium tests. If you're already using Selenium and looking for a way to take your automated testing practice to the next level, then this session is for you.

T4 How to Design a Custom Mobile App Test Strategy

Parimala Hariprasad, Amadeus Software Labs

Thu, 10/01/2015 - 9:45am

Each day thousands of mobile apps are built, and many are released with poor quality. Pressure mounts exponentially on organizations to test mobile apps with shorter time-to-market cycles. Mobile app testing becomes overwhelming due to multiple platforms, varying OS versions, numerous device manufacturers, wide range of screen resolutions, and more. Parimala Hariprasad presents an approach to designing test strategies for mobile apps. She addresses such questions as: What devices should we test? How do we select them? Can we use simulators/emulators? How do we handle fragmentation challenges? Which platforms are good enough? Parimala shares her experiences and highlights how analytics and user reviews can facilitate the creation of an effective test strategy that evolves over time and balances tradeoffs between cost, quality, and time-to-market in the constantly changing mobile market. Key takeaways include learning about fragmentation, the shotgun approach, mobile personas, and use of analytics to fine-tune the test strategy.

T5 Quality Index: A Composite Metric for the Voice of Testing

Nirav Patel, Walgreens Boots Alliance

Sutharson Veeravalli, Cognizant Technology Solutions

Thu, 10/01/2015 - 9:45am

It is quite possible that you are spending a considerable amount of your time as a QA manager making sense of the multitude of metrics reported by your teams, connecting the facts, understanding the underlying reality, and articulating it to your peers and leadership. Still, others in the organization may not interpret the message correctly, rendering most of your efforts futile. Nirav Patel and Sutharson Veeravalli share insights to help you resolve this challenge through a composite measure called Quality Index. By aligning metrics to business outcomes and using Quality Index as a tool of articulation, disparate interpretation of data can be eliminated and a cohesive message delivered to stakeholders. Learn how QA can acquire a voice across the senior forums by articulating succinct, contextual, and actionable information to speed up executive decisions in the course of programs and projects.

T6 Continuous Test Improvement in a Rapidly Changing World

Martin Pol, Polteq Testing Services BV

Thu, 10/01/2015 - 9:45am

Classical test process improvement models no longer fit in organizations adopting the newest development approaches. Instead, a more flexible approach is required today. Solutions like SOA, virtualization, web technology, cloud computing, mobile, and the application of social media have dramatically changed the IT landscape. In addition, we are innovating the way we develop, test, and manage. Many organizations are moving toward a combination of agile/scrum, context-driven testing, continuous integration and delivery, DevOps, and TestOps. Effective test automation has become a prerequisite for success. All of this requires a different way of improving testing, an adaptable way that responds to innovations in both technology and development. Martin shares a roadmap that enables you to translate the triggers and objectives for test improvement into actions that can be implemented immediately. Learn how to achieve continuous test improvement in any situation, and take away a practical set of guidelines to enable a quick start.

T7 Test Gaps: Transforming the Process

Iris Trout, TD Bank

Thu, 10/01/2015 - 11:15am

Throughout her career, Iris Trout has uncovered gaps in testing that prevent organizations from experiencing high efficiency and high quality test results. Join Iris as she shares her journey to improve QA practices. Learn what QA transformation means and discover how to set realistic timelines, prioritize what you need to work on, and measure and report on what you are improving. Exploring testing artifacts, metrics, reporting, outsourcing, roles, organization change management, and several others areas where most QA organizations fall short, Iris offers practical and easy-to-implement solutions for building a strong QA organization. She shares helpful information on how to engage a vendor in your transformation journey and how to make the vendor relationship strong and collaborative. With her passion and candor for quality delivery processes, Iris provides successful solutions that she has implemented several times over.

T8 Graphical Test Planning: A Method for Real Impact

David Bradley, Citrix Systems UK Limited

Thu, 10/01/2015 - 11:15am

Finding major design issues late in development—and the resulting unpredictability at a project’s end—cause many projects to suffer. The use of graphical test planning (GTP) helps eliminate this unpredictability. GTP is a revolutionary test analysis method that uses behavior modeling to capture the system design, anticipate product bugs before coding, and develop test suites before code is ready. GTP is lightweight, yet covers boundary conditions, class equivalence, domain analysis, and combinations. David Bradley shows how to use your skills and experiences to identify and remove design issues from the beginning. Learn how to capture detailed technical information that elicits input and reviews from many sources, making testing a valuable and integral part of the whole project lifecycle. Discover how GTP provides the flexibility, efficiency, and agility to fit in with today’s development processes. Explore how you can use GTP to successfully test your next project—no matter how challenging.

T9 Automate REST Services Testing with RestAssured

Eing Ong, Intuit, Inc.

Thu, 10/01/2015 - 11:15am

Many browser, UI, and Java-based tools and frameworks can help you test REST services. However, in the world of continuous integration and delivery, manual UI- or browser-based tools typically fall short in many aspects—from early test development to developer support. When using Java-based libraries such as HttpClient, much code has to be written for all aspects of a web service call. These extensions or wrappers tend to be complex, hard to read, and difficult to maintain. This is where RestAssured comes in. RestAssured is an open source Java DSL for testing REST-based services, making test code more readable, easier to write, and cheaper to maintain. Learn how easily you can write HTTP get and post requests as well as more complex scenarios involving session management, authentication, and (de)serialization of objects. Take back good practices and an open source command line tool that can help you jumpstart your RestAssured testing.

T11 Six Thinking Hats for Designing Exploratory Testing Charters

Xiaomei Tai

Thu, 10/01/2015 - 11:15am

Before starting an exploratory testing session, you should create a charter that defines the range and the goal of your effort. Because a good charter usually results in a productive testing session, charter design is an important and creative skill in session-based exploratory testing. During her years of coaching, Xiaomei Tai has found that many testers have difficulty creating high-quality charters, so she likes to share the way of using Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats approach in charter design. For example, use the blue hat to generate initial ideas for intake sessions; use the white hat to create collecting-information charters for survey sessions; use the black hat and the green hat to get some negative or creative testing charters for deep coverage sessions; and so on. In this session you will practice using the six thinking hats in an interesting exercise, and then compare and discuss the designs of the other delegates. Take away the benefits of applying the six thinking hats in charter design.

T20 Using Crowd Testing for a Game Engine

Björgvin Reynisson, CCP Games

Thu, 10/01/2015 - 3:00pm

Testing a PC-based game poses interesting challenges. With different OS platforms and many different GPUs, the number of combinations to test grows quickly. The large number of hardware configurations used by the players of EVE Online makes it impossible to test them all. This can lead to the situation where reproducing defects in the test lab is not possible. Björgvin Reynisson shares how CCP Games got fed up with the situation and decided to make a crowd-testing app that tests the game’s graphics engine. He describes the app, the framework for deploying the app, and how they handled the test results coming in from testers. Björgvin shares how the app has become both a development tool and an automated testing tool. Discover how this approach has helped identify hard-to-catch bugs, and discover some of the challenges of crowd testing. See how this project took an unexpected turn and led the team to change how the game content is distributed.tes

T21 MetaAutomation: Five Patterns for Test Automation

Matt Griscom

Thu, 10/01/2015 - 3:00pm

A huge gap exists between conventional results in test automation and the potential value that automation can bring to software quality. Matt Griscom presents an effective way to achieve that value with the MetaAutomation pattern language—fast, scalable, and reliable automation. MetaAutomation’s artifacts contain focused, structured information to make results immediately actionable, informative for the entire product team, and available for robust analysis. With these patterns, quality information automatically goes to the people who need to know. With a complete implementation, false positives and false negatives don’t interrupt people’s work. Manual testing is accelerated and focused—not confused by the false promise of automated manual tests. Learn the five patterns of MetaAutomation—Atomic Check, Precondition Pool, Parallel Run, Smart Retry, and Automated Triage. Join Matt to explore the nature and importance of MetaAutomation to software quality, and take away tips for quickly improving automation projects.

T22 Wow Your Mobile Users: Functional and Performance Testing Best Practices

Ron Anderson, Visionary Integration Professionals

Thu, 10/01/2015 - 3:00pm

Mobile users, driven by their actions as consumers, have high expectations. They also expect to be able to use their own mobile devices for work. All this change brings uncertainty. Nearly half of enterprises have concerns with IT’s ability to keep up with the rapid pace of mobile. Success depends on your enterprise’s ability to fully embrace and leverage these changes for optimal user experiences, making functional and performance testing critical to your strategy. Ron Anderson shares practical guidance on how to create testing processes that keep the user top of mind, fueled by best practices within an enterprise mobile environment. He presents several use cases to serve as the backdrop, giving you practical insight into the methods presented. Leave with significantly increased clarity on how to understand and address user expectations, plan for functional testing mapped to user characteristics, and develop strategies to ensure responsiveness.

T23 Testing Application Security: The Hacker Psyche Exposed

Mike Benkovich, Imagine Technologies, Inc.

Thu, 10/01/2015 - 3:00pm

Computer hacking isn’t a new thing, but the threat is real and growing even today. It is always the attacker’s advantage and the defender’s dilemma. How do you keep your secrets safe and your data protected? In today’s ever-changing technology landscape, the fundamentals of producing secure code and systems are more important than ever. Exploring the psyche of hackers, Mike Benkovich exposes how they think, reveals common areas where they find weakness, and identifies novel ways to test your defenses against their threats. From injection attacks and cross-site scripting to security mis-configuring and broken session management, Mike examines the top exploits, shows you how they work, explores ways to test for them, and then shares what you can do to help your team build more secure software in the future. Join Mike and help your company avoid being at the center of the next media frenzy over lost or compromised data.