Conference Presentations

Automated Testing of a Dynamically Configurable System

You provide your clients a service and product, designed so that each component is customizable and can be dynamically changed right down to screen layout and field location. This greatly increases the amount of testing you have to perform on a release since there could be more than...

Terry Morrish, Synacor
Swimming with the Salmon: Lessons in Moving Quality Upstream
Slideshow

Having difficulties getting your organization to recognize the value of QA? Is your “salmon team” losing to currents that impede continuous improvement and strategic planning? Colleen Kirtland and Harish Krishnankutty share their two-year uphill struggle to elevate QA to the position of...

Colleen Kirtland, The Capital Group & Harish Krishnankutty, Infosys Limited
Building Quality In
Slideshow

Have you ever delivered software to testing only to receive unexpected feedback regarding quality issues of interoperability, reliability, usability, or testability? Or worse, delivered to customers a product that fully met its specifications but generated complaints and calls for urgent...

Dawn Haynes, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
Structural Testing: When Quality Really Matters
Slideshow

Jamie Mitchell explores an underused and often forgotten test technique—white-box testing. Also known as structural testing, this technique requires some programming expertise and access to the code. Using only black-box testing, you could...

Jamie Mitchell, Jamie Mitchell Consulting Inc.
White-box Testing: When Quality Really Matters
Slideshow

Jamie Mitchell explores perhaps the most underused test technique in our arsenal—white-box testing. Also known as structural testing, white-box requires some programming expertise, access to the code, and an analysis tool. If you only employ black-box testing, you could easily ship...

Jamie Mitchell, Jamie Mitchell Consulting, Inc.
Taming the Beast: Test/QA on Large-scale Projects
Slideshow

Large, complex projects—those with more than 100 people and lasting more that a year—require special considerations for developing, communicating, and managing the overall QA strategy and test plans. Shaun Bradshaw provides insights he gained from a $70 million financial...

Shaun Bradshaw, Zenergy Technologies, Inc.
Orthogonal Defect Classification: An Agile Test/QA Primer
Slideshow

Can defect root cause analysis be made agile? Can we transform a multi-hour task from the classical world of software engineering into one that takes minutes and yields greater insights? Learn how Orthogonal Defect Classification (ODC) extracts semantics from defects and turns them into insights on the development process using analytics. After a quick overview of ODC, Ram Chillarege presents a case study to illustrate the method using real-world data on an agile project. They used ODC Triggers to measure test effectiveness at the end of every sprint to evaluate the effectiveness of testing compared to earlier sprints. This ODC process takes just minutes and brings its insight into the realm of the agile development practices. Put a powerful analytical technique in your agile toolbox to increase the velocity of your agile project and find new ways to reduce defects while measuring the quality of testing.

Ram Chillarege, Chillarege Inc.
Pay Now or Pay More Every Day: Reduce Technical Debt Now!
Slideshow

Is your team missing delivery dates? Is your velocity inconsistent from sprint to sprint? Are customers complaining about defects or the time it takes to add new features? These are signs that you are mired in technical debt-a metaphor that describes the long-term costs of doing something in a quick and dirty way and not going back to clean up the mess. Fadi Stephan shares a technical debt management approach to help you make prudent decisions on how much effort to invest in reducing technical debt. Discover ways to measure the quality of your current code base and determine the cost of eventual rework hanging over your system. Learn how to engage executives and get buy-in on a debt removal plan that will improve system design, increase the quality of your code, and return your team to high productivity. If you are burdened with technical debt, the choice is to pay now or continue paying more every day-forever.

Fadi Stephan, Excella Consulting
Database Development: The Object-oriented and Test-driven Way
Slideshow

As developers, we've created heuristics that help us build robust systems and employed test-driven development (TDD) to improve code design and counter instability. Yet object-oriented development principles and TDD have failed to gain traction in the database world. That’s because database development involves an additional driving force-the data. Max Guernsey shows how to treat databases as objects with classes of their own-rather than as containers of objects-and how to drive database designs from tests. He illustrates a way to give these database classes the ability to upgrade old data without introducing undue risk. Max also shares how to apply good object-oriented design principles to database classes and how to enforce semantic connections between databases and clients.

Max Guernsey, Hexagon Software LLC
Back to the Basics: Principles for Constructing Quality Software
Slideshow

Using an analogy to the building codes followed by architects and contractors in the construction of buildings, Rick Spiewak explores the fundamental principles for developing and delivering high quality, mission-critical systems. Just as buildings are constructed using different materials and techniques, we use a variety of languages, methodologies, and tools to develop software. Although there is no formal "building code" for software, software projects should consider-and judiciously apply-the recognized "best" practices of static analysis, automated unit testing, code re-use, and peer reviews. Rick takes you on a deep dive into each of these techniques where you'll learn about their advantages, disadvantages, costs, challenges, and more.

Rick Spiewak, The MITRE Corporation

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