STARWEST 2016 - Test Management
Wednesday, October 5
The Path to Test Leadership: A Road Less Traveled
Are you interested in growing into a test leadership position? Or do you shy away from leadership because you think you’ll lose your technical, hands-on testing skills? Regardless of your experience level, technical programming knowledge, and company organizational structure, following a test leadership path could be the difference between surviving or thriving as a testing professional. Join Tariq King as he debunks myths about test leadership, and provides a clear explanation of the different software testing leadership roles and positions. If you have ever...
The Art of People Facilitation: Servant Leadership and Team Dynamics
Some of the greatest products come from great teams with exceptional servant leaders. These leaders use influence instead of authority and know when to just get out of the way. Unfortunately, some teams are asked to be self-empowered, change on the fly, think for themselves—and then are told exactly how they have to do all of these things or else. Poor leadership can break a great team, ruin great product, and damage a great organization. In this highly interactive session, Robert Woods explores team dynamics, highlights servant leadership skills, and explains...
Virtually Speaking: Leading Distributed Test Teams
As a newly promoted quality assurance manager, Willie Smith assumed responsibility for a large application that allows UPS customers to ship packages worldwide. His team was distributed worldwide and had varying levels of automation experience, application knowledge, and QA processes in place. With the next deployment date only a few months away, Willie found that the testing side of the project was in trouble. To align the test team with project and company goals, he had to develop virtual training plans and implement new practices to deal with the host of issues...
Thursday, October 6
What Time Is It Over There? Managing Your Global QA Team
Cheaper … faster … smarter—words familiar to modern QA test team leaders everywhere. Although many organizations recognize that a globally-distributed QA model will achieve some of these objectives, it comes with obvious challenges. Lack of immediate communication, not knowing what the other is doing, and even cultural clashes can result in a lack of trust within the team, an absence of team spirit, and high attrition. Elizabeth Wisdom identifies the key to mitigating the risks associated with each challenge. And it’s not a technical solution (like advanced...
Testing the Magic at Walt Disney Imagineering
It takes more than faith, trust, and pixie dust to test a Disney theme park attraction. How does Walt Disney Imagineering ensure quality experiences for their guests? Janna Loeffler faced this challenge when she joined Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI). Since 2015 Janna has led the testing effort on some of Disney’s most complicated show and interactive systems. She describes the history of show software development and testing within WDI and discusses how to implement the right choice of quality solutions when working with different types of software. Learn how to...