personal improvement

Even though you employ the best testing processes, techniques, people, and tools, the overall effectiveness of your testing effort will always be bounded by your organization's commitment to quality. Cliff Morehead describes techniques he uses for assessing an organization's quality culture and shares approaches for influencing positive cultural change. Organizations have two major dimensions that determine if change takes hold: the driving force-top-down versus bottom-up-and the quality focus-externally oriented versus internally oriented. Cliff discusses specific tactics you can use to increase the effectiveness of your test improvement efforts for different organization types, with a focus on how front-line team members can influence their organization's culture. Take back the lessons Cliff has learned from his experiences in improving testing-what has worked for him and what hasn't.

Are you a new Better Software speaker or aspiring to be one in the future? Join us at this workshop on making effective conference presentations. Learn the secrets of developing content, identifying the Big Message, preparing slides with just the right words and images, presenting your message, handling questions from the audience, and being ready when things go wrong. Lee Copeland, a professional speaker since birth, shares ideas that will help you become a better speaker, no matter what the occasion.

In this bonus session from the Better Software Conference & EXPO, Lee Copeland speaks about the process of choosing session speakers for Software Quality Engineering conferences and offers some tips to help you down the path toward becoming a better speaker.

As software testers, how do we keep our skills fresh and up-to-date? In our line of work, there is always another build to test, more testing than we have time for, and small training budgets. Selena Delesie explains why skills improvement is critical for both individuals and organizations to succeed, and explores ongoing opportunities for you and your team to learn and practice new test skills. While improving skills requires time and effort, the benefits far outweigh the costs as you expand your career, improve the quality of your work, reduce time-to-delivery, and improve your reputation and your team’s value to the business. Learn some off-the-beaten-path ways you can enhance your skills, and discover the fun and benefits of hands-on learning. Selena demonstrates how crowdsourced and open source projects are excellent learning environments for testers.

Who drives your career as a tester or test leader? Hopefully, not the company for which you work. It's you-you must be the driver. Because the craft of testing is still relatively free and open, there is no authority structure that defines or controls our industry. There are no generally accepted and standardized credentials that will admit you to the upper tier of income and respect as a tester. There are no universities that offer degrees in testing-although certificates and certifications abound. What we do have is a pastiche of communities, proprietary methodologies, schools of thought-together with ambitious individuals who write articles, teach, argue with each other, and speak at conferences.