SQE STARWEST Conference Brochure 2008

Pre-COnferenCe tUtOriaLS MOnDay, sePTeMBeR 29, 8:30-12:00 (HAlF DAy - AM) MI Becoming a trusted advisor to Senior Management Lloyd Roden, Grove Consultants new With more than twenty-five years in the software industry, Lloyd Roden has worked as a developer, managed an independent test group within a software house, and joined Grove Consultants in 1999. Lloyd has been a speaker at STAReAsT, STARwesT, EuroSTAR, AsiaSTAR, Software Test Automation, Test Congress, and Unicom conferences as well as Special Interest Groups in software testing in several countries. He was program chair for both the tenth and eleventh EuroSTAR conferences. Ruud Teunissen, International Test Consultant at POLTEQ IT Services BV, has performed several test functions in a large number of IT projects: tester, test specialist, test consultant, and test manager. Together with Martin Pol, he is co-author of several books on structured testing. His main focus at this moment is test management and test process improvement. How can test managers present information about test results so that the decision-makers receive the correct message? Testing generates a huge amount of raw data, which must be analyzed, processed, summarized, and presented to management so the best decisions can be made quickly. Using his experiences as a test manager and consultant, lloyd Roden shares ways to communicate with and disseminate information to management. Develop your skills so you become a “trusted advisor” to senior management rather than the “bearer of bad news.” Discover innovative ways to keep the information flowing to and from management and avoid losing control of the test process, particularly near the delivery date. learn how to deal effectively with various controversies that prevent senior managers from taking us seriously. MJ reliable test effort estimation Ruud Teunissen, POLTEQ IT Services BV How do you estimate your test effort? And how reliable is that estimate? Ruud Teunissen presents a practical and useful test estimation technique directly related to the maturity of your test and development process. A reliable effort estimation approach requires five basic elements: (1) strategy – Determine what to test (performance, functionality, etc.) and how thoroughly it must be tested. (2) size – yes, it does matter—not only the size of the system but also the scope of your tests. (3) expected Quality – what factors have been established to define quality? (4) infrastructure and Tools – Define how fast you can test. without the proper organizational support and the necessary tools, you’ll need more time. (5) Productivity – How experienced and efficient is your team? while it’s fun to learn new techniques, it means your time is not being spent finding defects. MK Using Visual Models for test Case Design optioNaL Laptop Rob Sabourin, AmiBug.com, Inc. Designing test cases is a fundamental skill that all testers should master. Rob sabourin shares a graphical technique he has employed to design powerful test cases that will surface important bugs quickly. These skills can be used in exploratory, agile, or engineered contexts—anytime you are having problems designing a test. Rob illustrates how you can use Mindmaps to visualize test designs and better understand variables being tested, one-at-a-time and in complex combinations with other variables. He presents the Application-inputMemory (AiM) heuristic through a series of interactive exercises. we’ll use a widely available free, open-source tool called FreeMind to help implement great test cases and focus our testing on what matters to quickly isolate critical bugs. if you are new to testing, these techniques will remove some of the mystery of good test case design. if you’re a veteran tester, these techniques will sharpen your skills and give you some new test design approaches. Participants are encouraged to bring a laptop computer to this session. Rob Sabourin has more than twenty-five years of management experience, leading teams of software development professionals. A well-respected member of the software engineering community, Rob has managed, trained, mentored, and coached hundreds of top professionals in the field. He frequently speaks at conferences and writes on software engineering, SQA, testing, management, and internationalization. The author of i am a Bug!, the popular software testing children’s book, Rob is an adjunct professor of Software Engineering at McGill University. ML Measurement and Metrics for test Managers Rick Craig, Software Quality Engineering To be most effective, test managers must develop and use metrics to help direct the testing effort and make informed recommendations about the software’s release readiness and associated risks. Because one important testing activity is to “measure” the quality of the software, test managers must measure the results of both the development and testing processes. Collecting, analyzing, and using metrics is complicated because many developers and testers feel that the metrics will be used “against them.” Rick Craig addresses common metrics: measures of product quality, defect removal efficiency, defect density, defect arrival rate, and testing status. Rick offers guidelines for developing a test measurement program, rules of thumb for collecting data, and ways to avoid “metrics dysfunction.” various metrics paradigms, including Goal-Question-Metric, are addressed with a discussion of the pros and cons of each. Participants are urged to bring their metrics problems and issues for use as discussion points. Rick Craig is a consultant, lecturer, author, and test manager, who has led numerous teams of testers on both large and small projects. In his twenty-five years of consulting worldwide, Rick has advised and supported a diverse group of organizations on many testing and test management issues. From large insurance providers and telecommunications companies to smaller software services companies, he has mentored senior software managers and helped test teams improve their effectiveness. Rick is co-author of systematic software Testing and a frequent speaker at testing conferences, including every STAR conference since its inception. Michael Bolton has been teaching software testing on five continents for eight years. He is the co-author (with senior author James Bach) of Rapid software Testing, a course that presents a methodology and mindset for testing software expertly in uncertain conditions and under extreme time pressure. Michael is a co-founder of the Toronto Workshops on Software Testing. He has a regular column in Better software magazine, writes for Quality software, and sporadically produces his own newsletter. Michael lives in Toronto, Canada, with his wife and two children. He can be reached at mb@developsense.com, or through his Web site, http://www.developsense.com. MM Difficult testing Questions and How to answer them optioNaL new Laptop Michael Bolton, DevelopSense Testers live in a world of great complexity, scarce information, and extraordinary time pressures. with all these challenges, really good testing is less about confirming, verifying, and validating, and more about thinking, questioning, exploring, investigating, and discovering. while technical testing skills are important, you need better thinking skills to solve your biggest testing questions. Michael Bolton teaches you the skills—questioning, critical thinking, context-driven analysis, and general systems thinking—that can help you deal confidently and thoughtfully with your testing challenges. in this interactive workshop, you will examine common cognitive biases within testing and practice the thinking tools you need to overcome them. you’ll learn to use modeling and general systems approaches to manage complexity and see more clearly. work with Michael and others to explore your most difficult testing questions—and find innovative approaches to answer them. Participants are encouraged to bring a laptop computer to this session. Call 888.268.8770 or 904.278.0524 to register • www.sqe.Com/swreg http://www.developsense.com http://www.sqe.com/sWreg

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SQE STARWEST Conference Conference-At-A-Glance Pre-Conference Tutorials Keynote Sessions Concurrent Sessions Registration Information

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