Changing Role of Test Track

Software Testing is dramatically changing and evolving. The role for quality and testing is expanding into Dev/Test/Ops, where testing is being integrated into all aspects of the software development lifecycle. Speed and quality are now coming together as developers, QA managers, IT operations and line of business are now focused on delivering quality user experiences to consumers.

This track will look at the changing role of testing in today's SDLC and how continuous testing concepts are changing the way software is developed and deployed. We will have industry experts discuss what to expect with next generation SDLC platforms and solutions, and how to implement continuous testing into your organization.

Breakout Sessions

Allan Wagner
Technical Marketing Manager
IBM Rational

Service Virtualization: Enabling Testers to Test Continuously

Testing has always been challenging and it just keeps getting harder. End user demands for higher quality software delivered faster is forcing testers to look at ways to test continuously. However, the highly integrated nature of today’s mobile, cloud-based, and the other applications combined with the increased dependencies on services – which may not be available when teams need them - is introducing new testing delays. Delays which can be avoided by teams who embrace service virtualization, which is a necessity for achieving continuous testing. Join Al as he shares how teams can use service virtualization to make the unavailable available for continuous integration, functional and performance testing. Learn how and where to apply service virtualization in your methodology, regardless of the types of applications being developed.

Curtis Stuehrenberg
Test and QA Manager
Climate Corporation

ACCelerare Your Agile Test Planning

One of the most pervasive questions I'm asked by people testing within an agile environment is how to perform test planning when you've only got two weeks for a sprint - and you're usually asked to start before specifications and other work is solidified. This session track explores one of the most effective tools I've used to get a test team started working at the beginning of a sprint and perhaps even earlier. We'll be conducting a working session using the ACC method first proposed by James Whittaker and developed over practice by myself and others.

Jeff Sussna
Founder and Principal
Ingineering.IT

Continuous Quality: What Software-as-Service Means for QA

21st-century IT approaches such as Cloud Computing, DevOps, and Continuous Delivery drive dramatic shifts in the roles, perspectives, and skill sets of QA Engineers. They must become software engineers in their own right. At the same time, they need the ability to understand and validate operational concerns such as security, scalability, resilience, etc. In a software-as-service world, QA's ultimate job is to help IT organizations understand the customer's job-to-be-done and ensure they satisfy customers' needs for deliverability and serviceability. This talk will provide an introduction to the new role of QA. It will describe new testing tools, techniques, and mindsets. It will also explore ways that QA can help connect development and operations more directly to the business and to the customer.

David Murphy
Moderator
SVP Delivery
SOASTA

Cloud Testing In the Mainstream: User stories from Industry Leaders

Cloud testing enables companies in every industry to respond faster to market demands while still delivering the highest quality of user experiences. SOASTA’s Dave Murphy has been on the front lines with these customers as they’ve transformed their processes and expectations to test and tune their web and mobile sites. Dave will lead a power panel including Steven Winter (FIS Mobile), Ashwin Kothari (Nordstrom), Mark Tomlinson, and Nick Richardson who will explain how cloud testing has changed their business.

What were the drivers for the change?
How has cloud computing shifted the paradigm?
What were the organizational and technical hurdles?
Describe the before/after effects on the process and the business
Where do they go from here?

Don't miss this exclusive panel of IT Experts and learn first-hand the impact cloud testing can have on your organization.

Steven Winter has been a powerhouse in QA for over 18 years successfully navigating and directing through an ever increasing diversity of technical and operational quality challenges.

Steven Winter
Director of Quality
FIS Mobile

With 13 years of IT experience, Ash Kothari is a seasoned technology manager with a passion for quality, and has donned various hats as a developer, tester and manager at organizations such as Microsoft, Amazon and most recently at Nordstrom.

Ashwin Kothari
Nordstrom

Mark Tomlinson is a performance engineering and software testing consultant.

Mark Tomlinson
Performance Engineering Consultant
PerfBytes

Peter Varhol
Principal
Technology Strategy Research

How Did I Miss That Bug? Managing Cognitive Bias in Testing

How many bugs have you missed that were obvious to others? We all approach testing hampered by our own biases. Understanding our biases—preconceived notions and the ability to focus our attention—is key to effective test design, test execution, and defect detection. Peter Varhol shares an understanding of how the testers’ mindsets and cognitive biases influence their testing. Using principles from the social sciences, including research by Carol Dweck on mindsets and Daniel Kahneman on bias, Peter demonstrates that you aren’t as smart as you think you are. He shows how to use knowledge of biases—Inattentional Blindness, Representative Bias, the Curse of Knowledge, and others—not only to understand the impact of cognitive bias on testing but also to improve your individual and test team results. Finally, Peter provides tips for managing your biases and focusing your attention in the right places throughout the test process so you won’t miss that obvious bug.

Steven Winter
Director of Quality
FIS Mobile

Continuous Mobile Testing for Financial-Grade Quality

FIS Mobile’s Steven Winter reduced manual mobile testing results that took months to execute to an overnight automation taskallowing his company to aggressively compete while maintaining financial-grade mobile quality. Tasked with compressing the testing process for the leading mobile financial transaction platform, Steven revamped his approach to quality by implementing precision mobile test automation, continuous integration and on-site mobile labs. Steven will cover:

The hurdles and challenges of being an early leader in mobile quality
The core requirements of a new approach
Mobile test automation capabilities
The role of continuous integration
Real benefits in speed and quality

Join this session and learn from Steven’s experience and help your organization reclaim some precious time to test more, release sooner…or both.

Alexander Podelko
Technical Staff
Oracle

Load Testing: See a Bigger Picture

Load testing is an important part of the performance engineering process. It remains the main way to ensure appropriate performance and reliability in production. Still it is important to see a bigger picture beyond stereotypical last-moment load testing. There are different ways to create load; a single approach may not work in all situations. Many tools allow you to use different ways of recording/playback and programming. This paper discusses pros and cons of each approach, when it can be used and what tool's features we need to support it.

Ken Johnston
Principal Test Manager
Microsoft

Modern testing is becoming EaaSy

Just about every device out there connects with regularity to the Internet. That means every bit of software whether it runs locally on a device, is a standalone service, or is built on the cloud, is connected. Because everything is connected, this means every bit of software or hardware device is connected and can be treated like it is a service.

EaaSy, stands for Everything as a Service. Don’t ask me what the “y” stands for, I just added that to make the acronym easier to remember. EaaSy, leverage all the techniques we have developed over the years to make services testing leaner and more data driven. EaaSy builds on MVQ (Minimum Viable Quality) and applies them to modern apps sold through an AppStore, desktop applications, devices, and server products. EaaSy leverages the fact that everything is connected and constantly updating and declares that if it looks like a service, you should test it like a service.

In this session Ken Johnston will introduce the foundational capabilities of EaaSy:

Componentized deployments
Automatic failback to last known good
User segmentation with code flighting
Rich fast telemetry

These capabilities are common in services testing but until recently have not been applied outside of services. Now we should and we can treat everything like a service. Modern testing of software and devices is evolving rapidly and should be EaaSy or at least easier than ever before.

Mark Tomlinson
Performance Engineering
Consultant

Roles and Revelations: Embracing and Evolving our Conceptions of Testing

In the dramatic plays of continuous software development the tester's typically award-winning role as the underdog protagonist for quality is challenged by the preference of an audience who's applause cheers for rapid software delivery, improvement and adaptation. Our once-heroic and traditional gatekeeping practices in software testing are now likely to be perceived as unproductive, exaggerated blockers to the delivery of the system as a whole. We are suddenly the antihero of software, and to traditional testers that's a big wake-up call. One might argue that these evolutions in software testing require more technical capability, coding skills, business acumen and social perception than ever before. But more important than any other thing impacting a software tester's success is their ability to upgrade their perception of their own self-identity as testers.

This session will share observations and experiences of recent challenges to the tester's identity:

as the facilitator of quality vs. enforcers or bug hunters
as the diversifier of perspective and awareness
as the analyzer, calculator and mitigator of technical risk
as the lense that focuses and accelerates development
as the devil's advocate for clarity about business objectives

We will review the significant changes in contemporary software development practices that have smashed the traditional definition of the software tester's role into bits and pieces. We will critique several of these new demands of testers and managers of quality teams, specifically the "how" and "when" for software testing and automation, the ever-changing nomenclature of our profession and the new solutions that enable testers to regain their position as a value-added asset to every IT initiative.

Michael Larsen
Senior Quality Assurance Engineer
Socialtext

The New Testers: Critical Skills and Capabilities to Deliver Quality at Speed

This isn’t your parent’s generation of computers and interaction, and the speed of change is only going to accelerate going forward. Software development, and software testing, is undergoing a radical change, but while organizations have embraced the idea of changes in development and delivery, why are we still looking at old, so called “best practices” in software testing as though we’re still testing the software the previous generation wrote?

In this talk, I will discuss a variety of ways that testing is moving ahead and proving to be just as relevant as it ever has, and how we can equip the next generation of software testers. Through initiatives like SummerQAmp, PerScholas, Weekend Testing and other environments aimed at delivering hands on, real world skills to up and coming testers. Emphasis on rapid learning, direct peer communication, and an emphasis on heuristics and their application can give that edge to new testers, and could also help spark creativity and curiosity in established testers, too.

Seth Eliot
Principal Knowledge Engineer
Microsoft Engineering

Your Path To Data-Driven Quality

Bing analyzes Petabytes of data per day. Facebook instruments everything. Outlook.com analyzes web performance for millions of real users. Why? Because testing is measurement, and measurement requires data.

Testers have traditionally relied on test results, but the data sources now available to the tester and the ability to process these are expanding like never before. Data-Driven Quality (DDQ) strategies such as Testing in Production (TiP) are essential tools for most testers, but the question is how do you implement these strategies to benefit your specific product? If you are seeking this answer, Seth will show you how to move forward. The data you will need can be big or small, real-time or delayed, synthetic or organic. So it is critical that you know what data you need and understand how much is required. With this presentation, you will become equipped with the tools and knowledge you need to get insights from this data about your product quality. Seth will take you through the critical thinking and framing to understand how data-driven quality can benefit your product and team. He will then enable you to create a roadmap for how you can implement your data-driven quality strategy and take your testing to the next level.

Lightning Sessions

Mark Prichard Senior Director, Product Management Cloudbees		Complete Continuous Integration and Testing for Mobile and Web Applications In this lightning talk, Mark Prichard will show how to build a complete continuous integration environment for both mobile and web applications with fully automated unit, functional, user experience and performance tests to give continuous feedback to the development team on quality and application performance, using a blend of OSS and commercial tools that exercise all aspects of the application’s behavior and user interface. See for yourself what the state of the art for continuous delivery of modern, mobile-oriented web applications is today. The session is aimed at architects, application developers and QA/Test managers. How to implement a complete continuous integration and delivery framework that encompasses both mobile, web and back-end applications How to incorporate continuous quality and performance monitoring into your development methodology, using best-of-class OSS and commercial frameworks How and when to take advantage of real device testing, device clouds and SaaS (software-as-a-service) to achieve levels of test automation that few companies today are able to reach. Please join Mark for a fast but detailed look at one of the most important areas in IT delivery today: continuous integration. Mark has extensive experience in this field, and he will share insights gained helping companies to implement mobile development and test strategies.
Mike Ostenberg Director, Systems Engineering SOASTA		Performance Testing In Production, and what You’ll Find There Application performance optimization is the most universally consistent improvement you can make to your site or application to increase user retention, engagement and conversion to revenue. Many of the world’s leading brands now practice regular testing in production, but because of legacy processes and concerns, many other companies still rely on testing in small lab environments rather than the real environment that is delivering the content to their customers. This talk will review: Reasons why there has historically been reluctance to load testing production infrastructure New capabilities that make production performance testing fast, accurate and safe The top 10 issues found while testing in production
Dori Exterman CTO IncrediBuild		Reducing the Build-Test-Deploy Cycle from Hours to Minutes at Cellebrite Many organizations are trying to automate and streamline the process of building software, larger projects may take too long a time to give the necessary feedback. This session will present a highly scalable deployment architecture use case at Cellebrite to achieving 10 times faster development cycles where testing , regressions and sanity are executed though a CI and Agile development management scenario. This case study will illustrate increased CI performance, with best practices to achieving faster cycles. By using modern virtualization, distribution and build management and automation, every build server can be better utilized and be better managed. This session will highlight techniques to distribute the build process, achieve faster compilations, and much faster error detection to support better Agile development. Attendees will learn how to better integrate between Development Tools and CI platforms to achieve a highly scalable ALM processes.
Yuval Mazor Sela		Strategies for Increased Productivity in CI (From Tuesday BOF) It’s all about pipelines...It’s all about making management see the value of CI builds...It’s all about FUN!

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Changing Role of Test Track

Breakout Sessions

Lightning Sessions

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attendees also receive:

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Changing Role of Test Track

Breakout Sessions

Lightning Sessions

All ALM Forum 2015 conference attendees also receive:

ALM Forum Logowear

ALM Forum Bag

All ALM Forum 2015 conference
attendees also receive: