What is the impact of agile methods on test departments and testers? How do you manage testing in an agile test department? Robert Martin, an early adopter and proponent of agile development practices, discusses his experiences and recommendations for how to organize and run an agile test department. He describes the principles, practices, tools, and metrics that are important to successful test management within agile development. Agile methods change the role of test departments from verification to specification. With agile methods, you develop tests before the code, and the tests become the detailed requirements documentation. This paradigm shift has a profound impact on both the test team and the programming team. Learn about the test management problems that often arise in making the transition to agile development and common solutions that address these issues.

Software quality is first and foremost a business issue, and testing is often the last line of defense. The staffing, tools, and processes that we use to support our customers are fundamental to achieving quality-and their business objectives-in a cost-effective manner. Significantly improving software quality in an organization is a major project and not for the faint of heart. Such an improvement project must have a positive return on investment and a good likelihood of success. In this talk Richard Bender addresses fourteen major areas of concern for software quality and how they can impact the business. He includes industry statistics to help you make the case and weaves into the solution set the importance of good requirements and integrated testing.

• Fourteen reasons to improve software quality
• The ROI of software testing and quality improvement
• How to achieve buy-in for quality improvement

As a testing consultant Geoff Horne often is called upon to help rescue runaway testing projects. In this presentation, Geoff looks at common causes of such problems, what to do to remedy them, and how to prevent their recurrence. If your testing is taking longer than planned ... or you are finding too many (or too few) defects... or your test project has simply lost its way, then this session is for you. Find out if you are operating with faulty assumptions, learn how to identify the root causes of your problems, and develop a strategy and plan to fix them. Whether your issues relate to test planning, analysis, design, execution, management, or reporting, you will take away an assortment of tools and approaches to help get your testing project back on track-and keep it there.

• How to re-scope your test strategy and move forward
• Stringent incident logging and management procedures

You have heard about agile software development techniques such as eXtreme Programming (XP), Scrum, and Agile Modeling (AM). The industry is buzzing with everything from "this is the greatest thing ever" to "it's just hacking with a fancy new name." Comments like "there is no place for testers because developers and users do the testing now" and "testers play an important role in the agile methods" are both common. Scott Ambler, an early proponent of the agile movement, explains the fundamentals, values, and principles of agile development. He describes a range of agile techniques and explores many myths and misconceptions surrounding agility. Agile software development is real, it works, and it may be an important part of your future in testing. Better testing and improved quality are critical aspects of agile software development, but the roles of traditional testers and QA professionals on agile projects remain unclear.