Better Software Conference & Expo 2008 brochure

cOncuRRenT cLasses WednesdaY, june 11, 2:45 W15 ManaGinG proJeCts anD teaMs W19 testinG The psychology of software engineers James McCaffrey, Volt Information Sciences, Inc. The personality traits of software engineers tend to be quite different from those of the general population. In recent years, psychologists have come to a nearly unanimous consensus on the number and nature of human personality dimensions. A recent large-scale study involving several hundred software engineers and “regular” people (non-engineers) revealed that the personalities of developers, testers, and managers tend to be different from each other and from the personalities of the general population as a whole. So, how can you use this information? Although administering a personality assessment as part of a hiring process may be legal, it is problematic at best. A much better use of a personality assessment is to gauge the profile of your existing team members to maximize their productivity. Join James McCaffrey as he describes how you can quickly and easily create, administer, and interpret a personality profile of your team. At the conclusion of the session, you will have the opportunity to take the personality assessment used in the study and see how your personality compares with other software professionals. Ten principles of an agile Tester Lisa Crispin, ePlan Services, Inc. Everyone on an agile team does testing. If that’s true, what’s so special about an agile tester? If I define myself as a tester on an agile team, what does that really mean? Do agile testers need skill sets different from testers on traditional teams? What guides agile testers in their daily activities? Lisa Crispin believes that when it comes to agile testers, skills are important—but attitude is everything. The best agile testers have a results-oriented, customer-focused, collaborative, and creative mindset that makes them successful in an agile development environment. Lisa explains how you can apply ten agile principles to add value on agile teams, or on any software development team for that matter. The ten principles of an agile tester include areas such as feedback, communication, simplicity, continuous improvement, and responding to change. At the end of this session, you’ll have gained some practical advice for your own self-improvement process. W20 reQUireMents W16 aGile ManaGeMent Who are Your project stakeholders? Linda Westfall, The Westfall Team It’s easy to list all the stakeholders and identify different types of users for your software project—WRONG! Although it may be obvious who holds the checkbook for your project and who the “average” users will be, many other people and user roles are not so obvious. Unaccounted for stakeholders and users result in missed requirements and often leave important conflicts unresolved. Even worse, you can lose support—and the whole project can fail—if important people are left out of the process. As Linda Westfall demonstrates unique “brain writing” techniques in a facilitated, interactive requirements workshop, you will learn ways to identify a complete list of the important project stakeholders and user roles. After pruning the stakeholder list to eliminate duplicates, Linda demonstrates how to define a requirements elicitation strategy to select appropriate techniques for each stakeholder. Practice techniques for resolving stakeholder conflicts and take back a stakeholder identification checklist to ensure that you consider a broad range of stakeholder categories for your projects. agile Leadership: coaching great Teams Robert Galen, Robert Galen Consulting Group When adopting agile methods, many project managers find it difficult to move from a traditional, control-based model to a servant leader-based model. This paradigm challenges managers to their core because agility demands a coaching-driven mindset rather than the classic “I’m-in-charge” view. Explore the core aspects of agile leadership and team coaching with Bob Galen as you look at leadership from an agile perspective. Bob discusses “coaching up” the team as part of an agile adoption strategy and offers a conversation framework you can immediately use at work—and at home. Learn the fundamental coaching patterns and anti-patterns as you find out when to step in to help and when to be patient. You’ll have the opportunity to practice a conversation or two and hone your new coaching skills. W17 aGile DeVelopMent agile software Testing strategies Jared Richardson, 6th Sense Analytics Test automation is like exercise. We know both are great ideas, but most of us don’t do enough of either. Although we know that creating a solid automated test suite is critical to any agile testing strategy, we are often just told to “Do it” without much support—money or people. Jared Richardson examines the infrastructure and tools needed for your automated testing to succeed and prosper. Jared examines three strategies—test-driven development, defectdriven testing, and blitzkrieg testing—you can use to ensure great test coverage on your projects. You’ll gain an understanding of how to leverage your testing investments by employing continuous integration practices in your development projects. With real life scenarios as a backdrop, Jared discusses appropriate testing strategies for your current project or the next one down the road. Jared will get you moving toward automated testing, whether you’re starting fresh or trying to clean up an existing project. W21 speCial topiCs eight steps to a Virtualized Test environment John Janakiraman, illumita Virtualized software test environments deliver quantifiable benefits—lower lab costs, faster test cycles, and lower IT support overhead. New capabilities in virtualization and virtual test lab solutions are being brought to market by vendors such as VMWare, Surgient, VM Logix, and illumita. These tools promise compelling productivity improvements: richer test scope, tighter lab integration with test tools and processes, and on-demand test infrastructure. John Janakiraman describes capabilities and benefits of virtual test lab environments, offers guidance in adopting a virtual test lab, and shares lessons learned from real world implementations. John walks you through eight important steps to adopting a virtualized environment in your test lab. As John shares the lessons he’s learned implementing virtual test labs, find out if a virtualized lab environment is right for your organization. W18 proCess iMproVeMent successful process improvement—The agile Way Nelson Perez, Sierra’s Edge, Inc. Using agile techniques to develop and implement new processes—whether for use in agile environments or not—will increase stakeholder involvement and buy-in, lower cultural resistance, reduce process development cycle time, and encourage continuous process improvement. Join Nelson Perez as he explains how to translate the core principles of the Agile Manifesto into a context that you can apply to any process development and improvement program. Use the Agile Manifesto values and principles to speed up your process improvement initiatives and ensure its success. Based on his experience in a company with a highly resistive culture, Nelson realized that process improvement approaches must be tailored to each situation—what works consistently in one organizational culture may not be useful in another culture down the street, across town, or in another country. The agile paradigm works in process improvement programs because it is a universal approach for encouraging adaptive change. Learn new ways to encourage continuous process improvement and build stronger teams within your development group and throughout the enterprise. To regisTer call 888-268-8770 or 904-278-0524 or visiT www.sqe.com/bscereg http://www.sqe.com/bscereg

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Better Software Conference & Expo 2008 brochure

Better Software Conference & Expo Brochure Contents Conference At-A-Glance Special Events Conference Speakers 49 In-Depth Pre-Conference Tutorials 4 Keynote Presentations 42 Concurrent Classes Event Location and Las Vegas Highlights What Our Delegates are Saying Sponsors and Exhibitors Registration Information

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