STAREAST 2002 - Software Testing Conference

User Acceptance Testing (UAT) tends to take a lot of effort, yet still often fails to find what it should. Rather than being an afterthought subset of system test, effective UAT needs to be systematically planned and designed independently of technical testing. In this session, Robin Goldsmith shows how going from reactive to proactive UAT can make users more confident, cooperative, and competent acceptance testers.

Traditional methods for improving testing include training, hiring, adding new processes, building infrastructure, and buying new tools. But what about increasing the capability of the team? Author Aldous Huxley said, "Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him." The same is true for software teams: It's what we do with our experience that matters. Too often, we don't do much-if anything-to squeeze learning out of our experience.

This session presents a robust design method based on the Taguchi Approach. A new and powerful way to improve reliability and productivity, this method has been applied in diverse areas such as network optimization, audio and video compression, error correction, engine control, safety systems, calibration, and operating system optimization. Learn the basics of the robust design method for software testing, and experience the principles through case studies like Unix system performance tuning.

Even the most successful inspections can fail if team members aren't vigilant. A large financial institution has agreed to allow their story to be told (anonymously) for the purpose of illustrating how a program that was a classic success could fall into disuse. Specifically, you'll see how the company built up a very successful inspection program, and was achieving significant benefits, until four years later when inspections were no longer being done. How did this happen? Is it unique?