After defeating the Evil Lord Voldemort, Harry Potter thought he was destined for a long career as an Auror with the Ministry of Magic, spending his time catching dark witches and wizards. However, Harry's career as an Auror was short-lived. With all the dark wizards coming over to the good side after the fall of Lord Voldemort, Harry had little to do. So, he started along the path of a software engineer. On his learning path, some of the things Harry discovered about improving the performance characteristics of applications felt downright magical. He became so...
STARWEST 2022 - Keynotes
Wednesday, October 5
Agile Leadership:Thru the Looking Glass
What is leadership? And more to the point, what is modern-day leadership in today’s VUCA world? Certainly it’s not the same as it was. And certainly today’s economic, diversity, and Covid contexts have added to the complexity and challenge of becoming a great leader. Oh, and before you say that—you’re not a leader—hold on. We contend that we’re ALL leaders. Mary Thorn and Bob Galen will share their lifelong journeys in becoming agile leaders in contexts of software development, testing, and product delivery. They’ll explore the power of self-reflection and how...
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
The Future of Software Testing
It’s become standard practice for test engineers to test their code in a staging environment, fix all inconsistencies there, and then deploy to production. In this waterfall process, testers have no visibility into what’s happening in production. What do you do if your test results in staging don't match production? The future of software testing has no staging environments - only production. Testing in production is a proactive approach to testing as you ensure your features work in the environment that your features will live in, not a dummy environment. In this...
A Journey to the Pyramids: Scaling Test Patterns in Microservices at Netflix
Netflix launched its streaming services in the US with a simple pricing model. As our global reach expanded, the requirements became increasingly complex, and so did our testing needs. The membership lifecycle ecosystem at Netflix consists of multiple teams, more than one hundred internal microservices, and a similar number of external partners and payment processors. As we strive to improve the efficiency of our continuous integration and release processes, we are progressively moving towards a paradigm known as the "Test Pyramid''. This approach is based on the principle of grouping...