Formal code inspections work for some organizations, but are often considered too structured for many others. Thirumalesh Bhat discusses the pitfalls of formal inspections and presents a lightweight code review process that works at Microsoft. Learn the value of code reviews to improve the quality of both the test code and production code. Find out why test teams at Microsoft participate in all code reviews. Start a code review process in your organization, or improve the one that's in place now.

Test professionals face a myriad of issues with immature development technologies, changing systems environments, increasingly complex applications, and 24/7 reliability demands. We must choose the right methodology and best testing techniques to meet these challenges, all with a limited set of tools and not enough time. In this double-track session, you'll be able to ask for help from your peers, share you expertise with the group, and develop some new approaches to your biggest challenges. Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby facilitate this session, focusing on topics such as model based testing, security testing, testing without requirements, testing in the XP/Agile world, and configuration management. Discussions are structured in a framework so that participants will receive a summary or their work product after the conference.

There are more than 7,000 possible configurations of operating systems, browsers, screen resolutions, and other unique characteristics in today’s computer environments. Learn about a flexible automation framework for functional configuration testing based on an approach developed by Plaxo, Inc. This approach uses multiple virtual operating systems with a pre-installed, commercial automation tool launched on a single Intel-based computer. The results were highly scalable for new configurations under test and allowed the team to test over 30 different configurations on one PC.

Although test automation has been around for years, many organizations still have difficulty making automated testing a reality. Although organizations see the value in using automated test tools, research shows that most organizations perform more manual testing than automated testing. This presentation examines the big challenges in test automation and describes ways that successful organizations have overcome them. Learn how to apply these lessons in your organization to add value to your testing efforts. Topics include: how to organize your team for test automation; how to find the right tools; how to get and keep management support; creative ways to train people to use test tools; how to manage people's expectations; how to control and maintain automated testware; and how to integrate tool usage into existing test processes.