STARWEST 2022 - Software Tester
Customize your STARWEST 2022 experience with sessions for software testers.
Monday, October 3
Getting Started with AI-Driven Automation
NewAI has been rapidly changing the way we approach software testing. Traditional test automation is time-consuming to create and breaks down easily in the presence of change. Thankfully, AI is helping testing teams create less procedural, more resilient tests that are able to self-heal in the presence of modern, rapidly changing, highly dynamic production systems. This sounds great, but you may be asking yourself: How do I get started? What additional skills do I need to learn? What tools are available for me to start using, right now? Join Dionny Santiago as he breaks down different AI...
Unit Testing: What Every Developer and Tester Should Know
Do you want to take your testing skills to the next level? Are you trying to stay relevant on an agile team where testing is shifting to the left on the project timeline? Do you want to help your organization reap the full benefits of testing earlier? Then join Tariq King to explore the fundamentals of unit testing so you can find bugs as soon as they happen and do more thorough, targeted testing during software development. This introductory session is for everyone—of all programming skill levels. Learn how to apply program-based techniques such as testing by looking, automated unit...
Test Automation: How to Start and Succeed
Many organizations invest a lot of effort in test automation at the system level but then have serious problems as their product matures and changes over time. As a leader, how can you ensure that your new automation efforts will get off to a good start? What can you do to ensure that your automation work provides continuing added value? Chris Loder will explain the critical issues you need to know to get a good start, and he will share his extensive experience in building great automation. He covers the most important management issues you should address for test automation success,...
Test Design for Fully Automated Build Architecture
Imagine this … as soon as any developed functionality is submitted into the code repository, it is automatically subjected to the appropriate battery of tests and then released straight into production. Setting up the pipeline capable of doing just that is becoming more and more common and something you need to know about. But most organizations hit the same stumbling block—just what IS the appropriate battery of tests? Automated build architectures don't always lend themselves well to the traditional stages of testing. In this hands-on tutorial, Melissa Benua introduces you to key test...
Instill a DevOps Testing Culture in Your Team and Organization
The DevOps movement is here. Companies across many industries are breaking down siloed IT departments and federating them into product development teams. Testing and its practices are at the heart of these changes. Traditionally, IT organizations have been staffed with mostly manual testers and a limited number of automation and performance engineers. To keep pace with development in the new “you build it, you own it” environment, testing teams and individuals must develop new technical skills and even embrace coding to stay relevant and add greater value to the business. DevOps really...
Automation Framework Essentials
Automation is critical in today’s software delivery lifecycle, and yet many organizations struggle to keep their automation running. How can we mitigate difficulties and get consistent automation runs and results we can trust? The secret is implementing a solid automation framework, but that isn’t as easy as it seems. Chris Loder has built several automation frameworks over his career and has learned what works—and, more importantly, what doesn’t. This tutorial will cover what an automation framework is, the benefits of having one, and the keys to a successful framework, including...
Tuesday, October 4
A Quality Engineering Introduction to AI and Machine Learning
NewAlthough there are several controversies and misunderstandings surrounding AI and machine learning, one thing is apparent — people have quality concerns about the safety, reliability, and trustworthiness of these types of systems. Not only are ML-based systems shrouded in mystery due to their largely black-box nature, they also tend to be unpredictable since they can adapt and learn new things at runtime. Validating ML systems is challenging and requires a cross-section of knowledge, skills, and experience from areas such as mathematics, data science, software engineering, cyber-security,...
Quality and Testing Measures and Metrics
To be most effective, leaders—including development and testing managers, ScrumMasters, product owners, and IT managers—need metrics to help direct their efforts and make informed recommendations about the software’s release readiness and associated risks. Because one important evaluation activity is to “measure” the quality of the software, the progress and results of both development and testing must be measured. Collecting, analyzing, and using metrics are complicated because developers and testers often are concerned that the metrics will be used against them. Join Jeff Pierce as he...
Web Security Testing: The Basics and More
Web applications are often security critical or serve as front-ends for security critical applications, making web testing for vulnerabilities an essential part of software testing. Unfortunately, most software testers have not been taught how to identify web security issues while testing applications. Join Tom Stiehm as he shares what you need to know to security test web-based applications as part of your overall testing process. Learn about the most common web security vulnerabilities and how they are introduced into web code and exploited by hackers. Explore test techniques for...
Integrating Automated Testing into DevOps
In many organizations, agile development processes are driving the pursuit of faster software releases, which has spawned a set of new practices—DevOps. DevOps stresses communications and integration between development and operations, including rapid deployment, continuous integration, and continuous delivery. Because DevOps practices require confidence that changes made to the code base will function as expected, automated testing is essential. Join Jeffery Payne as he discusses the unique challenges associated with integrating automated testing into continuous integration/continuous...
Holistic Performance Testing for Modern Applications
With the advent of frameworks like Angular, React, and Vue, the landscape of application performance has changed significantly in terms of testing and measurement. Gone are the days of measuring response time as a single value based on back-end performance. In modern web and mobile applications, additional layers need to be peeled apart at the front end to truly understand its performance characteristics. Traditional approaches to performance testing are no longer sufficient to provide a delightfully responsive user experience. Join Kaushal Dalvi as he details new developments in the...
Test Estimation in the Face of Uncertainty
Anyone who has ever attempted to estimate software testing effort realizes just how difficult the task can be. The number of factors that can affect the estimate is virtually unlimited. The keys to good estimates are understanding the primary variables, comparing them to known standards, and normalizing the estimates based on their differences. This is easy to say but difficult to accomplish because estimates are frequently required even when we know very little about the project—and what we do know is constantly changing. Throw in a healthy dose of politics and a bit of wishful thinking,...
Wednesday, October 5
Testing Machine Learning Models
More companies are building ML and AI systems and applications, but they lack the same rigorous testing because many Testers don't know how to approach testing them. After having built and tested many different ML models and systems and talking to ML teams of small and large organizations, one thing always stands out: "We need better testing and automation in our MLOps lifecycle." So, we'll start by demystifying Machine Learning by breaking down a Prediction application so the audience better understands the "magic algorithms" behind the scenes. We'll explore an example of ML systems that...
Are You Ready for AI to Take Over Your Automation Testing?
We all know that Artificial Intelligence is here and here to stay. Most teams are wondering how to leverage AI for their automation. In this session, I will cover a case study on how to successfully leverage Artificial Intelligence in your automation strategies. Attendees in this session will take away a few key points. First, how to determine if your automation strategy can leverage AI tool, discuss the learning curve and mindset shift necessary for your QA team to embrace AI Tool, and discuss success case study of using AI tool as part of automation testing. Then, how to leverage AI...
Mastering Cross - Browser Testing with Selenium, Cypress, and Playwright
Agile mandates continuous testing processes. Within Agile there are various personas trying to accomplish exactly that, however, they bring different constrains including time lines, skillsets, and testing objectives. With the growing adoption of Cypress and Playwright test frameworks that appeals to front-end developers, how does Cypress & Playwright from Microsoft plays within a single pipeline together with Selenium? Do they compete or complement each other? In this session, Eran Kinsbruner, DevOps chief Evangelist, Author and Sr. Director at Perforce will uncover the main benefits...
Dos Oruguitas: Software Testers...and Everyone Else
Disney's smash hit, Encanto, will be nearly a year old by the time STARWEST 2022 comes around, but my prediction is that we’ll all still be uncovering common threads between ourselves and the characters of this amazing film when we gather together in October. Software testers may find more similarities between Mirabel, Luisa, Camilio, Julieta, and others (you better BELIEVE we’re going to talk about Bruno!) than any other persona along the software development and testing lifecycle.
Learn the importance of knowing the characters (and gifts!) of this masterpiece you most align with,...
Speed Up Your Cloud Transformation by Giving Developers Back Control Over Their Dev & Test Environments
Todays Cloud Transformation is accompanied by a number of vital policies and norms, important for delivering scalable and robust systems at high quality. Yet, the same practices can also be road-blockers for cloud developers who are striving to build bleeding-edge systems. Although fast, iterative development processes with quick feedback loops are vital to creating a culture of continuous innovation across the organization, handcuffs are all too often imposed on cloud developers by important, yet cumbersome cloud approval processes, or unnecessarily long wait times during...
Modern Test Automation Strategies - A Panel
Love it or hate it, test automation drives a large part of our day-to-day lives as testers. But writing and maintaining software automation doesn't HAVE to be painful! Learn from a panel of automation experts - including Janna Loeffler, Adam Auerbach, and more - about how their teams have built reliable automation tooling and infrastructure that can stand the test of time. Moderated by Melissa Benua, the panel will answer YOUR questions about and help you address the challenges that we all face when scaling our test automation to match modern continuous delivery needs. You...
Thursday, October 6
Tips and Tricks for Effective Agile Testing
A Performance Testing Pyramid
Preview
Software Architecture for Testers– Where the Bodies are Buried!
PreviewThis session is designed to provide an overview of software architecture and design to testers so that you can understand how the different tiers and components fit together in a modern, complex system, and help you assess where the risks lie. When developing a robust test strategy, it is very important for all members of the team, including testers, to know how the system is put together. This session provides a brief historical perspective on how software architecture has evolved from mainframe to client-server, to web, to mobile, to micro-services. It includes examples of where...
The Wheels of the QA Process Go Round and Round.
If we all know how to be good QA, why do the Star conferences exist? The truth is, we don't know because there isn't a Quality Assurance Engineer degree. We've made it up as we went along and are seeking help cobbling together tools and tricks to do our jobs better. The process I will go over isn't the end-all, be-all for QA but gives them the steps in the circular pattern that will help them find the success they are looking for. Agile development methodology is best done in a circle as each time the process completes, it lead directly into doing it again. Within that framework exists a...
Building Resiliency in Test Automation
Quality Assurance Legacy - 30 Years of Tips and Tricks to Make QA Easier
When companies are in trouble management starts cutting expenses. Quality Assurance departments, groups and teams are often viewed as “cost centers” and not “profit centers”; in other words, an expense that can be cut. Ensuring that your QA team and department runs efficiently and effectively will make sure that QA is viewed as a “profit center”, an essential part of the company, and not as something extra to be cut at the slightest hint of trouble.
Quality Assurance teams use various tools such as bug trackers and test case repositories. Many such tools are available and marketed,...