STARWEST 2007 - Software Testing Conference

PRESENTATIONS

Testing SOA Applications: What's New, What's Not

The Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach to building applications is rapidly approaching critical mass. With this architecture comes a new set of challenges for testers. Brian Bryson demystifies the testing practices to ensure SOA application quality. He begins by building and deploying a Web service to introduce you to SOA. Brian then examines the requirements and risks of SOA quality management including functional, performance, and security testing challenges.
Brian Bryson, IBM Rational
The Coming SOA Revolution: What It Means To Testers

Applications deployed with service oriented architectures are implemented as producers and consumers of services. Testing a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) application is unlike anything you've done before because every service can be invoked by consumers of whom you have no knowledge. This requires you to understand the specifications of those services in order to build valid, robust tests.
Frank Cohen, PushToTest
The Five "Doings" of Software Testing

As testers, we sometimes are so busy "doing", we forget about the "why’s" and "how's" of what we are doing. Dorothy Graham and Mark Fewster take a closer look at five key activities of testing: searching for defects, checking against requirements and specifications, assessing software readiness, measuring quality, and sampling software and data. Dorothy and Mark have found that these software testing activities have strong parallels with things that we do in ordinary life.
Mark Fewster and Dorothy Graham, Grove Consultants
The Secrets of Faking a Test Project

It's never been easier to fool your manager into thinking that you're doing a great job testing! In his presentation, Jonathan Kohl covers today's most respected test fakery.
Jonathan Kohl, Kohl Concepts Inc.
The Ten Most Important Automation Questions-and Answers

As test automation becomes more complex, many important strategic issues emerge. Mukesh Mulchandani shares key questions you must answer before you begin a test automation project or an improvement program. He begins with the elementary questions. Should I automate now or wait? What specifically should I automate? What approach should I adopt? Mukesh then considers more complex questions: vertical vs. horizontal automation, handling static and dynamic data, and testing dynamic objects.
Mukesh Mulchandani and Krishna Iyer, ZenTEST Labs
The Tester's Critical C's: Criticism, Communication, Confidence

Testers are professional critics. Our job is to evaluate and criticize other people's work. Although criticism can have a positive meaning, it is more often taken as negative. When we communicate our criticism to other people, we are sometimes misunderstood, and this can lead to serious problems, including losing confidence in ourselves. Dorothy Graham examines how our delivery of criticism and the ways we communicate can make us more effective-and not damage our interpersonal relationships.
Dorothy Graham, Grove Consultants
The Top Ten Signs You Need to Improve Your Testing Process

Does this sound familiar? Patch #94 was just released for the application you shipped last month; your customers refuse to upgrade to the latest version until someone else tries it first; your project manager casually asks if the application was tested on Windows 98 because that's what your biggest customer uses. Robert Watkins discusses these and other signs of test process breakdowns.
Robert Watkins, Metavante
The Zen of Software Testing: Discovering Your Inner Tester

Testing techniques and methods are usually based on models or theories-models derived from experience and theories from science. An alternative approach is Zen, a Buddhist doctrine stating that enlightenment can be attained through direct intuitive insight. Zen is all about harmony and balance. Dawn Haynes believes that a Zen approach to testing can help you meld disparate testing practices and gain new insights into your test processes and your everyday testing activities.
Dawn Haynes, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
Toot Your Own Horn: Hyper-visibility in Software Testing

Too often software projects are provided insufficient resources for testing. Perhaps, the project is under-funded, and testing is the first thing to get cut. Maybe the schedule is tight, and testing scope is reduced to allow for more developers. Barrett Nuzum believes the underlying problem is that the typical test team only makes itself known-and valued-when quality is poor and defects are obvious. It doesn't have to be that way!
Barrett Nuzum, Valtech Technologies
User Interface Testing with Microsoft Visual C#

Manually testing software with a complex user interface (UI) is time-consuming and expensive. Historically the development and maintenance costs associated with automating UI testing have been very high. Vijay Upadya presents a case study on the approaches and methodologies his Microsoft Visual C# test team adopted to answer the testing challenges that have plagued them for years. Vijay explains how the test team worked with developers to design high levels of testability into Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.
Vijay Upadya, Microsoft Corporation

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