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Agile Development & Better Software West 2011: Agile Testing: Challenges Beyond the Easy Contexts Don't let anyone tell you differently: Agile testing is hard! First, we have to get over the misconception that you don't need testers within agile teams. Then, we have to integrate testers with the developers and engender a holistic quality approach. And those are only the challenges when the going is easy! In more difficult contexts, testing in agile environments is-well, even more difficult. Bob Galen explores how to handle testing in difficult contexts-lack of test automation capabilities, agile in highly regulated environments, testing when your team is spread globally and real-time interactions are nearly impossible, and more. He describes contexts and approaches for blending existing, traditional testing techniques with their agile counterparts. With real-world examples, Bob describes how teams have achieved a good working balance between the two-for example, in test planning and quality metrics reporting.
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Bob Galen, iContact
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Questioning Best Practices: The Story of One Test Team's Transformation John McConda presents the story of a test team that challenged the notion of best practices and came out more focused, efficient, and effective. Creating a mission statement and using it as a measuring stick, this team threw out all practices, started with a clean slate, and scrutinized every proposed process and practice. They sought to understand and evaluate each practice-based contribution to the testing mission. Examples: Test cases-don't need them; Automated regression test suite-just enough, thanks; Performance testing-only with accurate operational modeling; CMMI®-just the parts that work for us. The result was a transformed team that began exceeding its goals and earned accolades from a previously unhappy customer. Along the way they learned plenty of lessons about making sure everyone's voice is heard and how to implement sustainable change within a test team.
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John McConda, Moser Consulting
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Defect Prevention: A Tester's Role Software delivery schedules are getting shorter and shorter as companies attempt to deliver products to their customers at a blinding pace. A critical role for testers and testing in this crazy world is identifying defects before they ever get to testing. Mike Ennis identifies key defect prevention techniques-walkthroughs, inspections, and reviews-that your test team needs to begin using-today. Yes, we know that these static analysis techniques are old, dull, and may seem boring; however, they actually work! Join Mike to see how static analysis techniques, performed by testers, help them test faster and more effectively while at the same time identifying and eliminating defects earlier in development.
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Mike Ennis, Accenture
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Focusing Testing on Business Needs Many testers mourn the state of their state-undervalued, unrespected, and often excluded from important project conversations. Even though their advice may be dismissed, many testers somehow believe that they are accountable for software quality. Why does this happen? Testers often forget that they are service providers whose role is to provide critical information to the project’s stakeholders. Selena Delesie explains why testing and test reporting should focus on business needs to add the most value and gain respect within the organization. Selena will help testers learn how to ask the right questions, draw out pertinent information, and understand the stakeholders “world view.” Explore key values required to be successful in transforming how the organization perceives testing. Discover communication techniques that will help testers connect with stakeholders and get them clamoring for more testing.
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Selena Delesie, Delesie Solutions
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Virtual Private Clouds: A Secure Approach for Leveraging Cloud Benefits Using cloud computing resources to test software can significantly expand the universe of plausible test scenarios. With the power of the cloud, we now can simulate test loads of many thousands of concurrent users across hundreds of platform combinations. So, how can we provide a secure environment for cloud-based testing over the Internet? Or must we abandon the cloud and revert to testing behind the firewall? Prashant Suri has tackled this challenge using Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) to secure data and transactions while replicating heavy user loads in geographically dispersed locations. Prashant explains how to include cloud resources as if they were simply another component of the in-house network. He shares case studies on test architecture solutions and performance testing using VPC so you can leverage secure cloud benefits in your work.
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Prashant Suri, QA InfoTech
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Testing for Web Accessibility Because 10% to 20% of the general population has disabilities that can impact their ability to use software, systems should be developed to accommodate their needs. Even though web accessibility requirements are included in many development projects, they are often not fully understood and verified during testing. Join David Leistner as he examines the Web Accessibility Initiative and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. First, David explains what web accessibility is, its importance, and who it affects. Next, he introduces the types of technology available for testing compliance and shows how to use analysis tools in testing for accessibility. Gain an understanding of the issues and alternatives with web accessibility development and ways that testers can ensure that people with disabilities can access the web and Internet-access they deserve and, in some cases, are entitled by law to have.
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David Leistner, National Archives and Records Administration
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RESTful Web Services Testing RESTful web services are gaining popularity due to their features, scalability, ease of development, and the stateless nature of the REST architecture. As more companies start adopting REST, efficient testing of these web services will become an important issue. Bindu Laxminarayan shares her experience with testing RESTful services using both manual and automated approaches. She describes the differences between SOAP and RESTful web services, discusses REST architecture from a testing perspective, and provides an in-depth guide for testing. Bindu shares examples of different MIME types such as XML, JSON, and XHTML with a particular emphasis on these different testing types. She identifies and illustrates important test issues to consider during regression, integration, and load testing of RESTful web services.
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Srichakrabindu Laxminarayan, Overstock.com
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The Right Stuff: Testers in the Agile World Agile is a major paradigm shift for software development teams–and especially for testers. Some testers struggle to find their identity, may feel like victims of the new agile process, and wonder if they have “the right stuff” to succeed in the agile world. Vinod Malhotra shares his insight on what the right stuff is. First, testers need to customize their processes to fit agile practices. Second, testers–and the whole team–need tools to enable team collaboration, promote transparency, and reduce waste of their limited time and resources. Third and most importantly, testers must alter and transform their mindset to embrace close collaboration with developers, insist on smaller chunks of testable functionality for testing early and often, learn to value working software rather than compliance to specifications, employ exploration in their testing, and embrace change.
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Vinod Malhotra, Microsoft Corporation
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The Miracle of Change: Transforming a Testing Organization Change is the catalyst that sparks creativity and innovation–it's invigorating, inspiring, and synergistic. Just as businesses react, test organizations also must react quickly and successfully with innovative solutions to changing demands in the marketplace. Is your test organization prepared to meet these challenges? Do you embrace an innovative culture where change is welcomed? Come and learn how Audrey Garner and her team transformed their testing organization from mediocre to extraordinary while maintaining their day-to-day testing activities. Audrey shares insights on creating successful change, inspiring innovation, enhancing the value of the testing practice, and maintaining constant communication along the way. She illustrates how to evaluate your current state, define important changes, measure improvement, instill accountability, and enhance professional growth.
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Audrey Garner, AmerisourceBergen Corporation - Lash Group
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Fuzzing and Fault Modeling for Product Evaluation Test environments are often maintained under favorable conditions, providing a stable, reliable configuration for testing. However, once the product is released to production, it is subject to the stresses of low resources, noisy–even malicious–data, unusual users, and much more. Will real-world use destroy the reliability of your software and embarrass your organization? Shmuel Gershon describes fuzzing and fault modeling, techniques used to simulate worst-case run-time scenarios in his testing. Fuzzing explores the limits of a system interface with high volumes of random input data. Fault models examine and highlight system resource usage, pointing out potential problems. These techniques help raise important questions about product quality–even for conditions that aren't explicit in requirements.
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Shmuel Gershon, Intel Corporation
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