Large-scale Exploratory Testing: Let’s Take a Tour
James Whittaker, Google

Manual testing is the best way to find the bugs most likely to bite users badly after a product ships. However, manual testing remains a very ad hoc, aimless process. At a number of companies across the globe, groups of test innovators gathered in think tank settings to create a better way to do manual testing—a way that is more prescriptive, repeatable, and capable of finding the highest quality bugs. The result is a new methodology for exploratory testing based on the concept of tours through the application under test. In short, tours represent a more purposeful way to plan and execute exploratory tests. James Whittaker describes the tourist metaphor for this novel approach and demonstrates tours taken by test teams from various companies including Microsoft and Google. He presents results from numerous projects where the tours were used in critical-path production environments. Join James and learn about the collection of test tours, test cases, and bugs from these case studies and take back recommendations for using tours on your own products.

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The Marine Corps Principles of Leadership 
Rick Craig, Software Quality Engineering 

Even with the best tools and processes in the world, if your staff is not focused and productive, your testing efforts will be weak and ineffective and your finished product will reflect this. Retired Marine Colonel, long-time test consultant Rick Craig describes how using the Marine Corps Principles of Leadership will help you become a better leader and, as a result, a better test manager or tester. Learn the differences between leadership and management and how they can complement each other. Discover new approaches to energize your testers and learn to avoid some that won’t. Rick explores motivation, morale, training, span of control, immersion time, and how to promote a consistent testing discipline within your organization. He addresses the role of “influence leaders” and how to use them as powerful agents of change. Learn what you can do to improve your leadership skills and your team’s ability to deliver on its mission with energy and commitment.

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Moving to an Agile Testing Environment: What Went Right, What Went Wrong 
Ray Arell, Intel

About a year ago, Ray Arell called his software staff together and declared, “Hey! We are going agile!” Ray read an agile project management book on a long flight to India, and, like all good reactionary development managers, he was sold! Now—two years later—their agile/Scrum process has taken shape; however, its adoption was not without strain on development, test, and other QA practices. Join Ray as he takes you on a retrospective of what went right and, more importantly, what went wrong as they evolved to a new development/test process. He introduces the software validation strategies developed and adapted for Scrum, explains what makes up a flexible validation plan, and discusses their iterative test method. Learn how they use customer personas to help test teams understand expectations for quality in each sprint and employ exploratory testing in the Scrum development flow. If you see agile in your development future, come discover what you’re in for, traps to avoid, and how to be successful. If you’re not ready for agile, you’ll learn some new approaches that can be applied to traditional processes.

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The Top Testing Challenges—or Opportunities—We Face Today
Lloyd Roden, Grove Consultants

Some people thrive on challenges, while others struggle with how to deal with them. Handled well, challenges can make us stronger in our passion, drive, and determination. Lloyd Roden describes the challenges we face today in software testing and how we can respond in a positive, constructive manner. One of the challenges Lloyd often sees is identifying and eliminating metrics that lie. While we (hopefully) do not set out to deceive, we must endeavor to employ metrics that have significance, integrity, and operational value. Another challenge test leaders face is providing estimates that have clarity, accuracy, and meaning. Often we omit a vital ingredient when developing test estimates—the quality required in the product. A third challenge is convincing test managers to actually test regularly to attain credibility and respect with the team they are leading. Join Lloyd as he delivers passionate and compelling arguments for turning these and other challenges into opportunities for the test team.

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