STARWEST 2000 - Software Testing Conference

PRESENTATIONS

Making a Business Case for Test Process Improvement

Time-consuming and marginally effective test processes are unacceptable in today's marketplace. The high demands of eBusiness applications combined with the more challenging quality requirements on security, usability, and performance require adequate and more mature test solutions. Dedicated, practice-based process improvement models provide the frame of reference for continuous improvement of test processes. This is obvious to quality and testing professionals--but how do you convince management?
Martin Pol, POLTEQ IT Services B.V.
Management of Test Case Aging

Testing continues over a software product's lifecycle, but the test plans--particularly test cases and methods--undergo an evolution and aging as they mature in character, depth, and complexity. Based on analysis of a suite of tests and methods that have matured over a ten to twenty year period, this presentation examines testing from its initial stages through its maturity. Explore the impact of software trouble reports and change requests, including impacts from system usage on the testing.
Jon Hagar, Lockheed Martin
Managing User Acceptance Testing in Large Projects

Managing user acceptance testing poses many challenges, especially in large-scale projects. Julie Tarwater explores the issues of planning, coordinating, and executing effective user testing with a large number of end users. Learn strategies for ensuring user acceptance while exploring the pros and cons of each. Discover ways to prioritize issues that arise from user testing.
Julie Tarwater, T. Rowe Price Associates
Measuring Ad Hoc Testing

Many testers discover most of their bugs through a free-form exploration of a product called ad hoc testing. Ad hoc testing, however, can be difficult to manage. Jonathan Bach presents his experiences in making this intuitive and unstructured process manageable by packaging it in blocks of roughly equivalent effort (called test sessions).
Jonathan Bach, Satisfice, Inc.
Measuring Test Effectiveness: How Good is Your Testing?

Every year companies around the world spend vast sums of money testing software, yet many have no idea of the effectiveness of this effort. Some use flawed metrics, while others find the measurement problems too hard to even attempt. Rick Craig dissects some of the more commonly used measures of test effectiveness and discusses their pros and cons.
Rick Craig, Software Quality Engineering
Model-Based Testing for Data Centric Products

How do you test data centric products such as search engines or content-rich sites? The typical approach is to throw people at it--but what if you throw machines at it instead? The trick to getting machines to test this correctly is to cheat by using model-based testing. Once the problem is explained to the machine, the machine can then generate the tests, documents, and results--and test around-the-clock! Learn why machines should test and people should think.
Margaret Worel, Microsoft
Modeling the Real World for Load Testing

Requesting your Web site's home page one hundred times per minute is not going to give you a very accurate idea of how your Web site is actually going to perform in the real world. Explore the variables that you need to consider when designing a Web load or stress test, including user activities, graphics, security, user access speeds, and geographic locations.
Steve Splaine, Splaine & Associates
Overcoming Communication Hurdles for Large Testing

Learn of the challenges one company faced in testing a new distribution center involving six new systems with multiple integration points. Consisting of over one hundred systems and business personnel, the various test teams were located in eight different physical locations throughout the United States. Discover the communication issues and problems encountered by the test teams during this project, and examine the tools and techniques involved to keep everyone informed.
Marcia Miller, Levi Strauss & Co.
Performance Testing a Firewall

Firewall products pose some interesting challenges. Learn of some of the issues--and their resulting resolution--which occurred while planning the performance and characterization testing of a network security product (firewall). Based on lessons learned during this planning process, gain an understanding of the complexity of the issues and the broad range of requirements (from marketing, engineering, and customers) placed on the characterization project.
Howie Dow, Compaq Computer Corporation
Quality Cycles for Rapid Development

Organizations are attempting to develop new applications at "Internet speed" which can often result in major business and capitalization losses. This presentation describes a technique being used for incorporating structured and exploratory testing approaches into a software development process that can be effectively used for rapid software development. The technique is then described as a general methodology called Quality Cycles.
John Lisle, VenturCom, Inc.

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