STAREAST 2011 - Software Testing Conference

PRESENTATIONS

Accelerate Your Testing with Service Virtualization

We all know that it’s not always possible to have our entire system available during testing because internal components may not be ready to execute or external components may be too expensive to use for testing. There is a solution out there for you. Glyn Rhodes shares how and when to employ service virtualization techniques to create “stubs”–modules of code that stand in for and simulate portions of your system. While stubbing has traditionally been a developer-only activity, it’s time that testers learn these techniques, too.

Glyn Rhodes, Green Hat
Active Context Listening: The Tester's Power Tool

Context drivers–business, technological, and organizational factors–should be important influences in how we make testing decisions. They exist in every project from rigid big-design-up-front waterfall projects to the most fluid agile development efforts. Rob Sabourin explores the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that context should influence your software testing approaches and identifies the tools you need to determine context. Rob urges testers to frequently inquire about the business.

Rob Sabourin, AmiBug.com
An Agile Approach to Defect Management

In each round of the party game Limbo, you set the bar lower and lower. Players must dance under the bar with only their feet touching the floor. When it comes to bugs, we also want to set the bar lower and lower as the project progresses–fewer bugs is always better. Lisa Crispin explains how agile teams address defects, and how you can apply an agile approach even in a "traditional" environment. Explore different approaches to deal with defects–from "fix and forget" to employing a traditional defect tracking approach.

Lisa Crispin, ePlan Services, Inc.

Automated Unit Test Generation: Improve Quality Earlier

Are you tired of finding seemingly simple defects late in development? Do you detect the majority of defects during late-stage, formal testing? Are your development teams too resource-constrained to perform serious unit testing? Brian Robinson describes how ABB utilizes advances in automated unit testing to help their development teams perform more comprehensive testing at the component level. These techniques enable developers to create and maintain high quality unit test suites with significantly less effort.

Brian Robinson, ABB Inc.
Automation Strategies for Testing Complex Data and Dashboards

Test automation engineers are inevitably confronted with the difficult challenge of testing a screen containing hundreds–if not thousands–of data values. Designing an approach to interact with this complex data can be a nightmare, often resulting in countless programming loops that navigate through volumes of data. Greg Paskal shares an innovative way to approach these automation challenges by breaking the problem into its logical parts.

Greg Paskal, JCPenney

Better Than a Root Canal: Root Cause Analysis of Defects

The quality problems many companies face after releasing a new product can be as painful as a root canal. One way to avoid this pain is timely root cause analysis (RCA) during development. Proper RCA and resulting improvements prevent product failures, eliminate associated rework, and reduce the pain of initial product releases. Based on empirical research conducted on today's RCA practices in the industry, Jan van Moll explains why many companies fail to do effective root cause analysis in practice.

Jan Moll, Philips Healthcare - Magnetic Resonance Systems
Building a World Class Test Organization

Do you have teams performing myriads of manual tests? Do you have to depend on subject matter experts with tribal knowledge for testing? Are you yearning to transform it all into a mature, modern, and world-class test organization? Theresa O'Leary leads you through a set of practical and proven steps to implement testing excellence. Her holistic approach encompasses people, process, tools, and environments.

Theresa O'Leary, UPS
Crowdsourced Testing: An Emerging Business Model

Crowdsourced testing has emerged as a startlingly effective by-product of social networking. Manoj Narayanan describes how many organizations are leveraging crowdsourcing to reduce testing costs and increase product quality. They are learning that the value of crowdsourced testing can differ significantly based on whether you are testing a web application, mobile device, or gaming app.

Manoj Narayanan, Cognizant Technology Solutions
Data Manufacturing: A Test Data Management Solution

Does your test organization create test data that represents production-like data? Does it fully protect the privacy of customers and the confidentiality of the business? Effective test data creation and management are critical for improving software quality, reducing costs, and ensuring data privacy and security. Fariba Alim-Marvasti shares Aetna Healthcare's Data Manufacturing practice that generates test data which thoroughly mimics production business data.

Fariba Alim-Marvasti, Aetna / Enterprise Testing & Quality Assurance
Embracing Change: Transforming Ideas and Challenges into Opportunities

Why are managers so poor at bringing about change? Why do people often resist and sometimes reject necessary changes? The reality is that people at all levels, from test managers to senior executives, often use flawed practices when trying to implement improvements and necessary changes. Many ignore, trivialize, or fail to act on the human element-the impact of the change on the people affected.

Naomi Karten, Karten Associates

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