Quality Assurance and Testing Track
 

Q1: People, Monkeys, and Models: Ben Simo

Learn how robots, monkeys, and woodpeckers can help improve your testing. Most of the “black box” test automation literature focuses on regression test execution. This is a very narrow view of test automation. While no automation can replace a thinking human being, it can be a powerful tool in the hands of a sapient tester. Join Ben Simo for a brisk tour through a variety of test automation methods. Review each method’s costs and benefits. Learn how each approach has worked and how it has failed. Add some test automation ideas to your toolbox.
 

Q2: From Start up to World Class Testing: Iris Trout, Bloomberg, LP

So you have been asked to start or improve a testing group within your organization? Where do you start? What services should you provide? Who are the right people for the job? Iris Trout presents a framework of best practices needed to implement or rapidly improve your testing organization. Hear how Bloomberg, LP , a large financial reporting institution, tackled the issue of implementing a new testing organization. Iris describes how she built a strong testing process in minimal time and achieved exceptional results. She shares her interviewing techniques, automation how to’s, and many other ways to implement quick successes. Learn to create Service level agreements. Discuss the value of peer reviews and how to evaluate their results. Iris shares handouts full of user-friendly ideas to help you get started.
-The essential components of a strong testing organization
-What makes up a good Service level agreement?
-Examples of strong quality metrics that help drive your goals
 

Q3: Avoid the Unexpected: Identifying Project Risks – Louise Tamres

Sometimes a problem creeps up unexpectedly – or so you think. Maybe the problem was there all along, yet no one bothered to think about probable vulnerabilities. By taking the time to assess potential problems, you can put safeguards in place that may help mitigate these risks. The first step is to identify these menaces, and several methods exist to identify such risks. In this presentation we’ll discuss rankings, risk analysis, project risks, and traceability. Analyzing this information allows testers to select and prioritize a meaningful subset of test cases, in order to yield confidence in the end product. Project Managers apply these same risk strategies to identify areas that require extra development scrutiny or special considerations such staffing, scheduling, and training. So next time, you can head off those nasty surprises before they creep up unexpectedly. 

Q: Lessons Learned in Performance Testing – Ben Simo

Some test tool vendors want us to believe that the secret to good performance testing is the right tool. Tools are essential, but tools are no better than their users. Learning to use a tool is the easy part. It’s what one does with a tool that matters. Generating load and measuring performance is not always an easy task. Complex things can be easily overly simplified; resulting in invalid test results. Simple things can easily be made more complex than they need to be; wasting time and resources. Join Ben Simo as he shares lessons he has learned through performance testing tragedy and triumph.  

Q4: Integration Testing: The Ghostly gray area between White Box Testing and Black Box Testing – Peter Ackerman, Advanced Medicals Consortium

Are your programmers doing “Unit” Testing, your QA group doing “System” Testing and your still letting too many defects into production? Maybe your answer is in doing “Integration” testing. A quick scan of the industry literature shows a relative scarcity of information on this aspect of testing, which is often neglected in favor of black-box systems testing. Two software professionals describe their views of what integration testing is, how it fits between white-box and systems black-box functional testing, where its use is appropriate, what techniques and methods they found useful in its application.
 

Q5: Software Test Certification Roundup (Moderated Panel Discussion)
h5. Come listen to a panel of experts on both sides of the issue of Software Test Certification discuss the pro’s and con’s of software test certification.
 

John McConda is a respected software tester and certification chair for the Indianapolis Quality Assurance Association.
 

Jess Lancaster is the test manager for Compliance Systems, a Senior Member of the American Society for Quality (ASQ) and an ASQ Certified Software Quality Engineer. (CSQE)
 

Dorothy Graham is a founding member of the founding member of the ISEB Software Testing Board, a co-founder of the EuroSTAR Conference, testing trainer, and author.
 

Michael Bolton is the principal consultant of Developsense, and a respected trainer, writer, and speaker in the area of software testing.
 

Matthew Heusser is a dev/tester/trainer extraordinaire, co-founder of the GLSE Conference, popular writer and speaker, and author of the blog Creative Chaos.
 

Q6: Agile Teams Require Agile QA: How to make it work – Tracy Beeson and Kealy Opelt
, Menlo Innovations Inc.

It is challenging to successfully integrate QA within the agile process. Not only is expanding the XP process to include other disciplines difficult but XP teams typically reject traditional QA practices. Integrating QA into your XP team does not have to be painful. It can be achieved by building an agile QA process through tackling small goals using the XP principles.