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Cloud Computing: Powering the Future of Testing With the advent of agile development processes, the expected cycle time for building and shipping quality software has been cut dramatically. Yet, much of the IT infrastructure testing used has remained the same for most companies. Testing teams often find themselves squeezed between the need for speed and their inadequate test infrastructure. Today, hundreds of companies are using cloud-based IT infrastructures to streamline, parallelize, and accelerate their testing cycles. Using real-world case studies, Sundar Raghavan shares how the cloud model can enable you to create multiple test environments, instantiate production-like virtual data centers, run multiple tests in parallel, and perform load tests almost at will. Sundar discusses how the cloud model reduces the cost and complexity of test harness set-up and tear-down-all without requiring you to change test tools or methodologies.
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Sundar Raghavan, Skytap
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STARWEST 2011: Seven Key Factors for Agile Testing Success What do testers need to do differently to be successful on an agile project? How can agile development teams employ testers’ skills and experience for maximum value to the project? Janet Gregory describes the seven key factors she has identified for testers to succeed on agile teams. She explains the whole-team approach of agile development that enables testers to do their job more effectively. Then, Janet explores the “agile testing mindset” that contributes to a tester’s success. She describes the different kind of information that testers on an agile team need to obtain, create, and provide for the team and product owner. Learn the role that test automation plays in the fast-paced development within agile projects, including regression and acceptance tests. By adhering to core agile practices while keeping the bigger picture in mind, testers add significant value to and help ensure the success of agile projects.
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Janet Gregory, DragonFire, Inc.
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Test Automation Magic: Pushing the Frontiers The evolutionary cycle of test automation appears to have hit a plateau. Krishna Iyer and Mukesh Mulchandani believe it is time to push the frontiers again for another cycle of improvements. Together, they describe how you can improve your test automation, with results that others will see as sheer magic. They describe a number of cutting edge ideas including automatic documentation of manual test cases, algorithms that will select the best automation scripts to run when you don't have sufficient time to execute them all, visual modeling of test automation to create new scripts from existing ones in a fraction of the time, and automation frameworks that disappear after test cases are built. Krishna and Mukesh also challenge traditional automation ideas such as automating only when the application is stable.
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Krishna Iyer, ZenTEST Labs
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STARWEST 2011: Lightning Strikes the Keynotes Lightning Talks have been a very popular part of many STAR conferences throughout the years. If you’re not familiar with the concept, a Lightning Talk session consists of a series of five-minute talks by different presenters within one presentation period. For the speakers, Lightning Talks are the opportunity to deliver their single biggest-bang-for-the-buck idea in a rapid-fire presentation. And now, lightning has struck the STAR keynote presentations. Some of the experts in testing-Michael Bolton, Jennifer Bonine, Hans Buwalda, Lee Copeland, Dale Emery, Bob Galen, Julie Gardiner, Dorothy Graham, Jeff Payne, and Martin Pol-will each step up to the podium and give you their best shot of lightning. With no time to dither or vacillate-and hemming and hawing forbidden-you'll get ten keynote presentations for the price of one and have some fun at the same time.
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Lee Copeland, Software Quality Engineering
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Testing Lessons from Comic Book Superheroes Over the years, Rob Sabourin has discovered testing lessons in diverse places-the Simpsons, the Great Detectives, and Dr. Seuss. Join Rob for a raucous, new adventure as he shares his testing lessons from the world of comic book superheroes. Rob believes these superheroes can teach important lessons about software testing and may even inspire you to become a "supertester." Superheroes have mythic adventures: escaping from strange planets, becoming irradiated, avenging crime, and more. Rob explores the skills of real-world supertesters. Batman's utility belt is filled with tools to get him out of danger-with his utility belt of tools and techniques, a supertester can quickly ferret out serious bugs. The Hulk's strength does the work of many people-supertesters develop design skills to build powerful tests. X-ray vision allows Superman to detect hidden enemies-supertesters uncover almost invisible defects lurking in systems.
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Robert Sabourin, AmiBug.com
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I Didn't Know I Knew That: A Story of Self-Learning During our testing careers, many of us are given the "opportunity" to test a system with which we have no experience-where the domain, the technology, or both are completely new to us. Rather than saying "Sorry, I can't do this job", perhaps you should embrace the opportunity, accept the challenge, and dive in! David Hayman shares the story of his journey testing a system that was new to him-establishing what he knew, what he thought he knew, what he didn't know and had to learn-and dealing with many surprises along the way. During his journey, David elicited the help of friends and colleagues, found surprising sources of information about the system, and discovered new inspiration and determination from within. His lessons learned illustrate an approach you can use to establish and develop new testing skills while working within the bounds of limited knowledge.
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David Hayman, Qual IT
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All That Testing Is Getting in the Way of Quality "You can't test in quality" is so cliché that it has to be true. Testing is an inherently negative discipline. It never proves quality has been attained-only that it has not. Perhaps it is time, once and for all, to do away with the traditional bug-finding tester role and come up with a better alternative. James Whittaker discusses the diminishing value of the old school testers in today’s software engineering practice and reveals what testers should really be doing instead of simply looking for more bugs. At Google, James has discovered that the role testers should play is one that makes them a part of software construction and elevates their position from a reporter of the negative to a producer of the positive. Learn how Google has embedded professional testers into its development teams and discover the activities they perform that have much more impact and value than merely reporting bugs and playing gatekeeper.
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James Whittaker, Google
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Automated Testing: The Differentiators of Success While automated testing is not new, it has undergone a resurgence in recent years. A combination of matured technology and continually increasing pressure to deliver more value has put a greater focus on finding efficiencies within testing. However, having the right automated testing tools is not enough. Nazar Hossain shares what he has found to be the key factors common to organizations that successfully use automated testing. First, have a comprehensive end-to-end process to manage and measure the success of automation efforts. Second, integrate test automation into the overall system development framework, making it an integral part of the project. This requires a well-engineered automation framework, automation development practices, and a close connection with the change management system.
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Nazar Hossain, Zarieas
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Google's New Methodology for Risk-driven Testing Risk mitigation and risk analysis are delicious ingredients in a recipe Google calls risk-driven testing. Most of us are familiar with how to approach risk mitigation from a test perspective-in the form of test plan development, test cases, and documentation. However, comprehensive risk analysis is still considered black magic by many in our field. In this hands-on presentation, Jason Arbon and Sebastián Schiavone introduce ACC-Attributes–Components–Capabilities-a methodology for systematically breaking down an application into coherent and logically-related elements for risk analysis. ACC prescribes a very easy-to-follow process that you can apply consistently and quickly to many types of projects. Jason and Sebastián break down risk analysis into seven simple steps and walk participants through the complete ACC and risk analysis process for several high-profile Google products.
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Sebastian Schiavone, Google, Inc.
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Test Estimation and the Art of Negotiation Many of us have struggled with test estimation. We have tried simple, heuristic models to craft a best guess-often without much success. We have also tried using a variety of complex, scientific models to calculate an accurate number. The problem is, we are usually fooled by the models-both simple and complex ones-and either overestimate testing needs or are lulled into impossible commitments. Lynn McKee and Nancy Kelln explore the realities of test estimation and propose a new mindset for handling estimation requests. In an interactive format, Nancy and Lynn demonstrate that the best estimate may be no estimate at all. By shifting the focus from estimating to negotiating, you’ll learn how to reveal the often obscured but already determined available time for testing.
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Nancy Kelln, Unimagined Testing
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