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Top Ten Tendencies That Trap Testers A trap is an unidentified problem that limits or obstructs us in some way. We don't intentionally fall into traps, but our behavioral tendencies aim us toward them. For example, have you ever found a great bug and celebrated only to have one of your fellow testers find a bigger bug just one more keystroke away? A tendency to celebrate too soon can make you nearsighted. Have you ever been confused about a behavior you saw during a test and shrugged it off? The tendency to dismiss your confusion as unimportant or irrelevant may make you farsighted-limiting your ability to see a bug right in front of you. Jon Bach demonstrates other limiting tendencies like Stakeholder Trust, Compartmental Thinking, Definition Faith, and more. Testers can't find every bug or run every possible test, but identifying these tendencies can help us avoid traps that might compromise our effectiveness and credibility.
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Jon Bach, Quardev Laboratories
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Communicating the Value of Testing Test managers constantly lament that few outside their group understand or care much about the value they provide and consistently deliver. Unfortunately, they are often correct. The lack of visibility and understanding of the test team's contribution can lead to restricted budgets,
fewer resources, tighter timelines, and ultimately, lower group productivity. Join Theresa Lanowitz as she highlights ways to move from simply being a tester of software to an advocate for your organization's customers. Learn how to effectively and concisely communicate with key
stakeholders in your organization to ensure that they understand the value and role of the testing group. With effective and concise communication, the testing group will be perceived as more strategically important and integral to the success of every project.
- Strategies for communicating complex data
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Theresa Lanowitz, voke, Inc. and Dan Koloski, Empirix
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A Bug's Life The quality of software is directly related to the number and severity of bugs in software when it goes into production. Inspired by the Disney® film of the same name, Lloyd Roden offers a light-hearted, humorous presentation with a serious message-neglect the bugs and they will take over! Learn about novel strategies to detect and fix bugs before they bite you. Find out ways to change your environment to make it less likely to attract bugs and easier to exterminate the ones that do invade your software. Explore the people issues that can cause unnecessary stress and concern for everyone involved in dealing with bugs in the development process. Take back a new attitude about bugs and a new energy to eradicate them in your house.
- How to find the different types of software bugs
- The environment where bugs are most likely to live
- People issues surrounding bugs
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Lloyd Roden, Grove Consultants
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The Power of Continous Integration with Automated Unit Tests Better, faster, cheaper-the mantra of many software methodologies and tools. Can it ever be true? Illustrated with examples from Agitar Software's internal development process, Jeffrey Fredrick describes the psychological impact of rapid feedback and how it unleashes the best in people. Find out what continuous integration means in the real world and how it can be coupled with automated developer (unit) tests to reduce the number and cost of failures. Learn about the psychological impact of lava lamps, email notifications, and Web applications as feedback mechanisms and why feedback is not only for developers. Instead of expecting people to act like machines, you can use continuous integration and automated tests to leverage the complementary strengths of each. See how automating integration maximizes the return on your developer testing investment.
- The impact of continuous integration
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Jeffrey Fredrick, Agitar Software Inc
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Software Metrics to Improve Release Management In large organizations with multiple groups or multiple projects, developing consistent and useful metrics for release management is highly challenging. However, when targeted at specific release goals, metrics can help monitor the development schedule and provide both managers and developers with the data needed to improve quality. With nearly eighty products that must be released on the same date, Mathworks has developed a release metrics program with a consistent method to categorize and prioritize bugs based on severity and frequency. Learn how they track progress toward bug fix targets for each category of bugs and monitor them consistently across their product line throughout the release cycle. See examples of metrics reports designed for management and daily use by teams, including historical trending analysis of overall and customer-reported bug counts.
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Nirmala Ramarathnam, The MathWorks Inc
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Agile Offshore Development: An Oxymoron? Companies that master Agile development in a multi-shore environment can benefit from reduced calendar time to implement new features, early development feedback to make course corrections, and increased development team responsiveness to changing market requirements. Multi-shore Agile development teams face unique challenges compared with co-located teams-large time zone differences, lack of proximity, cultural differences, and more. With experience driving multi-shore Agile development with several enterprise software companies, Roger Nessier describes ways that he has addressed these challenges. He discusses sprint planning with distributed teams, how to structure and assign work, and tools for communicating in real-time to create an Agile global development environment. Learn about the benefits and limitations of using Scrum management practices for offshore development and what it takes to be successful.
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Roger Nessier, Symphony Services
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Successful Software Managment: Fifteen Lessons Learned We normally think about process improvement as something applied to projects. But process improvement is also for people-and even for managers. Join Johanna Rothman as she shares lessons she's learned and management improvements she's made during her years in management. Like many other technical managers, Johanna became a manager by rising through the technical ranks. And, like many other managers, she had plenty of technical training and mentoring but had to learn management skills the hard way-through trial and error. Johanna describes fifteen lessons she has learned as a manager and offers tips and techniques to help you avoid difficult situations. Learn how to motivate your team and raise their level of work-and how to manage yourself.
- What is the software manager's real job
- How to create an effective work environment
- How to help people do their best work
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Johanna Rothman, Rothman Consulting Group, Inc.
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Managing Upward: Getting Approvals for the Tools You Need Executive management does not like to spend money (on others); however, to build better software you may need to purchase better tools. Although skilled in producing code and running software tests, many development and QA managers do not have much experience preparing proposals and driving requests for funding through the management approval process. To gain their enthusiastic approval, you need insight into the executive heart and mind to better frame your proposal. Learn the decision-making process of executive managers, the facts they need to make a decision, and why they are reluctant to spend money even if it is in the budget. Build the case for your proposal in terms that match the business objectives of the CEO, CTO, CFO, and others with decision-making authority. Take away a template for a proposal along with examples of successful proposals, including visuals, data, competitive analysis, and much more.
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Doug Smith, Aberro Software
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Validation: What It Means in an FDA Regulated Environment Even though formal validation may not be required in unregulated environments, many mission-critical applications could benefit from performing some of the same activities required for FDA regulated systems. Validation provides documented evidence showing, with a high degree of assurance, that a system will consistently meet its predetermined requirements. FDA validation is required if the use of the computer system could potentially impact product quality, safety, or efficacy, or if the system is used to support a regulatory submission function. Learn how validation is accomplished by looking at a series of qualification exercises typically prescribed in a Validation Protocol. Take back with you templates for a typical Validation Protocol, including the System Development Review, Installation Qualification, Operational Qualification, Performance Qualification, and Revalidation.
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Chrys Kyee, Genentech Inc
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Testing SOA Middleware: Automating What You Can't See SOA projects employing Web services have multiple back-end integration points, volatile data, and no direct, visible user interface. Together, these factors make SOA applications complicated to test. Most companies opt for indirect manual testing because they see no other option. However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Using real-world case studies as examples, Jon Howarth reveals step-by-step the data driven model Wells Fargo employs to automate its SOA regression testing. Learn about the problems their QA groups encountered and the solution that drove down costs and cycle times while increasing quality. Find out how to staff and train your team to support the solution and see example metrics to measure its effectiveness. Learn how to combine vendor tools to optimize your SOA automated testing into an integrated test framework.
- An automated testing strategy for SOA applications
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Jon Howarth, Wells Fargo
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