Better Software Conference & Expo 2008 brochure

cOncuRRenT cLasses ThuRsdaY, june 12, 12:45 T8 ManaGinG proJeCts anD teaMs T12 soa a Recipe for self-induced project failure Mike Seavers, BJC HealthCare Even with the progress of development practices in the last few years, have we significantly increased the percentage of successful projects? Are we meeting the needs of our customers at a cost they can afford? Are we adding business value with every project? Mike Seavers believes that, in many cases, our development practices are no better than before. The core of the problem is a fundamental misunderstanding between customers and software organizations about the difference between needs, driving forces, and features. Customers are needs-driven, but they speak in terms of features without understanding why. Similarly, developers are feature-driven and rarely address customers’ actual needs. By uncovering these misconceptions, Mike explains how to better understand your customers—what they really want and value, how to identify and remove feature-driven behaviors in our organizations that prevent us from being successful, and how, by mobilizing your organization around real value, to turn your customers into advocates rather than adversaries. sOa Testing challenges and proven practices Guruprasad Gopalakrishnan, Wipro Technologies The best thing about Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is its flexibility—a heterogeneous computing environment in which different services and service providers can use different technologies; loose coupling of components to allow any application to make use of service capabilities; and ad-hoc integration of applications within and across organizations. However, from a tester’s perspective, these very advantages make the testing of Web services and SOAbased applications highly complex. Testing Web services through the front-end of applications is usually ineffective. Tracking defects to their source is difficult because of the layered application designs. Instead, you must design and execute mostly non-functional tests for compliance to standards, interoperability, security, reliability, and performance. Join Guruprasad Gopalakrishnan to find out about the challenges inherent in SOA testing, discover the tools available to help you in your quest, and go home with a “tested” approach you can use to optimally confirm SOA operations. T9 personal DeVelopMent T1 seCUrity The Leadership imperative: creating a culture of Trust Pollyanna Pixton, Accelinnova In our personal and business lives, many of us know leaders who successfully foster environments of incredible creativity, innovation, and ideas—while other leaders try but fail. So, how do the top leaders get it right? Going beyond the basics, Pollyanna Pixton explores with you the ways that the best leaders create “safety nets” that allow people to discover and try new possibilities, fail early, and correct faster. Removing fear and engendering trust make the team and organization more creative and productive as they spend less energy protecting themselves and the status quo. Pollyanna shares the tools you, as a leader, need to develop open environments based on trust—the first step in collaboration across the enterprise. Learn to step forward and do the right thing without breaking trust. Find out when and how to acknowledge and reward trust in your team and organization. automating security Testing with curl and perl Paco Hope, Cigital Although all teams want to test their applications for security, our plates are already full with functional tests. What If we could automate those security tests? Fortunately, most Web-based and desktop applications submit readily to automated testing. Paco Hope explores two flexible, powerful, and totally free tools that can help to automate security tests. cUrl is a free program that issues automatic basic Web requests; Perl is a well-known programming language ideally suited for writing test scripts. Paco demonstrates the basics of automating tests using both tools and then explores some of the more complicated concerns that arise during automation—authentication, session state, and parsing responses. He then illustrates simulated malicious inputs and the resulting outputs that show whether the software has embedded security problems. The techniques demonstrated in this session apply equally well to all Web platforms and all desktop operating systems. You’ll leave with an understanding of the basics and a long list of resources you can reference to learn more about Web security test automation. T10 aGile DeVelopMent The impact of poor estimating and how to fix it Mitch Lacey, Ascentium Running Scrum by-the-book for three months, the team was continually failing to meet its delivery commitments. As a result, trust between the business managers and the team degraded almost to a point-of-no-return. Even holding bi-weekly retrospectives, the team could not pinpoint the problems causing their inability to release iterations on time. Mitch Lacey was asked to assist the team in finding the root causes of the problems. He analyzed multiple aspects of the project—from individual work items to planning meetings. Multiple issues were identified, but one thing stood out above all others—the estimation process they used had caused the team to miss its deadlines again and again. Mitch discusses the estimation problems the team was having, how they were fixed, and the resulting improvements in customer satisfaction value delivered. He presents new concepts, ideas, and techniques to help you improve your estimating practices and outlines the benefits of employing collaboration tools in the process. T14 speCial topiCs Real software Qa Linda Westfall, The Westfall Team With the ever-increasing demand for software products, it is imperative for organizations to move away from trying to “test in” software quality and move toward adopting a comprehensive, total-life cycle software quality management approach. Such an approach is the basis of real software quality assurance (QA)—all the planned and systematic actions necessary to provide confidence that a system will perform satisfactorily in production. In contrast to software quality control (QC), which consists of detection activities such as testing that are product focused, software QA is process focused. Software QA includes defining, establishing, and monitoring the control practices that ensure policies, systems, and processes are effective and efficient across the entire software development life cycle. Linda Westfall focuses on defining the elements and techniques of a comprehensive software QA program. Her goal is to help you identify gaps and process improvement opportunities in your organization’s software QA activities. T11 MetriCs function point analysis: a Quick and easy primer David Garmus and David Herron, The David Consulting Group The function point metric is used by many organizations worldwide to more accurately size systems. Knowing the size of a system allows developers to better meet customer demands of functionality within time and budget and communicate about these issues with the system “owners.” Based on the latest version of the International Function Point Users Group (IFPUG) Counting Practices Manual, David Garmus and David Herron provide a detailed explanation of the rules engineers must follow to accurately count function points. Join them to learn the value and use of function points within an overall software measurement program and the basics of how and when to use function point analysis (FPA). Examine real-world examples of software to see how to identify the different functional components according the IFPUG’s FPA standards. To assist them in applying IFPUG rules for counting function points, all participants will receive a Certified Reference Card. 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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