STARWEST 2010 - Software Testing Conference

PRESENTATIONS

Take a Chance-Testing Lessons Learned from the Game of MONOPOLY®

For years, MONOPOLY® has entertained countless people with the fictional thrill of what it might be like to make a killing in real estate-or to lose your shirt. As Rob Sabourin explains, the board game is similar to the real-world experience of running a software test project. Rob guides you through some of MONOPOLY's powerful lessons and strategies relating to test planning, risk management, technical debt, context-driven test strategies, contingencies, and decision making.
Rob Sabourin, AmiBug.com
Taking Your Testing Team Global

With pressure to downsize local teams in favor of offshore or outsourced testing, you may be faced with taking your team global. Jane Fraser discusses the good, the bad, and the ugly of having to outsource or offshore testing. She talks about the pitfalls of hiring across cultures, such as when “Yes” means “We don't understand, but we'll try.” Jane shares ways to maintain your team processes and standards with a distributed team. She examines the issues and benefits of insourcing and outsourcing-and the difference between the two.
Jane Fraser, Electronic Arts
Test as a Service: A New Architecture for Embedded Systems

The classic models adopted in test automation today-guaranteeing ease of test implementation rather than extendibility of the test architecture-are inadequate for the unprecedented complexity of today’s embedded software market. Because many embedded software solutions must be designed and developed for multiple deployments on different and rapidly changing hardware platforms, testers need something new.
Raniero Virgilio, Intel
Test Team Leadership-Yes, There's a Place for It in Agile

One of the gravest misconceptions about the agile methodologies isn’t about documentation, teamwork, quality, or productivity. It’s about the role of leadership and management in the adoption and sustained operation of agile practices. In no place is this more visible than in statements such as “We don’t need no stinking test managers … we’re agile.” Bob Galen explores this common misconception and shares his experiences of the proper role of leadership and management within agile test teams.
Bob Galen, iContact
Testing Dialogues: Automation Issues

What problems are you facing in test automation right now? Just getting started? Trying to choose the right tool set? Working to convince executive managers of the value of automation? Dealing with excessive maintenance of scripts? Worrying about usability and security testing? Something else? Based on the problems and topics you and fellow automators bring to this session, Dorothy Graham and Mieke Gevers, both experienced test automation experts, will explore many of the most vexing test automation issues facing testers today.
Dorothy Graham, Consultant
Testing Embedded Software Using an Error Taxonomy

Just like the rest of the software world, embedded software has defects. Today, embedded software is pervasive-built into automobiles, medical diagnostic devices, telephones, airplanes, spacecraft, and really almost everything. Because defects in embedded software can cause constant customer frustration, complete product failure, and even death, it would seem critical to collect and categorize the types of errors that are typically found in embedded software.
Jon Hagar, Consultant
Testing the System's Architecture

The architecture is a key foundation for developing and maintaining flexible, powerful, and sustainable products and systems. Experience has shown that deficiencies in the architecture cause too many project failures. Who is responsible for adequately validating that the architecture meets the objectives for a system? And how does architecture testing differ from unit testing and component testing? Even in the ISTQB glossary, architecture testing is not defined.
Peter Zimmerer, Siemens AG
Testing with Emotional Intelligence

Our profession can have an enormous emotional impact-on others as well as on us. We're constantly dealing with fragile egos, highly charged situations, and pressured people playing a high stakes game under conditions of massive uncertainty. On top of this, we're often the bearers of bad news and are sometimes perceived as the "critics", activating people's primal fear of being judged. Emotional Intelligence (EI), the concept popularised by Harvard psychologist and science writer Daniel Goleman, has much to offer our profession.
Thomas McCoy, Department of FaHCSIA
Testing with Virtual Machines: Past, Present, and Future

In the past several years, virtualization has dramatically improved tester productivity. A virtual machine is a useful abstraction for encapsulating the entire software stack. Roussi Roussev presents proven techniques that no modern test environment is complete without. Running multiple virtual machines on a single host maximizes hardware resource utilization and reduces operating costs. Strong isolation facilitates building security testing and multi-tenant environments.
Roussi Roussev, VMware
The Human Side of Testing

Software testing is a unique profession. We're engaged in critiquing highly complex systems that typically are poorly understood-even by those developing them-and usually forged in an environment of high stakes, enormous pressure, and competing priorities. Every day we deal with delicate egos, defensive reactions, shrinking timeframes, and diminishing resources, all within the context of an uncertain world economic situation. Join Thomas McCoy as he takes a sometimes-irreverent look at the human issues that beleaguer our profession.
Thomas McCoy, Department of FaHCSIA

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