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STAREAST 2006 Tutorials and Workshops
Go To: Monday | Tuesday
Tutorials and Workshops for Tuesday, May 16, 2006
8:30 AM — 5:30 PM | |
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How to Build, Support, and Add Value To Your Test Team
Lloyd Roden, Grove Consultants, and Julie Gardiner, QST Consultants Ltd.
Creating a test team is one thing . . . maintaining an effective and efficient team is quite another. Focusing on a people-oriented approach to software testing, Lloyd Roden and Julie Gardiner examine how to build—and retain—successful test teams within an organization. Discover the characteristics of successful testers and test managers and the qualities you should look for to recruit the right person. Identify seven key factors to motivate a test team, including establishing career paths for testers. Discover how a Test Manager can successfully promote the value of testing within the organization, encourage good working relations with Development and other departments, and become a "trusted advisor" to Senior Management. Discuss relevant issues faced in the people side of test management and take back utilities, spreadsheets, and templates to help you build a successful test team.
With more than twenty-five years in the software industry, Lloyd Roden worked as a developer, managed an independent test group within a software house, and joined Grove Consultants in 1999. Lloyd has been a speaker at STAREAST, STARWEST, EuroSTAR, AsiaSTAR, Software Test Automation, Test Congress, and Unicom conferences as well as Special Interest Groups in Software Testing in several countries. He was Program Chair for both the tenth and eleventh EuroSTAR conferences.
Founder and Principal Consultant of QST Consultants Ltd., Julie Gardiner has more than fourteen years of experience in the IT industry including time spent as an analyst programmer, Oracle DBA, and Project Manager. Julie works on the ISEB examination panel and is a committee member for the BSC SIGIST. Julie is a regular speaker at software testing conferences including, STAREAST, STARWEST, EuroSTAR, ICSTest, and the BCS SIGIST. |
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Measurement and Metrics for Test Managers
Rick Craig, Software Quality Engineering
To be most effective, test managers must develop and use metrics to help direct the testing effort and make informed recommendations about the software’s release readiness and associated risks. Because one important testing activity is to “measure” the quality of the software, test managers must measure the results of both development and testing processes. Collecting, analyzing, and using metrics is further complicated because many developers and testers feel that the metrics will be used “against them.” Rick Craig addresses common metrics: measures of product quality, defect removal efficiency, defect density, defect arrival rate, and testing status. Learn the benefits and pitfalls of each metric and how you can use these measurements to determine when to stop testing. Rick offers guidelines for developing a test measurement program, rules of thumb for collecting data, and ways to avoid “metrics dysfunction.” Various metrics paradigms, including Goal-Question-Metric, are addressed with a discussion of the pros and cons of each. Attendees are urged to bring their metrics problems and issues to use as discussion points.
A frequent speaker at testing conferences, Rick Craig is well received worldwide as a test and evaluation instructor with Software Quality Engineering. He has implemented and managed testing efforts on large-scale, traditional, and embedded systems, and co-authored a study that benchmarked industry-wide processes. Rick is co-author of the reference book Systematic Software Testing. |
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How to Break Software Security
Herbert Thompson, Security Innovation, Inc.
Software testing is a discipline that has become increasingly more competent at finding requirements-based defects. As an industry, we’ve developed and nurtured test harnesses, tools, techniques, and talent to find many bugs before software is ever released. Security testing, however, is a different story. Security bugs tend to manifest themselves as extra functionality that does not violate the requirements but nevertheless can produce catastrophic holes in software. Herbert Thompson introduces a fault model to help testers conceptualize these types of bugs and takes you through a set of software attacks that has proven effective at exposing security bugs. Take back with you a full arsenal of software attacks and the tools you need to detect security vulnerabilities in your software— before hackers discover them for you.
Chief Security Strategist at Security Innovation, Herbert Thompson earned his Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Florida Institute of Technology. Herbert is co-author of How to Break Software Security and The Software Vulnerability Guide and is the author of numerous papers on software security and testing. He has spoken on software security testing throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. At Security Innovation, Herbert directs the security strategy of the company and trains developers and testers at Fortune 500 companies on software security. |
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Just In Time Testing
Robert Sabourin, AmiBug.Com, Inc.
Turbulent Web development projects experience daily requirements changes, changes to user interfaces, and the continual integration of new functions, features, and technologies. Robert Sabourin shares effective techniques to keep your testing efforts on track while reacting to fast-changing priorities, technologies, and requirements. Robert covers test planning and organization techniques, scheduling and tracking, blending scripted and exploratory testing, identifying key project workflows, and using testing and test management tools. Learn how to create key decision making workflows for test prioritization and bug triage, adapt testing focus as priorities change, and identify technical risks and respect business importance.
Robert Sabourin has more than twenty years of management experience, leading teams of software development professionals. A well-respected member of the software engineering community, Robert has managed, trained, mentored, and coached hundreds of top professionals in the field. He frequently speaks at conferences and writes on software engineering, SQA, testing, management, and internationalization. The author of I am a Bug!, the popular software testing children’s book, Robert is an adjunct professor of Software Engineering at McGill University. |
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Test Process and Performance Improvement
Martin Pol, POLTEQ IT Services BV
What is the maturity of your testing process? How do you compare to other organizations and with industry standards? Join Martin Pol for an introduction to the Test Process Improvement (TPI®) model, an industry standard for test process maturity assessment. Many organizations want to focus on achieving the highest level of maturity without first creating the foundation required for success. Improving your testing requires understanding twenty key test process areas, your current position in each of these areas, and the next steps to take for improvement. Rather than guessing what to do next, use the TPI® model as a guide. Employing real world TPI® assessments he has performed in a variety of organizations, Martin describes an assessment approach that is suitable for both smaller, informal organizations and larger, formal companies. Each attendee will receive a copy of the reference book, Test Process Improvement, by Tim Koomen and Martin Pol.
Martin Pol has played a significant role in helping to raise the awareness and improve the performance of testing worldwide. Martin provides international testing consulting services through POLTEQ IT Services BV. He has worked with test outsourcing for more than fifteen years, successfully dealing with technical, management, and cultural issues. Martin has gained special expertise in offshoring to India. |
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Establishing a Fully-Integrated Test Automation Architecture
Edward Kit, Software Development Technologies
The third generation of test automation has proven to be the best answer to the current software quality crisis—a shortage of test resources to validate increasingly complex applications with extremely tight deadlines. Edward Kit describes the steps to design, manage, and maintain an overall testing framework using a roles-based team approach and a state-of-the-practice process, along with the key phases of test planning, test design, building and automating tests, executing tests, and reporting results. While demonstrating commercial examples of first-, second-, and third-generation test automation tools, Edward Kit provides tips for creating a unified automation architecture to address a wide variety of test environment challenges, including Web, client/server, mainframe, API, telecom, and embedded architectures.
Founder and president of Software Development Technologies, Edward Kit is a recognized expert in the area of software testing and automation. His best-selling book, Software Testing in the Real World: Improving the Process, has been adopted as a standard by many companies, including Sun Microsystems, Exxon, Pepsico, FedEx, Wellpoint, Southwest Airlines, and Cadence Design Systems. |
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Test Estimation Using Test Point Analysis
Ruud Teunissen, POLTEQ IT Services BV
How do you estimate your test effort? And how reliable is your estimate? Ruud Teunissen discusses the implementation of a practical and useful test estimation technique, directly related to your test process. The basic elements of a reliable test estimate are the size of the system under test (or the changes to it), the test strategy, available test design techniques, staff productivity, the software development process, and your environment. Discover the possibilities to grow from a budget based on “experiences in similar projects” or a “predefined percentage” of the total project budget to more formal estimation techniques such as Test Point Analysis (TPA®). TPA® is a useful, reliable, and practical instrument for estimating black-box tests as described in the Test Management Approach (TMap®). Ruud includes life experiences from different projects he has estimated and describes additional test effort estimation methods to employ depending on the maturity of your test process and your software development methods.
In the testing world since 1989 Ruud Teunissen has held numerous test functions in different organizations and projects: tester, test specialist, test consultant, test manager, and business unit manager of all testing. Ruud is co-author of Software Testing—A Guide to the TMap® Approach and is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences and workshops. He was a member of the program committee for Quality Week Europe and EuroSTAR. Ruud is currently an International Test Consultant at POLTEQ IT Services BV. |
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Requirements Based Testing
Richard Bender, Bender RBT Inc.
Testers use requirements as an oracle to verify the success or failure of their tests. Richard Bender presents the principles of the Requirements Based Testing methodology in which the software's specifications drive the testing process. Richard discusses proven techniques to ensure that requirements are accurate, complete, unambiguous, and logically consistent. Requirements based testing provides a process for first testing the integrity of the specifications. It then provides the algorithms for designing an optimized set of tests sufficient to verify the system from a black-box perspective. Find out how to design test cases to validate that the design and code fully implement all functional requirements. Based on the situation and their respective strengths and weaknesses, determine which test design strategy to apply to your applications under cause—effect graphing, equivalence class testing, orthogonal pairs, and more. By employing a requirements based testing approach, you will be able to quantify test completion criteria and measure test status.
Involved in test and evaluation since 1969, Richard Bender, has authored and co-authored books and courses on quality assurance and testing, software development lifecycles, analysis and design, software maintenance, and project management. Richard has worked in both large and small corporations with international clientele from a wide range of financial, military, government, and academic institutions. |
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Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Test Management
Johanna Rothman, Rothman Consulting Group, Inc., and Esther Derby, Esther Derby Associates, Inc.
Great management happens one interaction at a time. Many of those interactions happen behind closed doors—in one-to-one meetings. So if great management happens in private, how do people learn how to be great managers? Great managers consistently apply a handful of simple—but not necessarily easy—practices. Management consultants Johanna and Esther reveal management practices they—and their clients—have found useful and will help you learn how to perform them. Bring your big management issues and get ready to practice the skills you need to solve them. Learn to: conduct effective one-on-one meetings, uncover obstacles to your success, learn when and how to coach, and how to provide feedback. In this interactive workshop, Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby explore how managers can create an environment for success, keep progress visible, and coach their team to be the best they can be.
Johanna Rothman consults on managing high-technology product development. She uses pragmatic techniques for managing people, projects, and risk to create successful teams and projects. Johanna is the author of the highly acclaimed Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets & Science of Hiring Technical People and is a regular columnist on StickyMinds.com.
Esther Derby is one of the rare breed of consultants who blend technical and managerial issues with the people-side issues. Project retrospectives and project assessments are two of Esther's key practices that serve as tools to start a team's transformation. Recognized as one of the world's leaders in retrospective facilitation, Esther often receives requests to work with struggling teams. Esther is one of the founders of the Amplify Your Effectiveness (AYE) Conference. |
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Developing Your Skills As An Exploratory Tester
Cem Kaner and Andy Tinkham, Florida Institute of Technology
Software testing is a process of investigation to reveal quality-related information about a product. Exploratory testing is one approach to conducting that investigation. In Exploratory testing, we choose our focus and tests as we go rather than following a planned script—simultaneously learning, designing tests, and test executing them. This "learning" involves investigating the product, its environment, risks, and position in its market; how it behaves under test; how previous versions behaved in the field—in short, anything that can tell us what to test, how to test, or how to recognize a problem. Join Cem Kaner and Andy Tinkham as they guide you to develop new cognitive structures, skills, tools, and knowledge for exploratory testing. Break into workgroups focusing on rapid specification analysis, quicktests, applying models for exploration, ambiguity analysis, test generators, and more.
Cem Kaner is a professor of Software Engineering at Florida Institute of Technology and senior author of two of the leading books in the field, Testing Computer Software and Lessons Learned in Software Testing. You can see his lab's work at www.testingeducation.org. Andy Tinkham is a doctoral student studying with Cem Kaner at Florida Institute of Technology. Andy’s area of research involves the cognitive aspects of software testing, including user biases created by testing tools. Before returning to graduate school, he worked for eight years as a tester and test automation consultant for a variety of companies and projects. |
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Scripting for Testers
Chris McMahon, ThoughtWorks
Are you a tester who is interested in developing or improving your programming skills to aid your test efforts? Automated testing means programming, but programming doesn't have to be hard. Using the Ruby scripting language in this hands-on workshop, you will learn how to script tests for Web-based software. Explore techniques for automating browser-based testing using an open-source Ruby tool kit. Learn how to write automated functional tests for Web applications, understand how to define a base state for your functional tests, and discover the pros and cons of different approaches for automating Web application testing. By the end of the day, you will have written automated tests for a sample application. Working in pairs is encouraged—bring a friend.
Chris McMahon has been testing for about a decade. He is a contributor to the open-source Web Application Testing in Ruby (WATIR) project and has been known to park useful bits of scripting code on the Agile-testing mail list Wiki. Chris works for ThoughtWorks, where he hesitates to admit that he occasionally writes scripts in Perl as well. At other times he can be found—or not—somewhere in the mountains or the canyons of the Four Corners of the US, where he lives. |
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