Wednesday, November 17, 2004, 11:30 AM  Go to 1:45 PM   Go to 3:00 PM

W1	Test Management

More than half the battle in testing is managing the hand-off from development into the testing workflow. New software development technologies and methods can result in more functionality, delivered faster but with decreased testability. As a test manager, you need to know how the application was built, including the use of dynamic code and third party components, to develop an effective test strategy and a meaningful schedule. Unless you set clear and specific expectations from the development team and have the ammunition to back up your testability requirements, you will find your test efforts compromised by programming shortcuts that speed development but make testing difficult, expensive, and time-consuming.

• How the latest programming techniques and productivity tools can cripple testing
• The minimum testability requirements for software under development
• Ways to design and develop tests concurrently with software development

W2	Test Techniques

Like the music in a jam session, exploratory testing is supposed to be non-scripted and spontaneous. Its unstructured nature makes it an effective test method when requirements are lacking, time is short, or other methods are not yielding important bugs. But some project managers dismiss exploratory testing because the traditional implementation does not have mechanisms to measure progress and does not meet the need for traceability back to requirements. Jon Bach, co-inventor of an exploratory testing method called Session-Based Test Management, discusses how managers can solve these problems with exploratory testing using a simple, effective test measurement technique. By measuring three basic activities of testing (setup, execution, and reporting), this session can help testers and test managers estimate their efficiency and the time it takes to explore the same features on the next release.

• Three measurable aspects of exploratory testing
• How to keep exploratory testing focused and agile
• Computer aids for testing sessions

W3	Test Automation

When the Canadian pairs figure skating controversy erupted during the 2002 Winter Olympics, TV viewers hit the MSNBC Web site with a fury. But the site was ready and responded without a hitch due to the carefully planned and executed load testing of the voting applications. The MSNBC site received four to five million visitors a day with sudden bursts of traffic due to breaking news. In this session, Suzanne Wagstaff reviews the process she used for planning and preparing to test the MSNBC site, revealing a performance test methodology that works for any scale Web site. Learn about hardware profiling and a process that identifies distributed and on-site risks, including software, hardware, and personnel, to ensure a successful application rollout.

• A scalable methodology for performance testing
• How to identify performance and load risks prior to testing
• An example of a large, distributed testing project

W4	Outsourcing

Whether we like it or not, outsourcing has become mainstream in the development world and is now being imposed on testing organizations. If not done properly, an outsourcing venture can add costs, distract the internal QA organization, and increase business risks to the enterprise. This session describes practical steps to successfully execute outsourced QA projects. Rutesh Shah, who has years of experience on both sides of the table, explains what should and should not be outsourced, common vendor practices, risk management issues, relationship management, and a practical, proven process for outsourcing test activities. Use the knowledge gained from this session to ensure that your team makes efficient and informed decisions before outsourcing testing. Measure progress and determine the true ROI (or lack of it) when outsourcing testing.

• Outsourced vendor processes and perspective
• Strategies for qualifying activities for outsourced testing
• Transition and ongoing process to manage the outsourced testing

W5	Advanced Topics

Testing experts often disagree. Why? Different testers have different understandings of the role and mission of software testing. This session presents four schools of software testing, each with a different understanding of the purpose and foundation of testing. One school sees testing based on mathematics. Another sees it as an activity that needs to be planned and managed. A third sees it as a basis for understanding and improving software process. And the fourth sees it as an intelligence service, providing actionable information. These all sound reasonable enough, but each has provided the foundation for a school of testing and different hierarchies of values. Learn more about the four schools of software testing and the effects they have on your life. You may find that you, your colleagues, and management are operating in different schools.

• A thought-provoking talk about the different views of software testing
• Controversies arising from the foundations of different schools
• The source of conflicts that arise in your work about software testing

Wednesday, November 17, 2004, 1:45 PM  Go to 11:30 AM   Go to 3:00 PM

W6	Test Management

As a testing consultant Geoff Horne often is called upon to help rescue runaway testing projects. In this presentation, Geoff looks at common causes of such problems, what to do to remedy them, and how to prevent their recurrence. If your testing is taking longer than planned . . . or you are finding too many (or too few) defects . . . or your test project has simply lost its way, then this session is for you. Find out if you are operating with faulty assumptions, learn how to identify the root causes of your problems, and develop a strategy and plan to fix them. Whether your issues relate to test planning, analysis, design, execution, management, or reporting, you will take away an assortment of tools and approaches to help get your testing project back on track—and keep it there.

• How to re-scope your test strategy and move forward
• Stringent incident logging and management procedures
• A proven test metrics and reporting structure

Double-Track Session!

W7  Test Techniques Testing Dialogues - Technical Issues Facilitated by Esther Derby and Elisabeth Hendrickson Is there an important technical test issue bothering you? Or, as a test engineer, are you looking for some career advice? If so, join Esther Derby and Elisabeth Hendrickson, experienced facilitators, for “Testing Dialogues - Technical Issues.” Practice the power of group problem solving and develop novel approaches to solving your big problem. This double session takes on technical issues, such as automation challenges, model-based testing, testing immature technologies, open source test tools, testing Web services, and career development. You name it! You will share your expertise and experiences, learn from the challenges and successes of others, and generate new topics in real-time. Discussions are structured in a framework so that the participants will receive a summary of their work product after the conference.

W8	Test Automation

Unless you have an automation tool for functional testing, you probably do not have time to execute all the manual tests you should. Even if you have such a tool, you may not have the quantity of licenses necessary for reaching your desired level of efficiency. An alternative is to automate tests using scripting languages, such as VBScript, Ruby, or Perl. Scripting languages are at your fingertips every time you sit in front of your computer and are imbedded in many popular, commercially available automated test tools. With examples using VBScript and Internet Explorer, Dion Johnson reveals a step-by-step approach for creating and implementing automated tests via scripting languages. This eye-opening presentation offers valuable information for all who are truly serious about test automation.

• Accessing and implementing scripting languages
• Creating automated tests using a scripting language, e.g., VBScript
• Object models for automating tests

W9	Outsourcing

Outsourcing testing software projects to countries in Asia is a trend that is here to stay. You have a growing number of choices for an outsourcing country in Asia—India, China, Taipei, Korea, and others. Although India currently dominates the scene and both Taipei and Korea have historically provided excellent quality, though at a higher cost, China is quickly moving to become the leader with even lower billing rates and a large number of experienced and educated engineers. In this session, Jacob Hsu offers an overview of the Asian outsource scene including the latest trends and data. Take away a checklist of best practices for successfully outsourcing product testing to Asia, including how to manage distributed testing teams, how to overcome language/cultural issues by country, and what types of testing should (and should not) be outsourced offshore.

• What India, China, Taipei, and Korea have to offer in testing services
• The different language and cultural issues in Asian countries
• How to deal with intellectual property issues in offshore outsourcing

W10	Advanced Topics

Performance and load testing generate barrels of data about transaction times, hardware resource utilization, and system behaviors. Your job as a performance engineer is not only to know how to use automated tools to create this data, but also to summarize, interpret, draw conclusions, and effectively communicate the results of tests. Do your job well, and management will be compelled to act on your recommendations. Dan Downing describes the tools and techniques he regularly employs for creating displays and graphs that visually correlate complex application performance and system resources metrics, turning a mass of data into concise and powerful information. Participants will walk away with specific techniques for using Excel and commercial or open source load testing tools to develop and clearly communicate performance test results.

• The results graphs that support performance/load testing objectives
• Key system metrics that portray scalability, bottlenecks, capacity, and page presentation times
• The right Excel graph type and Excel’s graph customization features

Wednesday, November 17, 2004, 3:00 PM  Go to 11:30 AM   Go to 1:45 PM

W11	Test Management

Software quality is first and foremost a business issue, and testing is often the last line of defense. The staffing, tools, and processes that we use to support our customers are fundamental to achieving quality—and their business objectives—in a cost-effective manner. Significantly improving software quality in an organization is a major project and not for the faint of heart. Such an improvement project must have a positive return on investment and a good likelihood of success. In this talk Richard Bender addresses fourteen major areas of concern for software quality and how they can impact the business. He includes industry statistics to help you make the case and weaves into the solution set the importance of good requirements and integrated testing.

• Fourteen reasons to improve software quality
• The ROI of software testing and quality improvement
• How to achieve buy-in for quality improvement

W12	Test Automation

“Automating manual tests was taking too long and we believed that overhead would become too high to maintain the automated tests. As the code base evolved and expanded, the performance and value of older automated tests deteriorated noticeably. What to do? Taking a lesson from developers in an eXtreme programming (XP) framework, we began applying these practices to our test automation project.” Join Neill McCarthy as he shares his test team’s adventurous journey from a traditional, plan-driven automation project to a set of agile practices including test-driven development. Learn from their failures, triumphs, and measures of success as Neill outlines the new automation framework that he employs today.

• Why adopt XP for test automation
• The people challenges of using XP in testing
• A framework for agile test automation development

W13	Outsourcing

In this case study of an award winning project, Andy Redwood describes how his team used “best shoring” of testing services to reduce costs, reuse assets, and get the best from their test automation tools. In an enterprise-wide transformation process at a large investment bank, his team used available infrastructure, technology, tools, and process to reduce business risk from software changes with a new automated regression test suite. With some facts and figures and a little hindsight, you will learn how to provide global, automated testing services on a twenty-four hours a day/seven days a week, on-demand basis. Find out what metrics you need to accurately measure the costs and benefits of a “follow the sun” test automation strategy.

• A successful outsource project that measurably improved business resilience
• The do's and don'ts of offshore testing
• How to design “just enough” automated regression tests

W14	Advanced Topics

The corollary to the axiom “all software has bugs” is “you will never find them all.” Even if you could, hardware and environmental failures always are lurking about, waiting to crash the software. If you accept the premise that failures are inevitable, then part of your testing should confirm that the software gracefully recovers from failures, protecting customer data and minimizing downtime. In this presentation Scott Loveland helps you face the issue head-on by explaining novel ways to force failures and then test the software's ability to recover. Having spent his career with IBM in test for z/OS and its predecessors, MVS and OS/390, and most recently Linux, Scott reveals the tools and techniques proven for testing recoverability of industrial-strength software in the trenches of the IBM mainframe development lab.

• Methods for injecting errors and monitoring recovery of large, complex systems
• Ways to trigger module-level, system-level, and multi-system-level error paths
• How the recovery testing approach varies by testing phase

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