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Risk: The Testers Favorite Four Letter Word Identifying risk is important-but managing risk is vital. Good project managers speak the language of risk, and their understanding of risk guides important decisions. Testers can contribute to an organization's decision making ability by speaking that same language. Learn from Julie Gardiner how to evaluate risk in both quantitative and qualitative ways. Julie will discuss how to deal with some of the misconceptions managers have about risk-based testing including: Testing is always risk-based. Risk-based testing is nothing more than prioritizing tests. Risk-based testing is a one-time-only activity. Risk-based testing is a waste of time. And risk-based testing will delay the project.
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Julie Gardiner, QST Consultants Ltd.
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It's 2005, Why Does Software Still Stink We've now been writing software for an entire human generation. Yet software is arguably the least reliable product ever produced. People expect software to fail, and our industry has developed a well-deserved and widely accepted reputation for its inability to deliver quality products. James Whittaker explores the history of software development over the last generation to find out why. He uncovers several attempts to solve the problem and exposes their fatal flaws. James then looks forward to a world without software bugs and offers a roadmap-practical techniques that can be implemented today-for how to get there from here. Join James on this journey through the past and into the future-and be sure to bring something to scrape the bugs off your windshield.
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James Whittaker, Florida Institute of Technology
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Twelve-Step Program for a Better Test Process We can't make software better by testing the quality into it. However, if we manage our testing processes and educate the rest of the team about what it takes to make better software, we can make a difference. First, we have to get the testing world under control and work to reasonable expectations; then, we can spread the word to the rest of the organization. Judy McKay describes how to gain control of the test process-while still getting the real work done-and shares ways to educate the rest of the team about quality awareness. Using Judy's twelve-step program, test managers and testers will regain their sanity as they take control of the testing workflow and share it with the project team. By allowing developers to become part of your world, quality assurance can become a reality in your organization.
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Judy McKay, Test & Automation Consulting LLC
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The Return on Investment for Finding Defects in Test For testers, finding defects is a way of life. However, we usually don't reflect on what an undiscovered defect can cost a business or how much it costs to find defects late in development. Geoff Horne seeks to put real costs on both of these situations and looks at practical ways to reduce the costs of not finding defects. With real-life case studies that you can use to justify the need for more testing, Geoff provides simple measures and statistics to calculate whether your allocation of testing dollars is too high, too low, or just right. Learn to show how testing can actually save money and how to get the best return for your testing dollar. After all, stock market investors assess their options based on risk and potential return. Why should testing be any different?
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Geoff Horne, iSQA
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Describing Software Requirements with User Stories All projects start with needs or requirements. How those requirements are documented and expressed has a tremendous affect on the rest of the project. The technique of expressing requirements as "user stories" is one of the most broadly applicable techniques introduced by eXtreme Programming (XP). However, user stories are a valuable approach on all time-constrained projects, not just those using XP. Although user stories originated in the Agile processes, they are useful even if you are not planning to employ Agile development. In this session, Mike Cohn will help you identify and write good user stories and understand the six attributes of all good stories. Explore how user role modeling can help when gathering the initial stories for a project.
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Mike Cohn, Mountain Goat Software
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Achieving Meaningful Metrics from Your Test Automation Tools In addition to the efficiency improvements you expect from automated testing tools, you can-and should-expect them to provide valuable metrics to help manage your testing effort. By exploiting the programmability of automation tools, you can support the measurement and reporting aspects of your department. Learn how Jack Frank employs these tools with minimal effort to create test execution
status reports, coverage metrics, and other key management reports. Learn what measurement data your automation tool needs to log for later reporting. See examples of the operational reports his automation tools generate, including run/re-run/not run, pass/fail, percent complete, and percent of overall system tested. Take with you examples of senior management reports, including Jack's favorite, "My Bosses' Boss Test Status Report"-names will be changed to hide the guilty. Regardless of the
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Jack Frank, Mosaic Inc
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The Test Strategist's Toolbox As a decision-making framework, a test strategy outlines the vision and values that drive the project and keeps you on a clear path in times of change or uncertainty. A good test strategy makes you more resilient to inevitable changes as the project progresses. However, each test
project needs its own strategy depending on the business and risk profiles of the applications, technology in use, development methods, and even the experience and culture of the test group. In this interactive session with James Lyndsay, you will learn about a wide range of test strategy
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James Lyndsay, Workroom Productions
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Can You Find Bugs in Your Pajamas? Becoming an Effective Telecommuting Tester Distributed development teams, including test engineers, are becoming more the norm than the
exception. Many individual testers and test managers perform some of their job duties from
home. Test engineer Andy Roth is an extreme example of this situation-telecommuting from his
Maryland home 300 miles from his company’s office. As a “tele-tester” Andy has become a
manager in addition to his testing duties, managing his personal test lab, his time, his peer
relationships, and even managing his manager. If you are considering becoming a tele-tester,
already are one, or manage tele-testers, join Andy for a discussion of what it takes to survive and
flourish in this environment. Find out the necessary prerequisites and qualities of successful teletesters
and the tools of the trade that make life easier and most productive.
- The case for tele-testing and its limitations
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Andy Roth, IBM Rational Software
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Test Improvement for Highly Reliable NYSE Trading Systems With billions of dollars changing hands every day, financial trading systems demand extremely high accuracy and reliability. So, how do you improve test process performance in the areas of time to market and efficiency and at the same time reduce failures? Over the last three years, using process and project measurement data as a guide, SIAC has focused on doing exactly that. Steve Boycan highlights the key elements of the process changes that have led to SIAC's current performance: the use of a rigorous requirements engineering process; controlled parallel and iterative work flows; changes to the level of abstraction in test documentation; emphasis on test planning, analysis, and design; causal analysis; and improving the test team's skills.
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Steve Boycan, SIAC
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It's Too Darn Big: Test Techniques for Gigantic Systems Structuring test designs and prioritizing your test effort for large and complex software systems are daunting tasks, ones that have beaten many, very good test engineers. If you add concurrency issues and a distributed system architecture to the mix, some would simply throw up their hands. At Microsoft, where Keith Stobie plies his trade, that is not an option. Keith and others have reengineered their testing, employing dependency analysis for test design, model property static checking, "all pairs" configuration testing, robust unit testing, and more. They employ coverage to successfully help select and prioritize tests and make effective use of random testing including fuzz testing security. Finally, models of their systems help them generate good stochastic tests and act as test oracles for automation.
- Test checklists for large, complex, distributed systems
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Keith Stobie, Microsoft Corporation
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