SQE STARWEST Conference Brochure 2008

COnCUrrent SeSSiOnS MONDAY, MAY 16, 8:30-5:00 weDneSDay, OCTOBeR 1, 1:45 p.m. W6 TEST MAnAGEMEnT W9 PERSOnAL EXCELLEnCE great test teams Don’t just Happen Jane Fraser, Electronic Arts Test teams are just groups of people who work on projects together. But how do great test teams become great? More importantly, how can you lead your team to greatness? Jane Fraser describes the changes she made after several people on her testing staff asked to move out of testing and into other groups—production and engineering—and how helping them has improved the whole team and made Jane a much better leader. Join Jane as she shares her team’s journey toward greatness. she started by getting to really know the people on the team—what makes them tick, how they react to situations, what excites them, what makes them feel good and bad. she discovered the questions to ask and the behaviors to observe that will give you the insight you need to lead. Join Jane to learn how to empower your team members with the responsibility, authority, and accountability to get the job done while you concentrate on removing roadblocks to their success. And most importantly, remember it’s all about them—it’s not about you. W7 what Price truth? when a tester is asked to Lie Fiona Charles, Quality Intelligence, Inc. As testers and test managers, our job is to tell the truth about the current state of the software on our projects. Unfortunately, in the high-stakes business of software development, often there is pressure—subtle or overt—to distort our messages. when projects are late or product reliability is poor, managers’ and developers’ reputations—and perhaps even their jobs—may be on the line. Fiona Charles discusses the importance to testers of refusing to compromise the truth, recognizing a potential cover-up before it occurs, knowing the legal position around securing project information, and developing a strategy to maintain integrity and still get out alive. she examines the early warning signs and discusses the practical tactics available to testers, including signaling your unwillingness to lie, getting accurate and detailed reports of project progress and status on the record, keeping notes of disturbing conversations and events, and choosing whether to “blow the whistle” (and if so, to whom), leave the organization—or both. W10 TEST TECHnIquES SPECIAL TOPICS Understanding test Coverage Michael Bolton, DevelopSense Test coverage of application functionality is often poorly understood and always hard to measure. if they do it at all, many testers express coverage in terms of numbers, as a percentage or proportion—but a percentage of what? when we test, we develop two parallel stories. The “product story” is what we know and can infer about the software product—important information about how it works and how it might fail. The “testing story” is how we modeled the testing space, the oracles that we used, and the extent to which we configured, operated, observed, and evaluated the product. To understand test coverage, we must know what we did not test and that what we did test was good enough. Michael Bolton proposes alternatives for obtaining and describing test coverage—diagrams, strategy models, checklists, spreadsheets and matrices, and dashboards—and suggests how we can use these tools to build a clearer understanding of coverage to illuminate both the product story and the testing story. W8 the Case against test Cases James Bach, Satisfice A test case is a kind of container. you already know that counting the containers in a supermarket would tell you little about the value of the food they contain. so, why do we count test cases executed as a measure of testing’s value? The impact and value a test case actually has varies greatly from one to the next. in many cases, the percentage of test cases passing or failing reveals nothing about the reliability or quality of the software under test. Managers and other non-testers love test cases because they provide the illusion of both control and value for money spent. However, that doesn’t mean testers have to go along with the deceit. James Bach stopped managing testing using test cases long ago and switched to test activities, test sessions, risk areas, and coverage areas to measure the value of his testing. Join James as he explains how you can make the switch—and why you should. TEST AuTOMATIOn automate aPi tests with windows PowerShell Nikhil Bhandari, Intuit Although a myriad of testing tools have emerged over the years, only a few focus on the area of APi testing for windows-based applications. nikhil Bhandari describes how to automate these types of software tests with windows Powershell, the free command line shell and scripting language. Unlike other scripting shells, Powershell works with wMi, XMl, ADO, COM, and .neT objects as well as data stores, such as the file system, registry, and certificates. with Powershell, you can easily develop frameworks for testing—unit, functional, regression, performance, deployment, etc.—and integrate them into a single, consistent overall automation environment. with Powershell, you can develop scripts to check logs, events, process status, registry check, file system management, and more. Use it to parse XMl statements and other test files. Reduce your testing cycle times to better support iterative development and, at the same time, have more fun testing your windows applications. “This was my first STAR conference and it was fabulous. Wonderful to get new perspectives on topics and it really refreshed my attitude and confidence in my own career.” Jen Tritch Software Quality analyst, Catalina Marketing Call 888.268.8770 or 904.278.0524 to register • www.sqe.Com/swreg 19 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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