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| Wednesday, October 29, 2003: 11:30 AM |
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W1 Test Management
Sell Your Management on a New Testing Process
Harry Robinson, Microsoft
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New test approaches and methods can temporarily disrupt your testing department’s productivity, often making it tough to get these new approaches embraced by senior management and accepted into test teams. For the past few years, Microsoft has experimented with and finally embraced advanced methods, including model-based testing. Small-scale pilot projects, readily available tools, and widespread education can ease your migration to a new generation of software testing. Harr y Robinson shows how a small group of people successfully introduced test innovation into teams across Microsoft, and how they won acceptance for improvements that flew in the face of conventional methods and metrics.
• Spearhead improvements with few resources and little support
• Introduce new technology with minimal disruption
• Persuade non-technical managers to embrace a technical shift. | |
W2 Test Techniques
Rapid Web Testing in a High Velocity Environment
Greg Paskal, Kinko’s
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It’s going live tonight! How can I test Web changes when I have only a few hours for testing? In this session, Greg Paskal presents the Minimal Essential Testing Strategy (METS) designed to aid in your rapidly changing Web environment. This creative technique will enhance your Web testing efforts, regardless of time constraints or type of application. Walk away with a starter strategy and ways to adapt this new process to your organization’s needs. Plus, discover ways to provide valuable feedback to developers as a by-product of using METS.
• Discover the benefits of rapid testing techniques for your Web application
• Implement and fine-tune the Minimum Essential Testing Strategy (METS)
• Ways to avoid common Web testing ‘’gotchas’’ early in the testing process | |
W3 Test Automation
Getting More Mileage Out of Your Automation
Kelly Whitmill, IBM
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Don’t settle for rerunning the same automated test cases over and over again. Instead, get more mileage out of your automation! Learn how to add real-time variety and randomness to automated tests and make your data-driven test cases even more dynamic. Kelly Whitmill offers hints, guidelines, and tradeoffs for automated verification of test executions and tells you how to do automated verification when you can’t know the expected results until runtime. Find out why you don’t need formal models and fancy tools to use test case generation in your projects.
• Change the way you think about test automation
• Seven techniques to make your test automation better
• Use test-case generation without formal models | |
W4 Performance Testing
The Performance Management Lifecycle
Steve Rabin, Insight Partners
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Reliable and consistent performance must be an integral part of your software’s release criteria and specifically tested during quality assurance. Learn the key elements of building a performance benchmark for your application. Steve Rabin describes a roles-based approach for performance testing benchmark and shares the methodology he has used numerous times. With this process, you define metrics, workload characteristics, transactional definitions, and utilization assumptions.
• An eight-step process that addresses all phases of the performance lifecycle
• Tools for automated performance benchmarking
• A performance benchmark that measures the key processes performed during an application session | |
W5 Advanced Topics
Data-Driven Techniques to Test XML APIs
Shakil Ahmed, Convergys
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Adapting the Convergys’s Advance Data-Driven Techniques (ADDT) process, the company has successfully automated testing of XML APIs. In a highly complex, PC based billing application, ADDT has been used to improve the reliability of the product and significantly reduce testing time. With this approach, automated scenario-based tests are implemented for XML APIs, and test case templates are generated automatically from schema. This technique is generic and can be used for all XML APIs.
• Learn the principles of XP
• Find out what to do first (and second) if your development team adopts XP
• Explore the challenges that carr y over from XP to the testing/QA world | |
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| Wednesday, October 29, 2003: 1:45 PM |
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W6 Test Management
Creating and Maturing a Testing Center of Excellence
Thomas P. George, Capital One Financial
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How can your test organization help drive improvement in the overall software lifecycle? During the past several years, Capital One Financial has developed a Testing Center of Excellence (COE) that brought together disparate testing organizations to align their test processes and technical discipline. In addition to the measurable results of the COE, this initiative has supported and encouraged similar improvements in requirements development, project management, systems architecture, and software development methods. Learn how to significantly increase the business awareness of testing’s value and establish testing at the critical element to quality delivery in your organization.
• The profound impact testing can have on the entire development lifecycle
• Initial requirements needed to form a Testing Center of Excellence
• Measure the value of testing in your organization | |
W7 Test Techniques
Using Test Objectives to Define, Summarize, and Report Your Test Efforts
Jan A. Scott, QB Software, Inc.
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A large system test can consist of hundreds or even thousands of test cases, making it difficult to report results to management in a meaningful way. We typically use summary metrics, but they don’t always present a clear picture. In this session, Jan Scott shows you how to develop business-driven test objectives, measure your testing progress against these objectives, and present your results to management. Improve your test process while giving management a better tool for deciding when the software is ready to go into production.
• Learn the difference between test objectives and test cases, and establish test objectives from real-life examples
• Develop a business test objectives report that is meaningful to your testers and management
• Use the business test objectives report to track progress and summarize results | |
W8 Test Automation
Automating J2EE and .NET Testing
Frank Cohen, Push To Test
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With the introduction of the new J2EE (1.4) and .NET platforms, the middleware tier of software applications just became more complex. How do you test an application that uses up to 20 major APIs? Using case study of such an application, Frank Cohen describes how to test functionality, scalability, and performance. In this environment, testers and developers must work together, beginning with automated unit testing and continuing through integration and into system testing. Take away the test agent code, documentation, and installation instructions you’ll need to run the same tests in your own environments under a free, open-source license.
• Where middleware (J2EE and .NET) protocols and APIs often break
• Testing multi-protocol, multi-API applications
• An open-source testing framework for unit, integration, and system testing | |
W9 Performance Testing
Large Database Load and Stress Testing
Michele Rossi, BMC Software
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No one looks forward to load and stress testing a large database, but it is a critical task in the test process. Michele Rossi focuses on practical strategies to test software built for large database environments. Before designing your next database load and stress tests, find out what questions to ask and how to model realistic database activity. With the right test scripts and automated tools to create sufficient activity, you’ll go a long way toward improving product quality under heavy database loads.
• The type of environment you need for a large database test
• Practical methods, appropriate tools, and scripts for load and stress testing
• Test cases that simulate activity in a large database | |
| Double-Track Session! |
W10 Advanced Topics
Testing Dialogues – Test Management Issues
Facilitated by Esther Derby and Johanna Rothman
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Testing dialogues are a unique platform for you to share your ideas and learn from experienced testers from around the world. In this double session, test managers engage in in-depth, small group discussions with their peers. You’ll share your expertise and experiences, learn from others’ challenges and successes, and generate new topics in real-time. Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby facilitate this session, focusing on management issues such as: release criteria; determining ROI of test; coaching and feedback; managing new employees; estimating test time and resources. Bring your BIG issue and start a new dialog with your management peers. Discussions are structured in a framework so that participants will receive a summary or their work product after the conference.
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| Wednesday, October 29, 2003: 3:00 PM |
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W11 Test Management
Square Peg, Round Hole: Matching Testing With Business Needs
Patrick Callahan, ePeople, Inc.
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There are many types of software testing methods, ranging from exploratory to a full CMM Level 5 compliance. Choosing the wrong style of testing methodology can jeopardize your company’s software success. In this presentation, Patrick Callahan discusses his real-world experience at ePeople and other Silicon Valley startup companies and outlines some proven strategies selecting and implementing the right one for you. Learn about the four stages of test evolution from chaos to a continuous improvement process.
• Danger signs of bad development practices and how to make incremental improvements to improve quality
• Solve problems quickly and win over development groups to gain support for quality
• Convince developers that “testing” is not a dirty word | |
W12 Test Techniques
Adventures in Testing Data Migration
Geoff Home, iSQA
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Many organizations do not recognize the need for formal testing approaches to data migrations or systems mergers. Migrations are often performed by specially-built data conversion utilities that should be considered new software applications in their own right. Because conversion is a one-time occurrence, data can be riddled with defects and inaccuracies. Geoff Home discusses the different testing levels that you can apply to data migration and the inherent risks associated with such migrations. Take away strategies you can use to bring quality and focus to your data conversions. Examine examples of migration disasters, and learn how to avoid them in your organization.
• The four steps in testing data migration
• An iterative data conversion testing lifecycle
• Devise test strategies for data migrations, mergers, and conversions | |
W13 Test Automation
Test Automation with Open Source Tools in an Agile Environment
Peter Dignan, ProtoTest
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Test automation, open source tools, and agile methods are three important trends in software development. The instructors present a case study of a project where the project team integrated these three methods to build and deliver a critical application. Using automated testing as a foundation piece of the process the team met the demands of an aggressive schedule while responding to fluctuating requirements. The use of open source tools for test automation reduced the project cost while providing additional flexibility during the project.
• Why test automation is a key enabler for agile development methods such as XP
• A framework for using and integrating open-source test automation tools
• Use tools such as JUnit, dbUnit, ANT, Canoo, Cactus, and WAPT | |
W14 Performance Testing
.NET as a Powerful Platform for Performance Testing
Sergey Linetskiy, Genesys Telecommunications Laboratory
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Expensive performance testing automation tools often require special customization and consulting services to test complex applications. Sergey Linetskiy shares his experience using the Microsoft .NET platform as the basis for building a powerful, inexpensive performance testing framework. With a high-speed script engine, built-in classes for management and monitoring, and the classes for different data exchange protocols, .NET has all the key elements you need to build one yourself.
• Learn which .NET framework components are needed to build a testing framework
• Build Virtual Users simulators on a base of .NET classes
• Control and monitor test execution using .NET classes | |
