Friday, November 19, 2004, 10:00 AM  Go to 11:15 AM

F1	Test Management

“QA is the bottleneck” . . . “Why does QA take so long?” . . . “You need to test faster.” Often, key project stakeholders either do not understand QA or have difficulty quantifying the effects that increasing or decreasing test time will have on the project. First American CREDCO found the solution was to turn QA into a full service organization, complete with a “Quality Rainbow” menu of options to be purchased. Want it quicker and willing to accept a higher risk? Then select from Column 1. Want low risk and willing to take the time to ensure the product is pristine? Then select from Column 5. Whether your test team is small or large, you can learn to “in-source” QA services, set time and efforts expectations up front, and measure the value of QA activities so that QA does not become a roadblock to project success.

• A method to specify and quantify the services provided by a QA group
• How to clearly measure and demonstrate the trade-off among time, resources, and risk
• Ways for QA to partner with other project teams

F2	Test Techniques

Use cases are hard to test because they do not have a standard format or style, and they lack coherent structure. This is due in part to the need for a standard definition in UML, which defines the graphical part but not the textual part. In this session, Jim Heumann pinpoints the issues related to testability of use cases and introduces a testable style for writing use cases, a process used extensively and successfully by IBM Rational Software. Based on the testable use case writing technique, you will learn how to create test cases from these use cases.

• How to make a use case more understandable and testable
• Examples of testable use cases
• How to create test cases from use cases

F3	Test Automation

FitNesse is an open source testing tool based on the Wiki Wiki Web and FIT (Framework for Integrated Tests). The Wiki Wiki Web is a collaboration tool in which anyone can create or change new pages to document or share any information. FIT is a framework and tool for creating automated acceptance tests. Joined together, FitNesse is a Web server-based tool for teams to easily and collaboratively create documents, specify tests, and run them. Micah Martin, co-creator of FitNesse, demonstrates how FitNesse can be used to create high-level feature tests that will drive development. Walk away with an understanding of how to automate acceptance testing in agile development and how it fits in with test-driven development.

• What a Wiki is and how to use it
• An introduction to the free FIT acceptance testing tool
• Acceptance testing as part of the test-driven development practice

Double-Track Session!

F4  Acceptance Testing A Systematic View of User Acceptance Testing Geoff Quentin, Q-Bit Testing Acceptance testing is a vital and specific form of testing whether you are tasked with rolling out an enterprise application package, releasing a major system enhancement, or developing acceptance tests in an agile development project. In addition, acceptance tests can give some teeth to service level agreements and software acquisition contracts. However, most treat acceptance testing as the same activity as system testing—but done by different staff. That is wrong! Because acceptance testing is not about bug hunting and breaking the software, you need a different strategy. With over 25 years of experience covering acceptance testing for all types of systems from safety-critical control systems to standard financial applications, Geoff Quentin shares his views on how to do acceptance testing correctly. Using ISO 12207 processes, IEEE standards as appropriate, and anecdotes from his personal experiences, Geoff outlines the important acceptance test activities beginning at project initiation and going to and beyond the start of production operations.

F5	Advanced Topics

The .NET environment provides a surprising but little known way to create user interface (UI) test automation scripts. By employing objects in the System.Threading and System.Reflection namespaces, test engineers can write ad hoc automated UI test scenarios in minutes. James McCaffrey presents an example of a Windows-based application and creates a test program written in VB.NET that verifies UI functionality by simulating user typing and clicking. James explains the code in detail so you can modify and extend the program to meet your own needs. Learn how to write ad hoc UI test automation for .NET-based Windows applications.

• How to use System.Threading for test harness communications in .NET
• Simulate .NET user interactions with System.Reflection
• A look ahead to Avalon and its effect on user interface test automation

Friday, November 19, 2004, 11:15 AM  Go to 10:00 AM

F6	Test Management

As a professional test manager or test engineer, you must keep up with the latest test techniques, management practices, and systems technologies. But that is not enough. You also must interact with and, more importantly, learn to influence executive managers and other non-technical project stakeholders. Even today in many companies, testing and test management are not well understood, and their work is unappreciated by non-technical people. Now, it is time for you to take action and do more than simply “get along” in your organization. Join Robert Sabourin for a lively session on developing your hidden and interpersonal skills, including communication, persuasion, problem solving, and teamwork. Find out new ways to work harmoniously with non-technical people while getting your important testing job done efficiently and effectively.

• How to use individual differences and perspectives to your best advantage
• Ways to handle difficult and confrontational people
• Positioning and posturing your project, your team, and yourself for success

F7	Test Techniques

For a test engineer, perhaps the most important measure of requirements quality is testability. By improving testability during requirements development, you will not only make test design easier, but you also will have gone a long way toward building better software for less cost. Learn methods to identify the requirements problems that reduce or improve testability: ambiguity, incompleteness, inconsistency, incorrectness, and ''compoundness.'' This method first was used successfully in a very large payroll system development project and has since been practiced in both large and small development projects. From this session take away a spreadsheet-based method for tracking requirements testability throughout the project, and see examples from an Access database that can be used for further requirements analysis.

• How to analyze requirements for attributes that increase testability
• A way to correlate requirements testability analysis results
• What can go wrong with this practice

F8	Test Automation

When they receive a new software build, testers usually start their automated testing runs. Instead, what if they could execute tests automatically at the end of the build process? Using Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 as the example tool, Geoff Stewart shares his experiences using Virtual PC software to configure, baseline, and isolate a test environment and automatically execute tests as part of the build process. By using virtual machine software via a command line interface, anyone can run tests without knowledge of the testing tool. Geoff demonstrates the technique and explains how he saves test results in XML for easier post-processing and historical reference. Get a head start on test execution, eliminate version conflicts, and save time installing test tools on host machines.

• An overview of virtual machine technology
• Integrating test execution with an automated build process
• How XML and XSL provide easy access to test results

F9	Advanced Topics

General Motors is on the road to a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) as its computing standard. To proceed they need to understand the scalability and throughput limits of the message-centric Web services approach that is the essence of SOA. General Motors chose SOA to build its next generation information systems, using Web services and ebXML technology. Service consumers and service providers will exchange Unified Business Language (UBL) Business Object Documents (BODs) to do things like get a purchase order and acknowledge an order. Frank Cohen presents the test methodology and findings from the GM Web Service Performance Benchmark project for its SOA applications and highlights a huge, impending industry-wide problem with Web services. Take home a test methodology to check SOA and Web Services for scalability in your environment.

• A summary of the technology issues with Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Web Services, and ebXML
• How today's Web services tools from BEA, Sun, and IBM measure up
• How to measure scalability and functionality in Web systems and those employing Grid computing

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