As a tester or test manager, have you ever wondered whether reason actually plays a part in some management decisions? It seems that many decisions are influenced by far more-or far less-than rational analysis. Surprise! Testers make decisions that are just as irrational as anyone else. James Lyndsay presents his view of bias-why we so often labor under the illusion of control, how we lock onto the behaviors we're looking for, and why two people can use the same evidence to support opposing positions. James shares real-life experiences of tester irrationality to help you see how biases affect our everyday work. Discover why timeboxes work, why independence really matters, and the subtle nudges that can encourage us to stay on track. Be prepared to join in discussions, engage with demonstrations, and challenge your preconceptions.

A system built using a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) consists of many different services that interact with each other to provide the system's functionality. Unlike the traditional stand-alone or client-server architecture, SOA separates functions as distinct services making them reusable and easily accessible over distributed networks. Moreover, SOA aims at a loose coupling of these business-level services. Manikanda Viswanathan explains why the traditional performance testing approach which is more application-centric will no longer yield good results. In traditional testing, each application is tested individually. These applications have few external dependencies and performance bottlenecks can be found, contained, and repaired more easily. In SOA testing, applications are distributed, highly dependent on one another, deployed on heterogeneous platforms, and often have availability challenges.

As an experienced test manager, Lloyd Roden believes that test estimation is one of the most difficult aspects of test management. You must deal with many unknowns, including dependencies on development activities and the variable quality of the software you test. Lloyd presents seven proven methods he has used to estimate test effort. Some are easy and quick but prone to abuse; others are more detailed and complex but may be more accurate. Lloyd discusses FIA (finger in the air), formula/percentage, historical reference, Parkinson's Law vs. pricing, work breakdown structures, estimation models, and assessment estimation. He shares spreadsheet templates and utilities that you can use and take back to help you improve your estimations. By the end of this session, you might just be thinking that the once painful experience of test estimation can, in fact, be painless.

Maquet Critical Care develops medical equipment in an FDA-regulated environment and uses exploratory testing as a valuable complementary test technique to requirements-based testing. By combining more traditional techniques with exploratory testing, they achieve high quality software embedded within life-critical equipment. Although performing exploratory testing in a way that meets regulatory standards poses some interesting challenges, Maquet has discovered that session-based test management (SBTM) is effective for testing and acceptable to its external auditors. Alexander Andelkovic shares the challenges of convincing company management and outside auditors that SBTM is both efficient and acceptable. Explore the choice between buying or building an SBTM reporting tool, the benefits of well-managed exploratory testing, and the increased visibility of quality-related information.