Conference Presentations

Enterprise DevOps: Breaking Down the Barriers between Development and IT Operations

Agile processes were originally designed to break down the barriers among users, programmers, and testers. Now, DevOps-an emerging set of principles and practices for communication, collaboration, and integration between development and IT operations-seeks to break down the development/operations barriers. By applying agile principles to operations and re-architecting the interfaces between these groups, DevOps empowers organizations to deliver high-value software faster and with fewer errors. Jez Humble describes how to implement DevOps practices in large enterprises-and small organizations. Starting with an investigation of the crisis facing large IT departments, Jez discusses the root causes of operations challenges and how DevOps addresses them.
Jez Humble, ThoughtWorks Inc
Mission Critical Agility

Whether it is controlling interplanetary spacecraft, managing medical records, or "merely" staying in business, it seems that more of us are facing the pressure of building and managing mission-critical systems and teams. Although it's tempting to think that reliability is all that matters, we're also forced to adapt to constantly advancing technologies, shifting priorities, and relentless competitive pressures. What can we learn about agility from great inventors like Alexander Graham Bell and the pioneers at NASA who risked everything to change the world? Is it wise to embrace innovation and take risks when so much is at stake? Can you afford to be agile when failure is not an option, or can you afford not to? Jeff Norris explores key principles of agility from a fresh and entertaining perspective by drawing on inspiring stories of people who demonstrated agile work practices long before anyone had heard of a ScrumMaster.
Jeff Norris, NASA
Eight Principles for Better Unit Testing

Unit testing is a core component of agile development methodologies. Teams that perform comprehensive unit testing are perceived to be more reliable, professional, and advanced. Yet, many developers find starting unit testing is difficult. They test the wrong things, often with fragile tests that must be rewritten. Many give up even before realizing the value that unit testing brings. It doesn’t have to be that way! Gil Zilberfeld explains important principles for better unit testing: choosing what to test first, selecting the most appropriate tools, determining what to include in unit tests and what to defer to integration tests, measuring progress, understanding the differences between designing unit tests for new projects vs. legacy code, and more. Learn how to overcome resistance and get the entire team on board. There’s no reason to make the same mistakes others have made. Don’t get stuck with bad tests or the wrong tool.
Gil Zilberfeld, Typemock
Surviving an FDA Audit: Heuristics for Exploratory Testing

In FDA regulated industries, audits are high-stakes, fact-finding exercises required to verify compliance to regulations and an organization’s internal procedures. Although exploratory testing has emerged as a powerful test approach within regulated industries, an audit is the impact point where exploratory testing and regulatory worlds collide. Griffin Jones describes a heuristic model-Congruence, Honesty, Competence, Appropriate Process Model, Willingness, Control, and Evidence-his team used to survive an audit. You can use this model to prepare for an audit or to baseline your current practices for an improvement program. Griffin highlights the common misconceptions and traps to avoid with exploratory testing in your regulated industry. Avoid mutual misunderstandings that can trigger episodes of incongruous behavior and an unsuccessful audit.
Griffin Jones, iCardiac Technologies
Automation Maturity: Planning Your Next Step in Test Automation

Do you find your organization not achieving the test automation benefits and ROI you expected? Are you spending too much effort rewriting scripts that don't hold up over time? Does your test plan look more like "random acts of automation?" Ayal Cohen describes test automation maturity levels and shares key points on how to determine your test organization's current maturity. Ayal identifies key ideas on how and when to move to the next level. Defining an efficient automation framework coupled with a stepped-up maturity methodology will help you achieve great success with automation. Ultimately, you can increase your test coverage dramatically, shrink your timelines, and better support your company's business goals. As Ayal explains, it's an ongoing process of addressing your goals, challenges, and current maturity level, while laying the foundation for future needs as you grow.
Ayal Cohen, HP
Improving Software Quality Through Static Analysis

You've implemented unit testing, pair programming, and code inspection in your development process, but defects still escape despite your best efforts. Furthermore, you discover latent defects in previously error-free software as you make changes. The problem isn't your quality efforts-it's your approach. Michael Portwood shows how practical static code analysis techniques can complement your traditional testing approaches by addressing nagging quality and design defects. He focuses on subtle but common coding issues that lead to defects, code complexity testability issues, and a wide range of architectural issues limiting product lifecycles-issues that are missed by empirical testing. Introducing static analysis into your development process is easy to accomplish.
Michael Portwood, The Nielsen Company
Project Estimation: The Scientific Way

At its core, estimating is a personal process. When estimating a task, your brain combines past experiences, confidence, and intuition to create a best guess. Paul Pagel explores estimating techniques that can turn your guesses into more accurate estimates on which you and your organization can rely. Join Paul and dive into estimating techniques you can use to go beyond gut instinct: PERT calculations, range estimates, normalized team estimates, and risk-based assessment estimation techniques. Before creating an estimate, you first should determine how accurate an estimate you need and what’s possible. Do you need estimates that are 50–75% correct, or is the project one that needs a higher accuracy? Paul shows how to determine the right level of confidence for your project and how to create estimates at that confidence level. He illustrates each of these estimating techniques through real-world examples.
Paul Pagel, 8th Light
Risk Analysis for Test Managers

Risks are endemic in every step of every software project. A well-established key to project success is to proactively identify, understand, and mitigate these risks. However, risk management is not the sole domain of the project manager, particularly with regard to product quality where test managers and testers can significantly influence the project outcome. Julie Gardiner demonstrates how to evaluate and mitigate product risk from a testing perspective. She describes different approaches to risk management, the benefits of each, and how to use them. With an understanding and appreciation for product risk analysis, the test manager and team can then assess which testing approaches and techniques they should apply to reduce these risks. Julie demonstrates an easy way to report on progress to business management and stakeholders using product risk as its basis.
Julie Gardiner, Grove Consultants
Testing in the Cloud: Is it Right For You?

Finally, software testing in the cloud is not just for dreamers anymore! Join Andrew Pollner to explore why and how cloud-based testing is emerging as a viable alternative to replace or complement traditional testing platforms. Implemented properly, cloud testing offers many advantages: shifts the burden of installing, configuring, maintaining, and updating testing tools to a vendor; reduces or eliminates the need to build and maintain servers to support testing functions; expands the reach of testing across geographical locations; offers potentially limitless capacity; and more. However, with all these benefits come new challenges: determining the appropriate cloud test environment, test data security, connectivity to the environment, and others.
Andrew Pollner, ALP International Corp
Software Testing Using Microsoft Visual Studio Test Professional
Video

Help simplify the entire development process, from design to deployment. Bring a vision to life using powerful prototyping, modeling, and design tools. Work more efficiently with integrated testing and debugging tools that enable delivery of high-quality solutions.
Charles Sterling, Microsoft

Pages

CMCrossroads is a TechWell community.

Through conferences, training, consulting, and online resources, TechWell helps you develop and deliver great software every day.