STAREAST 2009 - Software Testing Conference

PRESENTATIONS

STAREAST 2009: The Case Against Test Cases

A test case is a kind of container. You already know that counting the containers in a supermarket would tell you little about the value of the food they contain. So, why do we count test cases executed as a measure of testing's value? The impact and value a test case actually has varies greatly from one to the next. In many cases, the percentage of test cases passing or failing reveals nothing about the reliability or quality of the software under test.
James Bach, Satisfice, Inc.
STAREAST 2009: The Irrational Tester: Avoiding the Pitfalls

As a tester or test manager, have you ever wondered whether reason actually plays a part in some management decisions? It seems that many decisions are influenced by far more-or far less-than rational analysis. Surprise! Testers make decisions that are just as irrational as anyone else. James Lyndsay presents his view of bias-why we so often labor under the illusion of control, how we lock onto the behaviors we're looking for, and why two people can use the same evidence to support opposing positions.
James Lyndsay, Workroom Productions, Ltd.
STAREAST 2009: The Marine Corps Principles of Leadership

Even if you have the best tools and processes in the world, if your staff is not motivated and productive, your testing efforts will be weak and ineffective. Retired Marine Colonel Rick Craig describes how using the Marine Corps Principles of Leadership can help you become a better leader and, as a result, a better test manager. Learn the difference between leadership and management and how they complement each other. Join in the discussion and share ideas that have helped energize your testers (and those that didn't).
Rick Craig, Software Quality Engineering
STAREAST 2009: What Price Truth? When a Tester is Asked to Lie

As testers, our job is to report the current state of software quality on our projects. But in the high-stakes, high-risk business of software development, some may pressure us to distort the message. When projects are late or quality is poor, software managers' reputations-even their jobs-may be on the line. Our testing progress report could be the biggest obstacle to a "green light" project status report or an on-time delivery.
Fiona Charles
Taking Control Using Virtual Test Lab Automation

Due to more complex software and environments, the expectations placed on software labs have grown significantly. While under tighter budget constraints, test labs are expected to rapidly provide the infrastructure to create varied test environments for executing test cases. Traditionally, only physical machines and bare-bones hypervisors formed the lab infrastructure. Testers spent a significant amount of time creating and re-creating pristine test environments.
Jim Singh, VMLogix, Inc.
Testing Lessons from Delivery Room Triage

Bug triage, like labor and delivery triage, is about deciding on a course of action on the spot, often with minimal information to guide decision-making. The four basic steps of labor and delivery triage apply directly to testing-preliminary assessment, interview, exploration and observation, and taking action. In testing, preliminary assessment triggers immediate action before any bug review meetings or further testing. Interview exposes important contextual information.
Rob Sabourin, AmiBug.com
The New Era of Community-based Testing

Professionals are being confronted by a growing list of challenges-shorter release cycles, increased expectations, smaller budgets, and fewer testing resources. It's time to rethink the outdated methods of the past to enable us to deal with increased complexity in technical platforms, agile development methodologies, and greater scrutiny into the costs of defect discovery. Community-based testing meets these challenges head-on.
Doron Reuveni, uTest
The Strategic Alignment of Testing and Development

Strategic alignment between testing and development is vital for successful systems development. Missing, however, have been actionable, how-to approaches for assessing and enhancing this alignment. Jasbir Dhaliwal and Dave Miller present STREAM, the Software Testing Reassessment and Alignment Methodology, a systematic approach used to achieve this alignment at both strategy and execution levels.
Jasbir Dhaliwal, FedEx Institute of Technology at the University of Memphis
The Testing Dashboard: Becoming and Information Provider

Primary concerns for test managers are keeping the testing on schedule, meeting test objectives, making sure tests are effective, and satisfying stakeholders. Like taking a trip by car, you have a destination and only so many resources to get there. By keeping an eye on your car's dashboard, you know your status anywhere along the way. Likewise in testing, a dashboard is an effective way to organize and communicate the status of testing so that you and others can easily evaluate your progress.
Randy Rice, Rice Consulting Services
Top Ten Automation Questions and Their Answers

As software becomes more complex, many strategic test automation issues emerge that put test automation projects and improvement programs more at risk than ever. Mukesh Mulchandani shares ten key questions you must answer before beginning a test automation project. He begins with the elementary questions: Should I automate now or wait? What specifically should I automate? What approach should I adopt? Mukesh then considers more complex questions: vertical vs.
Mukesh Mulchandani, ZenTEST Labs

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