STARWEST 2016 - Software Tester

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 that testing plays in risk mitigation. Develop an inventory...

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the next big technology challenge for software testing. IoT testing uses concepts from traditional and mobile environments but has new testing problems and new patterns. Jon Hagar begins by examining how to use data analytics from error profiles and social media to discover the new error patterns in IoT systems. Usage data on IoT devices is growing rapidly and becoming a big data issue. Through hands-on exercises, Jon explains how teams can use data analytics to improve development and testing. Next, he uses the analytics to define...

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 and SpecFlow, two tools for running automated acceptance tests and facilitating BDD. Mary Thorn explores the nuances of Cucumber and SpecFlow, and...

What do you do when you are not testing? Whatever it is, you probably have a place where you work on your interests, some tools and equipment, and some things you always have with you. Perhaps you have a room or shed or tool rack with your favorite and most used equipment readily at hand in a workbox. Wouldn’t it be great to have your own workbox for testing? Well, Isabel Evans says you already do! Everyone’s “mental tool set” is different, but we all need versatile, strong, and multipurpose approaches to our work. In thirty years of software testing, Isabel has...

With the adoption of agile practices in many organizations, the test automation landscape has changed. Bob Galen explores current disruptors to traditional automation strategies, and discusses relevant and current adjustments you need to make when developing your automation business case. Open source tools are becoming incredibly viable and beat their commercial equivalents in many ways―not only in cost but also in functionality, creativity, evolutionary speed, and developer acceptance. Agile methods have fundamentally challenged our traditional automation...

In test automation, we must often use several tools that have been developed or acquired over time with little consideration of an overall plan or architecture and no consideration for how to integrate those tools. As a result, productivity suffers and frustrations increase. Join Mike Sowers as he shares experiences from multiple organizations in creating an integrated test automation plan and developing a test automation architecture. Mike discusses both the good (engaging the technical architecture team) and the bad (too much isolation between test automators...

Knowledge of Selenium, the industry-standard tool for testing web applications, is a much sought after skill in today’s world of test automation. Many believe it is a must-have skill for test engineers. If you want to learn Selenium, then this tutorial is a great start. Cheezy Morgan shows you how to build test automation using Selenium. But he doesn’t stop there. He uses his years of experience to show you how to build automation that is clean and easy to maintain. Cheezy introduces other tools that work with Selenium to help manage the data used to drive your...

In today’s fast paced, ever changing world of software and technology, software performance testing is becoming essential to successful product implementation. To be successful, we must understand several fundamental factors about performance testing. Join Dale Perry as he examines these activities and identifies key issues, how they determine our level of success at implementing the necessary testing, and potential pitfalls. He addresses the tester’s role in performance testing, the performance test planning process, and integrating performance testing into the...

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....

Today’s software applications are often security critical, making security testing essential in a software quality program. Unfortunately, most testers have not been taught how to effectively test the security of the software applications they validate. Join Jeffery Payne as he shares what you need to know to integrate effective security testing into your everyday software testing activities. Learn how software vulnerabilities are introduced into code and exploited by hackers. Discover how to define and validate security requirements. Explore effective test...

GitHub—a powerful online collaboration, code review, code management, and version control service based on the open source Git tool—is the new business card for professional developers working on software projects. That's why job interviewers often look to GitHub to gauge a potential development hire's creativity, popularity, capability, and tenacity. Today’s testers need to learn about and use GitHub, too. Join Wilson Mar as he examines the major GitHub repositories testers should know about. In this hands-on tutorial, you’ll learn why and how GitHub is being...

Have you ever worked on a project where you felt testing was thorough and complete—all features were covered and all tests passed—yet in the first week in production the software had serious issues and problems? Join Dawn Haynes to learn how to inject robustness testing into your projects to uncover those issues before release. Robustness—an important and often overlooked area of testing—is the degree to which a system operates correctly in the presence of exceptional inputs or stressful environmental conditions. By expanding basic tests and incorporating...

To be most effective, test managers must develop and use metrics to help direct the testing effort and make informed recommendations about the software’s release readiness and associated risks. Because one important testing activity is to “measure” the quality of the software, test managers must measure the results of both the development and testing processes. Collecting, analyzing, and using metrics are complicated because many developers and testers are concerned that the metrics will be used against them. Join Mike Sowers as he addresses common metrics—...

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...

Isn't it amazing? Stakeholders drop software on our desks and expect us to test it—without any requirements, design, or product knowledge whatsoever. About the only clear thing is the absurd and unrealistic deadline. We are expected to bend over backward, spread magic pixie dust, and heroically test quality into a product we have never heard of before. But testing in the dark is not impossible, and as Rob Sabourin shows, it can even be a very valuable and fun experience. Learn strategies to emerge from a murky fog into clear, meaningful quality insights. Leverage...

Delivering high quality applications in an agile world is becoming more complex and challenging because of the changes the web and mobile are undergoing. Web testing continues to get much more difficult due to: increasing use of open technologies (HTML, JavaScript, and CSS) and web components in apps; lengthening the approval processes for plugins; and Chrome, Mozilla, and Edge browsers blocking specific APIs. On the mobile front, Apple, Google, and Microsoft are making it easier for developers to build cross-platform apps, resulting in more to test in less time...

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...

As the popularity of Node.js grows, so does the complexity and scale of the applications based on it. More than other technologies, this environment has a growing number of valuable open source modules to promote test-driven development and integrated testing. When organizations like PayPal, Walmart, Netflix, and LinkedIn are leveraging Node.js, it’s clear that it is here to stay. With the increasing number of enterprise deployments, the need for a comprehensive full stack testing strategy becomes even more critical. Join experienced Node.js QA architect and...

Growing team skill sets, resource management, pipeline management, career development, career definition, scaling issues, and optimizing efficiencies are just a few of the problems agile QA test teams face. If you have asked yourself How can I do more with less?, How can I increase the impact of QA testing at my organization?, or How is the QA testing helping or hurting product launches?, then don’t miss this stimulating presentation! Join Arylee McSweaney as she shares Etsy’s value driven—yet individualistic—approach to quality...

Losing your focus because change is hitting you from all sides? Meetings and technology disrupting much of your day? End the day not knowing what you’ve accomplished? It’s for you to learn the power of mindfulness techniques. Francie Van Wirkus guides your discovery of how mindfulness provides calm and clarity in the face of great change, which exponentially enhances your problem solving and creativity. Once you regularly practice mindfulness, you are free to grow your champion heart. Like an athlete who doesn't quit, successful testers must be resilient and...

With the drive for continuous integration and delivery, the implications and approaches for designing more testable software are receiving substantial discussion and debate. What does testability really mean in practice? How do you take the idea of testability—how easy it is to test software—and put it into action through the different dimensions of designing and testing a real world product? Nir Szilagyi recognizes that the challenges of difficult-to-test software can transform a testing cycle from a small automation and exploratory effort to a long struggle of...

Much of the success of agile adoptions is due to the automated testing approach used in agile projects. Because many of these techniques were pioneered in the development of web applications, it can be difficult to see how these techniques can be leveraged for a project where software is being built for an embedded or Internet of Things (IoT) application. Thomas Stiehm describes ways to leverage agile testing techniques for embedded systems. Whether you are building a medical device, embedded controller, or IoT device, learn how to leverage these testing...

Exploratory testing (ET) is a great complement to traditional test approaches. Testing professionals often see ET as an approach for manual testing. However, trying to organize ET from a test process perspective can be a challenge. There is an important question to ask—and answer: Is exploratory testing compatible with test automation? Jim Trentadue explores how automated test cases can be designed to include provisions for exploratory testing. Examples of this are data used in input fields, navigating various paths in your application, encountering unexpected...

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...

Is your company thinking about using Selenium to implement test automation in a joint development and operations environment? If your company has already started using Selenium, have you experienced execution or integration challenges? The path to a well-oiled and successful Selenium test automation program comes down to using the right techniques and development standards that incorporate modularity and flexibility. Jin Reck describes how to design effective web test automation development, and shares common challenges and solutions when implementing an...

In performance testing we run a suite of tests, modify the system in an attempt to improve its performance, and then repeat the tests. We want to know if the performance is “better.” However, no single performance measure exists; we must consider and evaluate many variables. Although viewing a full histogram of various test runs is more helpful, quantifying the change between the tests becomes the challenge. Parvez Ahammad introduces the relative divergence index (RDI), a multidimensional statistical method to compare differences between two sets of performance...

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...

If you don’t proactively manage and control your application test data, you may be missing out on a big process improvement that will save money, improve test coverage, and may save your systems from embarrassing failures. Paul Merrill describes the advantages and disadvantages of four data strategies—Elementary, Refresh Data Source, Selfish Data Generation, and Selfish Data Generation with Batch Cleanup—to help gain control of test data. Explore the two components of a data strategy—the Creational Strategy and the Cleanup Strategy—and their value to effective...

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 expression “garbage, garbage out” emphasizes the need for thorough testing in any Big Data and analytics implementation. Big Data testing means ensuring the correctness and completeness of voluminous, often heterogeneous, data as it moves across different stages—ingestion, storage, analytics, and visualization—producing actionable insights. What should be our testing focus? Which of the 4 V’s—variety, volume, velocity, and veracity—are most important at which stage? For example, in the ingestion stage, testing needs to focus on variety of data rather than...

Although the idea of doing performance testing throughout the software lifecycle sounds simple enough, as soon as you try to combine the concepts of “always testing” (in dev, pre-prod, and production) with “limited time and resources” and throw in the word “comprehensive,” the challenges can be monumental. Quickly the “how” of it emerges as the most important question—and one worth focusing on. Brad Stoner tackles this topic by explaining how he has been able to solve this seemingly impossible puzzle by applying various approaches such as early and often,...

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...

Big Data, one of the latest buzzwords in our industry, involves working with petabytes of data captured by various systems and making sense of that data in some way. Maryam Umar has found that testing systems like Hadoop is very challenging because of the frequency with which the data arrives in the system, the number of jobs that run to process that data, and the interdependency of the data. Maryam describes some of the projects at Hotels.com which involve identifying multiple users and using that data to make recommendations of hotels. Testing this is fairly...

Andreas Grabner maintains that most performance and scalability problems don’t need a large or long running performance test or the expertise of a performance engineering guru. Don’t let anybody tell you that performance is too hard to practice because it actually is not. You can take the initiative and find these often serious defects. Andreas analyzed and spotted the performance and scalability issues in more than 200 applications last year. He shares his performance testing approaches and explores the top problem patterns that you can learn to spot in your...

Ten years ago, many of us started our careers in testing, generally moving from a different internal role. It was common for people who were product users to be hired to jump start their technical career. Now, we see the growth of tester positions that require coding experience or a computer science degree. Melissa Tondi discusses the changing landscape of the role of testers, the challenges when hiring developers with no previous testing experience, and a way to shift the pendulum back to balance technical acumen with a user advocacy role. Melissa leads a...

Far too often in our careers we trust our fate to employers. We attend training and acquire skills needed for our jobs today. Unfortunately, as far too many have learned, careers can be stalled when you don't have the right skill sets. Much of testing’s future requires automation ability beyond the traditional knowledge and experience of many testers. Jared Richardson examines key skills that you need to acquire to future-proof your career and ensure you are ready for the job you want to have. Jared focuses on deliberate learning and intentional experimentation...

As developers and testers, we're uniquely creative, we're inspiration driven, we obsess over every detail, and we can rarely turn it off ... we are creatives, and we are different. We think differently, we perform differently, and we need to lead differently. Join Martin Ringlein for a rant, a rave, and a reality check on how to build and lead creative teams. Learn how to manage collaboration and fuel inspiration. Leave the Testing & Leadership Summit with much more than data points, facts, and figures about leadership; see how changing our perspective of the...

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...