STARWEST 2016 - General Management
Tuesday, October 4
Test Attacks to Break Mobile and Embedded Software
In the tradition of James Whittaker’s book series, How to Break Software, Jon Hagar applies the testing “attack” concept to the domain of mobile and embedded software systems. First, Jon defines the environments of mobile and embedded software. He then examines the issues of software product failures caused by defects found in these types of software. Next, Jon shares a set of attacks against mobile and embedded software based on common modes of failure that teams can direct against their software. Like different kinds of software design patterns, attacks...
The Impact of IoT on Testing: What’s in Store?
No longer just a futuristic concept, the Internet of Things (IoT) has a strong presence in our world even today. If your business is not prepared for it, you’re already behind. With the proliferation of connected “things”—devices, appliances, cars, and even clothes—Jennifer Bonine says that the stage is set and IoT apps are here to stay. Testing, product management, and development teams must address developing and testing in this paradigm. Testers, accustomed to traditional platforms, are now asked to test on more complex devices and more advanced platforms....
Wednesday, October 5
Lessons Learned in Leadership: Give Your Team the Edge
Selena Delesie recognizes that highly successful teams embrace several specific principles. When every person embodies these principles, teams have people who are passionate about the work they do and who show up every day eager and ready to deliver their best. A self-admitted geek, Selena was thrilled to hear Sir Richard Branson speak live at an event last year—in-person and in the same room! She learned that his success is built on the same principles she coaches: listening deeply, believing people truly matter, having an addiction to learning, serving others,...
Engineering Trust in Complex Systems
Within software and test engineering, two new disciplines—Chaos Engineering and Intuition Engineering—provide avenues to address trust in complex systems. Chaos Engineering is a methodology for test engineers to validate a system’s behavior and establish empirical trust metrics. Intuition Engineering provides new interfaces to navigate complexity, filling in gaps in understanding that classical methods cannot address.
Casey Rosenthal explains how these disciplines are used to improve quality on Netflix.com, one of the largest scaled deployments on the...
IoT Software Testing Challenges: The IoT World Is Really Different
With billions of devices containing new software connected to the Internet, the Internet of Things (IoT) is poised to become the next growth area for software development and testing. Although many traditional test techniques and strategies remain viable, challenges in IoT testing include huge amounts of data, multiple communication channels, device protocols, resource limitations (battery or memory), addressing sensors and controllers, cloud-hardware-device integration, and security concerns. Jon Hagar says that for IoT testers to be successful, they must develop...
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...
Lightning Strikes the Keynotes
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...
Thursday, October 6
T-Shaped People: Time to Get in Shape for Your Testing Future
Today, agile testers are being asked to do a lot more than just testing. The notion of “T-shaped people,” who combine technical skills with collaborative capabilities, was created by Tim Brown in the 1990s to describe the new breed of worker. Mary Thorn believes that anyone—including testers—can contribute more to the business than their standard role traditionally dictates. The tester’s critical view and skeptical thinking can be used earlier in the development process. This role can stretch to include other aspects that intrigue them and keep them interested....
Agile Testing Process Analytics: From Data to Insightful Information
In recent years, businesses have raised their expectations for development projects while cutting back on financial resources and demanding shorter production cycles. Jonathan Alexander says that to meet these growing demands and succeed as a testing manager, you need to leverage agile process data and insights to make critical decisions about your team and strategy. However, this is no easy task with everything there is to look at during a development project. How do managers distinguish meaningful data from meaningless data? Jonathan shares the analytics that...
The Boss Chose the Cloud: What Does that Mean for You?
Although most test managers and testing staff know how to cope with new and difficult testing challenges, Martin Pol and Jeroen Mengerink maintain that the cloud phenomenon requires special attention. Testing must evolve and innovate to address the newly introduced risks combined with the changing emphasis for classical quality requirements. How do you test resource elasticity and the “bring your own device” philosophy with their cloud-specific security and performance risks? How do you understand and then cope with local and international privacy legislation for...
Story Time for Testers
Stories help us learn. They can be fun or scary, exciting or relaxing. People worldwide tell and listen to stories. We access them through books, film, TV, and computers. But direct, face-to-face storytelling is still a powerful experience. When Isabel Evans was young, there was a program on the radio called Listen with Mother. For fifteen minutes, mothers and children across the land would sit and listen to a story. Join Isabel and become your younger child, bring your testing parent, and listen to her stories. In fifteen minute sections, Isabel recounts stories...
Friday, October 7
The United State of Women Summit: From Dreaming to Doing!
Axosoft evangelist, Tania Katan reports back after being invited to the White House’s United State of Women Summit as a “Changemaker”. She will share stories from leaders, activists and, ahem, the First Lady of the United States on how women are taking on challenges in technology, entrepreneurship and beyond. You will leave this talk with tools for challenging the status quo and becoming a Changemaker! In the spirit of Axosoft’s collaborative tools (GitKraken)—and work culture—this lively talk (and micro-workshop) will engage attendees in working collaboratively...
Panel–Career Superpowers
Let’s discuss and define the most important career superpowers for women. Hear what industry professionals, leaders, and idea disruptors think the important career superpowers are for women in 2016 and going forward.
Panel: Tania Katan, the Curator of Code at AxoSoft and Melissa Benua, Senior Backend Software Engineer at PlayFab, Inc.