As if releasing a quality software project on time were not difficult enough, poor management of planning, people, and process issues can be deadly to a project. Presenting a series of anti-pattern case studies, Ken Whitaker describes the most common deadly habits—along with ways to avoid them. These seven killer habits include mishandling employee incentives; making key decisions by consensus; ignoring proven processes; delegating absolute control to a project manager; taking too long to negotiate a project’s scope; releasing an “almost tested” product to market; and hiring someone who is not quite qualified—but liked by everyone. Whether you are an experienced manager struggling with some of these issues or a new software manager, take away invaluable tips and techniques for correcting these habits—or better yet, for avoiding them altogether. As a bonus, every delegate receives a copy of Ken’s full-color Seven Deadly Habits comic.
Seven Deadly Habits of Dysfunctional Software ManagersTechWell
As if releasing a quality software project on time were not difficult enough, poor management of planning, people, and process issues can be deadly to a project. Presenting a series of anti-pattern case studies, Ken Whitaker describes the most common deadly habits—and ways to avoid them. These seven killer habits are mishandling employee incentives; making key decisions by consensus; ignoring proven processes; delegating absolute control to a project manager; taking too long to negotiate a project’s scope; releasing an “almost tested” product to market; and hiring someone who is not quite qualified—but liked by everyone. Whether you are an experienced manager struggling with some of these issues or a new software manager, take away invaluable tips and techniques for correcting these habits—or better yet, for avoiding them altogether. As a bonus, every attendee will receive a copy of Ken’s full-color 7 Deadly Habits comic.
Agile Metrics to Boost Software Quality improvementXBOSoft
Why don't metrics apply to Agile development methodologies? Wrong! They Do, but you have to know how and when.
Find out in this webinar (recording) in special collaboration with the Chicago Quality Assurance Association (CQAA).
Agile, a development methodology, designed to allow team members to work iteratively during the development process instead of delivering a final product all at once, is now 20 years old. And when it comes to testing within an Agile process, there are those that use pyramids, and rectangles as mental models for where you should put your effort, or not.
Sometimes, software quality in Agile is mistranslated as the idea that everyone is responsible for software testing. But within Agile software development, ensuring quality is much more than testing and must include activities at different levels, including estimates for the workload for each iteration. Otherwise, testing happens last minute—or sometimes not at all, depending on time constraints. To have a successful Agile team, most software developers know that velocity is an essential component.
But it’s not just about measuring velocity, as velocity is only one factor or measurement for success. There are many other factors to measure when you want to assess the success of your Agile team in delivering a quality product. In this webinar, we specifically look at some key metrics for us the measure the success and progress of our quality in Agile.
Tune in with Philip Lew as he goes through ways you can gather insights in slicing, dicing, and analyzing (and interpreting) data. We’ll use Jira as an example, but you can do this with practically any issue tracking collaboration tool to help your team improve software quality.
business model, business model canvas, mission model, mission model canvas, customer development, lean launchpad, lean startup, stanford, startup, steve blank, entrepreneurship, I-Corps, Stanford
Defect Patterns Analysis for Agile and Waterfall - XBOSoft Webinar with Micha...XBOSoft
Whether you’re waterfall or agile, this presentation will uncover 3 keys to accelerating schedule by managing defect prevention, detection, and remediation by software teams. Actual Industry Case Studies will reveal how to implement an end-to-end defect strategy that maximizes the likelihood of team’s success. Topics covered will include waterfall, Agile, pair programming, test-driven development, and outsourced projects. We’ll also look at techniques that use defect curves to “predict the trajectory” of a project and its Development and QA phases.
Agile Test Management Using Jira and ZephyrXBOSoft
Do you have traceability where you can efficiently determine the cause of defects if there was an unclear requirement? Are you sure your test cases cover your requirements? Can you easily execute targeted regression when you’ve updated your software’s functionality? Now with software development teams mostly working from home or in dispersed geographies, supporting effective collaboration between remote workers is critical. In this XBOSoft quarterly webinar, our CEO, Philip Lew, teams up with BDQ’s CEO Chris Bland, to discuss the problems with working remotely, integrating the phases of testing in development in an Agile, and how this can be done using Zephyr, one of the predominant plugins in the Atlassian marketplace for test management. In this webinar, you will learn how to:
--Link tests with user stories and group tests within test cycles.
--Tie your results (defects) all the way back to user stories for effective defect root cause analysis.
--Classify defects to analyze and prioritize your test efforts.
--Use the traceability matrix with Zephr for deep visibility into your Agile process.
business model, business model canvas, mission model, mission model canvas, customer development, lean launchpad, lean startup, stanford, startup, steve blank, entrepreneurship, I-Corps, Stanford
Seven Deadly Habits of Dysfunctional Software ManagersTechWell
As if releasing a quality software project on time were not difficult enough, poor management of planning, people, and process issues can be deadly to a project. Presenting a series of anti-pattern case studies, Ken Whitaker describes the most common deadly habits—and ways to avoid them. These seven killer habits are mishandling employee incentives; making key decisions by consensus; ignoring proven processes; delegating absolute control to a project manager; taking too long to negotiate a project’s scope; releasing an “almost tested” product to market; and hiring someone who is not quite qualified—but liked by everyone. Whether you are an experienced manager struggling with some of these issues or a new software manager, take away invaluable tips and techniques for correcting these habits—or better yet, for avoiding them altogether. As a bonus, every attendee will receive a copy of Ken’s full-color 7 Deadly Habits comic.
Agile Metrics to Boost Software Quality improvementXBOSoft
Why don't metrics apply to Agile development methodologies? Wrong! They Do, but you have to know how and when.
Find out in this webinar (recording) in special collaboration with the Chicago Quality Assurance Association (CQAA).
Agile, a development methodology, designed to allow team members to work iteratively during the development process instead of delivering a final product all at once, is now 20 years old. And when it comes to testing within an Agile process, there are those that use pyramids, and rectangles as mental models for where you should put your effort, or not.
Sometimes, software quality in Agile is mistranslated as the idea that everyone is responsible for software testing. But within Agile software development, ensuring quality is much more than testing and must include activities at different levels, including estimates for the workload for each iteration. Otherwise, testing happens last minute—or sometimes not at all, depending on time constraints. To have a successful Agile team, most software developers know that velocity is an essential component.
But it’s not just about measuring velocity, as velocity is only one factor or measurement for success. There are many other factors to measure when you want to assess the success of your Agile team in delivering a quality product. In this webinar, we specifically look at some key metrics for us the measure the success and progress of our quality in Agile.
Tune in with Philip Lew as he goes through ways you can gather insights in slicing, dicing, and analyzing (and interpreting) data. We’ll use Jira as an example, but you can do this with practically any issue tracking collaboration tool to help your team improve software quality.
business model, business model canvas, mission model, mission model canvas, customer development, lean launchpad, lean startup, stanford, startup, steve blank, entrepreneurship, I-Corps, Stanford
Defect Patterns Analysis for Agile and Waterfall - XBOSoft Webinar with Micha...XBOSoft
Whether you’re waterfall or agile, this presentation will uncover 3 keys to accelerating schedule by managing defect prevention, detection, and remediation by software teams. Actual Industry Case Studies will reveal how to implement an end-to-end defect strategy that maximizes the likelihood of team’s success. Topics covered will include waterfall, Agile, pair programming, test-driven development, and outsourced projects. We’ll also look at techniques that use defect curves to “predict the trajectory” of a project and its Development and QA phases.
Agile Test Management Using Jira and ZephyrXBOSoft
Do you have traceability where you can efficiently determine the cause of defects if there was an unclear requirement? Are you sure your test cases cover your requirements? Can you easily execute targeted regression when you’ve updated your software’s functionality? Now with software development teams mostly working from home or in dispersed geographies, supporting effective collaboration between remote workers is critical. In this XBOSoft quarterly webinar, our CEO, Philip Lew, teams up with BDQ’s CEO Chris Bland, to discuss the problems with working remotely, integrating the phases of testing in development in an Agile, and how this can be done using Zephyr, one of the predominant plugins in the Atlassian marketplace for test management. In this webinar, you will learn how to:
--Link tests with user stories and group tests within test cycles.
--Tie your results (defects) all the way back to user stories for effective defect root cause analysis.
--Classify defects to analyze and prioritize your test efforts.
--Use the traceability matrix with Zephr for deep visibility into your Agile process.
business model, business model canvas, mission model, mission model canvas, customer development, lean launchpad, lean startup, stanford, startup, steve blank, entrepreneurship, I-Corps, Stanford
Leveraging Open Source Automation: A Selenium WebDriver ExampleTechWell
As online activities create more revenue, organizations are turning to Selenium to test their web applications and to reduce costs. Since Selenium is open source, there is no licensing fee. However, as with purchased tools, the same automation challenges remain, and users do not have formal support and maintenance. Proper strategic planning and use of advanced automation concepts are musts to ensure successful Selenium automation efforts. Sharing his experience designing and implementing advanced automation frameworks using Selenium WebDriver, David Dang describes the factors necessary to ensure open source automation is right for your project. David helps you understand the real effort required to implement WebDriver in a way that will scale and minimize script development. Additionally, he dives into must-haves in your Selenium framework design; the resource and timeline considerations necessary to implement WebDriver; and the long-term, continual improvement enhancements all automation engineers should consider in their Selenium automation implementations.
Giving and Receiving Feedback: A New ImperativeTechWell
Giving and receiving feedback are tough for everyone. Who wants to criticize others or be criticized? Although managers have a duty to give honest feedback to staff and peers, many people resist change or differ on how to change—leading to interpersonal conflicts and impacting deliverables. Omar Bermudez explains several techniques—Giving Positive Feedback, Acid Reflux (when you get that sick feeling), and SARA (Surprise, Anger, Rationalization, Acceptance)—that allow people to give and receive honest feedback to promote incremental improvements. Omar explains how to give accurate feedback to and receive the same from senior team members or direct superiors, a skill critical to career advancement. To increase self-esteem, happiness index, and your power to influence, Omar teaches you how to present feedback to your peers, your boss, or other colleagues in a diplomatic and efficient way. Take away key insights into how to create a healthy organizational culture with clear and constructive feedback.
Reduce Third-Party Tool Dependencies in Your Test FrameworkTechWell
Have you found yourself forced to use outdated test tools because the cost to migrate was prohibitive? Have you abandoned or rewritten existing tests because it was easier (and cheaper) than migrating? With technology ever changing, most businesses struggle to keep up with producing high-quality products for the lowest price possible. And it is usually testers who suffer the most, as they are forced to use tools that are outdated, or no longer supported, because the company cannot afford the migration cost. Chris Mauck offers a new way to design your automation tests to reduce the third-party tool dependencies in your current test framework and significantly shorten the time required to migrate those tests in the future. Using real coding examples Chris explains the approach, design, and implementation. Learn a different way to structure your tests and how you can implement better coding practices across your team.
Teaching Pointy-Haired Bosses to be Agile EnablersTechWell
Ryan Ripley says that Scrum failures can often be traced back to management not understanding their role in an agile world. What gets managed during an agile project? How is success measured? Will I keep my job in the transition? Managers have all these questions and more during an agile transformation. Unfortunately, these fears are not covered during the two-day certification courses. Agile coaches need a plan for how to talk with managers and teach them the best ways to contribute to agile projects. To better understand managers’ concerns, Ryan introduces the concept of personas, representing different managers. He explores ways to “coach up” management and help them get past their concerns and issues. Ryan shares his insights on where managers can improve agile projects, how they can add value in a newly transformed organization, and help pave the way for agile teams to succeed.
STARCANADA 2015: Lightning Strikes the KeynotesTechWell
Throughout the years, Lightning Talks have been a popular part of the STAR conferences. If you’re not familiar with the concept, Lightning Talks consists of a series of five-minute talks by different speakers within one presentation period. Lightning Talks are the opportunity for speakers to deliver their single biggest bang-for-the-buck idea in a rapid-fire presentation. And now, lightning has struck the STAR keynotes. Some of the best-known experts in testing will step up to the podium and give you their best shot of lightning. Get multiple keynote presentations for the price of one—and have some fun at the same time.
Software Attacks for Embedded, Mobile, and Internet of ThingsTechWell
In the world of embedded systems, mission-critical mobile apps, and the Internet of Things (IoT), developers and testers must do more than just look for feature bugs. To find potential failures and serious security errors, their arsenal should include attack-based exploratory testing. In the tradition of James Whittaker’s How to Break Software books, Jon Hagar applies the “attack” concept to embedded, mobile, and IoT software. Jon examines common industry patterns of product failures and shares a set of his favorite software test attacks for native, web-based, and hybrid apps. He explains when and how to conduct the attacks, including the pros and cons of some attacks. Take back an arsenal of at least three basic tester attacks, three developer attacks, and three security attacks that you can employ on your current or next project.
Innovation is not usually associated with testing or quality assurance. For our field to tackle the quality issues of modern applications and remain relevant, we must innovate. The good news is that there are lots of opportunity to innovate today. Sharing hard-earned tips and tricks, Jason Arbon describes how to identify low-hanging fruit for innovation, how to innovate with or without programming skills, how to fail gracefully, how to tell if what you are doing is actually innovative, and how to present innovation to your company and maximize adoption while getting credit for your work. Discover how to find time to innovate when your manager isn’t supportive or when you think you are too busy with your real job. Innovation isn’t just cool—it’s necessary for job security and career aspirations in today’s fast-moving world. Jason draws on real world experiences at Google, Microsoft, Applause.com/uTest.com, and his work with many top testers. You need to innovate—now more than ever. Find out how.
Wearables and Contactless Technology—for Payment Processing and Much MoreTechWell
The emergence of wearable devices like Google Glass, Apple Watch, and many others—combined with contactless technology such as near field communications—are being combined in new applications for payment processing, banking, and much more. Adopting wearables for contactless transactions will require technology shifts by both merchants and consumers. Using Google Glass as the wearable example, David Meyer demonstrates how users can see their account balance inside Google Glass to make purchase decisions, transmit the purchase authorizations, and transfer funds between their bank accounts. David discusses new security challenges and authentication issues with these technologies. He explores ways to improve adoption rates, including demographics to focus on, security standards to follow, UI limitations, considerations for application design, and API development. Take back a list of requirements for developing useful and compelling applications that combine wearables and contactless technology.
Testing Applications—For the Cloud and in the CloudTechWell
As organizations adopt a DevOps approach to software development, they work to shorten test cycles, begin testing earlier, and test continuously. However, one challenge still remains―the unavailability of complete and realistic production-like test environments. Technologies like service virtualization help, but there comes a time when you need additional computing resources to deploy and test the application. Today's cloud technology allows teams to spin up test labs on demand. Join Al Wagner as he describes the various clouds―public, private, and hybrid―and the cloud services available today. By combining the cloud with service virtualization, teams can now test applications end-to-end much earlier in the delivery lifecycle. Learn how teams can use today’s SaaS offerings, deployed on cloud technology, to manage their test effort and drive test execution. Explore how you can use clouds throughout the delivery lifecycle as your organization works to migrate and virtualize legacy applications. Take testing to a new level and test with greater efficiency―in the cloud.
Virtualize APIs for Better Application TestingTechWell
In today’s interconnected world, APIs are the glue that allows software components, devices, and applications to work together. Unfortunately, many testers don’t have direct access to manipulate the APIs during testing and must rely on either testing the API separately from the application or testing the API passively through functional application testing. Lorinda Brandon maintains that these approaches miss the most important kind of API testing―uncovering how your application deals with API constraints and failures. Lorinda describes common API failures—overloaded APIs, bad requests, unavailabilities, and API timeouts—that negatively impact applications, and how application testers miss these scenarios, especially in third-party APIs. She explores how and when virtualization can and cannot help, including creating a virtual API that can fail. Lorinda discusses the importance of simulating API failures in web and mobile application testing, and identifies tools and technologies that help virtualize your APIs.
As an organization grows, the body of code that needs to be regression tested constantly increases. However, to maintain high velocity and deliver new features, teams need to minimize the amount of manual regression testing. Eric Smith shares his lessons learned in automating RESTful API tests using JMeter, RSpec, and Spock. Gain insights into the pros and cons of each tool, take back practical knowledge about the tools available, and explore reasons why your shop should require RESTful automation as part of its acceptance test criteria. Many decisions must be made to automate API tests: choosing the platform; how to integrate with the current build and deploy process; and how to integrate with reporting tools to keep key stakeholders informed. Although the initial transition caused his teams to bend their traditional roles, Eric says that ultimately the team became more cross-functionally aligned and developed a greater sense of ownership for delivering a quality product.
From Web Developer to Hybrid App DeveloperTechWell
You or your company have a great idea for an app—and now you need to build it. So, what architecture do you use to support iOS, Android, Windows Phone 8, and future operating systems? How can you deal with all these platforms and still re-use your skills as web developer? The answer is a hybrid app, which allows developers to use part native code and part web code to create cross-platform apps. Greg Avola, a web developer who built a cross-platform app called Untappd, describes his experiences, demonstrates the tools he employed, shares lessons learned, and discusses the best practices he uses today. Learn how to take your mobile web application and turn it into native smartphone and tablet apps. Save time and resources while avoiding the extra effort of developing a feature for iOS and then having to write the same code for Android, Windows Phone, etc.
We Need It by the End of the Year: What's Your Estimate?TechWell
Letting good estimates made by smart people be overwhelmed by the strong desires of powerful people is a cardinal sin of project management. Accurate estimates are the foundation of all critical project decisions regarding staffing, functionality, delivery date, and budget. How do we properly estimate in a world where tradition declares that the deadline is set before the requirements are even known? Tim Lister offers practical advice on dealing with this thorny issue. Tim presents strategies and tactics for project estimating and describes his favorite estimating metric—the Estimating Quality Factor (EQF). By thinking of your project this way—goals are important and so are good estimates—you will be on the road to better quality and better projects. If you can learn to start the project and estimate continuously as events unfold, your goals and estimates will eventually converge.
Performance Testing in the Agile LifecycleTechWell
Traditional large scale end-of-cycle performance tests served enterprises well in the waterfall era. However, as organizations transition to agile development models, many find their tried and true approach to performance testing—and their performance testing resources—becoming somewhat irrelevant. The strict requirements and lengthy durations just don’t fit in the context of an agile cycle. Additionally, investigating system performance at the end of the development effort misses out on the early stage feedback offered by an agile approach. And it’s more important than ever that today’s agile-built systems perform. So how can agile organizations ensure optimum performance of their business critical systems? Lee Barnes discusses why agile teams need to change their thinking about performance from a narrow focus on testing to a broader focus on analysis—from a people, process and technology perspective. Take back techniques for shifting your performance testing/analysis earlier in the development cycle and extracting performance data that is immediately actionable.
Applying Courtship Principles: Hiring for the Long TermTechWell
As managers, we tend to focus on improving our processes. But have you considered that good people—not processes—are really the foundation of high-quality software? Competent and skilled people—combined with good process—can consistently produce higher-quality software. When we look for a spouse, we go out on a date, then another, and another as part of an information gathering process. We collect several months or even years of information to make this critical decision. So, why do we often make long-term employment decisions with a few brief interviews? Philip Lew shares his ideas on how to find the best testers. Determining what qualities and characteristics to look for, what questions to ask, and which non-traditional activities or exercises to employ can be done as part of the interview process. Phil says that adapting our questions and methods can help us not only find people suited for our development processes but also help us hire for the long term.
The mix of ever-smarter mobile devices and the constant connectivity of wireless networks have changed the way users access applications—and the way we develop and test them. Deployed applications deliver different content and functionality depending on whether the user is accessing them via a browser, smartphone, or tablet. And applications are accessed over myriad network configurations, including wireless and mobile networks. Brad Stoner presents an in-depth look at performance testing challenges for mobile applications including recording from devices, playing back device-specific requests, and accounting for variances in users’ geographical locations. Discover some of the best mobile performance testing approaches such as emulating mobile networks with varying connection speeds, packet loss, and latency during load tests. Find out when to use real devices vs. emulators to ensure high mobile application performance delivery to all end-users, at all times—on any device or network.
Develop a Defect Prevention Strategy—or Else!TechWell
Defects occurring throughout the development of a software project penalize the project. The effort spent remediating these defects robs the project team of valuable time, resources, and money that could otherwise be used for further innovation and delivering the highest possible quality product to wow the customer. The occurrence of a large percentage of these defects can be avoided with preventive defect removal strategies. Scott Aziz describes various methods for removing defects during the early design and development phases―long before testing. Methods include requirements-based testing that eliminates 95 percent of requirements defects prior to the coding phase, code reviews and inspections, and establishing model-based test design practices that allow for testing business requirements before any code is developed. Take back and adopt in your environment some of the most effective early defect prevention practices known and practiced in the industry today.
Seven Deadly Habits of Dysfunctional Software ManagersTechWell
As if releasing a quality software project on time were not difficult enough, poor management dealing with planning, people, and process issues can be deadly to a project. Presenting a series of anti-pattern case studies, Ken Whitaker describes the most common deadly habits-and ways to avoid them. These seven killer habits are mishandling employee incentives; making key decisions by consensus; ignoring proven processes; delegating absolute control to a project manager; taking too long to negotiate a project's scope; releasing an "almost tested" product to market; and hiring someone who is not quite qualified-but liked by everyone. Whether you are an experienced manager struggling with some of these issues or a new software manager, you'll take away invaluable tips and techniques correcting these habits-or better yet, avoiding them altogether. As a bonus, every attendee will receive a copy of Ken's full-color 7 Deadly Habits comic .
Deliver Double the Value in Half the TimeDavid Hawks
This session was presented at the PMI Austin Development Day Conference in Sept 2014. We explore the difference between "Doing Agile" vs. "Being Agile." Establishing a learning culture is critical. Six problems are presented and solutions are shown which lead to the team's ability to deliver double the value in half the time.
Leveraging Open Source Automation: A Selenium WebDriver ExampleTechWell
As online activities create more revenue, organizations are turning to Selenium to test their web applications and to reduce costs. Since Selenium is open source, there is no licensing fee. However, as with purchased tools, the same automation challenges remain, and users do not have formal support and maintenance. Proper strategic planning and use of advanced automation concepts are musts to ensure successful Selenium automation efforts. Sharing his experience designing and implementing advanced automation frameworks using Selenium WebDriver, David Dang describes the factors necessary to ensure open source automation is right for your project. David helps you understand the real effort required to implement WebDriver in a way that will scale and minimize script development. Additionally, he dives into must-haves in your Selenium framework design; the resource and timeline considerations necessary to implement WebDriver; and the long-term, continual improvement enhancements all automation engineers should consider in their Selenium automation implementations.
Giving and Receiving Feedback: A New ImperativeTechWell
Giving and receiving feedback are tough for everyone. Who wants to criticize others or be criticized? Although managers have a duty to give honest feedback to staff and peers, many people resist change or differ on how to change—leading to interpersonal conflicts and impacting deliverables. Omar Bermudez explains several techniques—Giving Positive Feedback, Acid Reflux (when you get that sick feeling), and SARA (Surprise, Anger, Rationalization, Acceptance)—that allow people to give and receive honest feedback to promote incremental improvements. Omar explains how to give accurate feedback to and receive the same from senior team members or direct superiors, a skill critical to career advancement. To increase self-esteem, happiness index, and your power to influence, Omar teaches you how to present feedback to your peers, your boss, or other colleagues in a diplomatic and efficient way. Take away key insights into how to create a healthy organizational culture with clear and constructive feedback.
Reduce Third-Party Tool Dependencies in Your Test FrameworkTechWell
Have you found yourself forced to use outdated test tools because the cost to migrate was prohibitive? Have you abandoned or rewritten existing tests because it was easier (and cheaper) than migrating? With technology ever changing, most businesses struggle to keep up with producing high-quality products for the lowest price possible. And it is usually testers who suffer the most, as they are forced to use tools that are outdated, or no longer supported, because the company cannot afford the migration cost. Chris Mauck offers a new way to design your automation tests to reduce the third-party tool dependencies in your current test framework and significantly shorten the time required to migrate those tests in the future. Using real coding examples Chris explains the approach, design, and implementation. Learn a different way to structure your tests and how you can implement better coding practices across your team.
Teaching Pointy-Haired Bosses to be Agile EnablersTechWell
Ryan Ripley says that Scrum failures can often be traced back to management not understanding their role in an agile world. What gets managed during an agile project? How is success measured? Will I keep my job in the transition? Managers have all these questions and more during an agile transformation. Unfortunately, these fears are not covered during the two-day certification courses. Agile coaches need a plan for how to talk with managers and teach them the best ways to contribute to agile projects. To better understand managers’ concerns, Ryan introduces the concept of personas, representing different managers. He explores ways to “coach up” management and help them get past their concerns and issues. Ryan shares his insights on where managers can improve agile projects, how they can add value in a newly transformed organization, and help pave the way for agile teams to succeed.
STARCANADA 2015: Lightning Strikes the KeynotesTechWell
Throughout the years, Lightning Talks have been a popular part of the STAR conferences. If you’re not familiar with the concept, Lightning Talks consists of a series of five-minute talks by different speakers within one presentation period. Lightning Talks are the opportunity for speakers to deliver their single biggest bang-for-the-buck idea in a rapid-fire presentation. And now, lightning has struck the STAR keynotes. Some of the best-known experts in testing will step up to the podium and give you their best shot of lightning. Get multiple keynote presentations for the price of one—and have some fun at the same time.
Software Attacks for Embedded, Mobile, and Internet of ThingsTechWell
In the world of embedded systems, mission-critical mobile apps, and the Internet of Things (IoT), developers and testers must do more than just look for feature bugs. To find potential failures and serious security errors, their arsenal should include attack-based exploratory testing. In the tradition of James Whittaker’s How to Break Software books, Jon Hagar applies the “attack” concept to embedded, mobile, and IoT software. Jon examines common industry patterns of product failures and shares a set of his favorite software test attacks for native, web-based, and hybrid apps. He explains when and how to conduct the attacks, including the pros and cons of some attacks. Take back an arsenal of at least three basic tester attacks, three developer attacks, and three security attacks that you can employ on your current or next project.
Innovation is not usually associated with testing or quality assurance. For our field to tackle the quality issues of modern applications and remain relevant, we must innovate. The good news is that there are lots of opportunity to innovate today. Sharing hard-earned tips and tricks, Jason Arbon describes how to identify low-hanging fruit for innovation, how to innovate with or without programming skills, how to fail gracefully, how to tell if what you are doing is actually innovative, and how to present innovation to your company and maximize adoption while getting credit for your work. Discover how to find time to innovate when your manager isn’t supportive or when you think you are too busy with your real job. Innovation isn’t just cool—it’s necessary for job security and career aspirations in today’s fast-moving world. Jason draws on real world experiences at Google, Microsoft, Applause.com/uTest.com, and his work with many top testers. You need to innovate—now more than ever. Find out how.
Wearables and Contactless Technology—for Payment Processing and Much MoreTechWell
The emergence of wearable devices like Google Glass, Apple Watch, and many others—combined with contactless technology such as near field communications—are being combined in new applications for payment processing, banking, and much more. Adopting wearables for contactless transactions will require technology shifts by both merchants and consumers. Using Google Glass as the wearable example, David Meyer demonstrates how users can see their account balance inside Google Glass to make purchase decisions, transmit the purchase authorizations, and transfer funds between their bank accounts. David discusses new security challenges and authentication issues with these technologies. He explores ways to improve adoption rates, including demographics to focus on, security standards to follow, UI limitations, considerations for application design, and API development. Take back a list of requirements for developing useful and compelling applications that combine wearables and contactless technology.
Testing Applications—For the Cloud and in the CloudTechWell
As organizations adopt a DevOps approach to software development, they work to shorten test cycles, begin testing earlier, and test continuously. However, one challenge still remains―the unavailability of complete and realistic production-like test environments. Technologies like service virtualization help, but there comes a time when you need additional computing resources to deploy and test the application. Today's cloud technology allows teams to spin up test labs on demand. Join Al Wagner as he describes the various clouds―public, private, and hybrid―and the cloud services available today. By combining the cloud with service virtualization, teams can now test applications end-to-end much earlier in the delivery lifecycle. Learn how teams can use today’s SaaS offerings, deployed on cloud technology, to manage their test effort and drive test execution. Explore how you can use clouds throughout the delivery lifecycle as your organization works to migrate and virtualize legacy applications. Take testing to a new level and test with greater efficiency―in the cloud.
Virtualize APIs for Better Application TestingTechWell
In today’s interconnected world, APIs are the glue that allows software components, devices, and applications to work together. Unfortunately, many testers don’t have direct access to manipulate the APIs during testing and must rely on either testing the API separately from the application or testing the API passively through functional application testing. Lorinda Brandon maintains that these approaches miss the most important kind of API testing―uncovering how your application deals with API constraints and failures. Lorinda describes common API failures—overloaded APIs, bad requests, unavailabilities, and API timeouts—that negatively impact applications, and how application testers miss these scenarios, especially in third-party APIs. She explores how and when virtualization can and cannot help, including creating a virtual API that can fail. Lorinda discusses the importance of simulating API failures in web and mobile application testing, and identifies tools and technologies that help virtualize your APIs.
As an organization grows, the body of code that needs to be regression tested constantly increases. However, to maintain high velocity and deliver new features, teams need to minimize the amount of manual regression testing. Eric Smith shares his lessons learned in automating RESTful API tests using JMeter, RSpec, and Spock. Gain insights into the pros and cons of each tool, take back practical knowledge about the tools available, and explore reasons why your shop should require RESTful automation as part of its acceptance test criteria. Many decisions must be made to automate API tests: choosing the platform; how to integrate with the current build and deploy process; and how to integrate with reporting tools to keep key stakeholders informed. Although the initial transition caused his teams to bend their traditional roles, Eric says that ultimately the team became more cross-functionally aligned and developed a greater sense of ownership for delivering a quality product.
From Web Developer to Hybrid App DeveloperTechWell
You or your company have a great idea for an app—and now you need to build it. So, what architecture do you use to support iOS, Android, Windows Phone 8, and future operating systems? How can you deal with all these platforms and still re-use your skills as web developer? The answer is a hybrid app, which allows developers to use part native code and part web code to create cross-platform apps. Greg Avola, a web developer who built a cross-platform app called Untappd, describes his experiences, demonstrates the tools he employed, shares lessons learned, and discusses the best practices he uses today. Learn how to take your mobile web application and turn it into native smartphone and tablet apps. Save time and resources while avoiding the extra effort of developing a feature for iOS and then having to write the same code for Android, Windows Phone, etc.
We Need It by the End of the Year: What's Your Estimate?TechWell
Letting good estimates made by smart people be overwhelmed by the strong desires of powerful people is a cardinal sin of project management. Accurate estimates are the foundation of all critical project decisions regarding staffing, functionality, delivery date, and budget. How do we properly estimate in a world where tradition declares that the deadline is set before the requirements are even known? Tim Lister offers practical advice on dealing with this thorny issue. Tim presents strategies and tactics for project estimating and describes his favorite estimating metric—the Estimating Quality Factor (EQF). By thinking of your project this way—goals are important and so are good estimates—you will be on the road to better quality and better projects. If you can learn to start the project and estimate continuously as events unfold, your goals and estimates will eventually converge.
Performance Testing in the Agile LifecycleTechWell
Traditional large scale end-of-cycle performance tests served enterprises well in the waterfall era. However, as organizations transition to agile development models, many find their tried and true approach to performance testing—and their performance testing resources—becoming somewhat irrelevant. The strict requirements and lengthy durations just don’t fit in the context of an agile cycle. Additionally, investigating system performance at the end of the development effort misses out on the early stage feedback offered by an agile approach. And it’s more important than ever that today’s agile-built systems perform. So how can agile organizations ensure optimum performance of their business critical systems? Lee Barnes discusses why agile teams need to change their thinking about performance from a narrow focus on testing to a broader focus on analysis—from a people, process and technology perspective. Take back techniques for shifting your performance testing/analysis earlier in the development cycle and extracting performance data that is immediately actionable.
Applying Courtship Principles: Hiring for the Long TermTechWell
As managers, we tend to focus on improving our processes. But have you considered that good people—not processes—are really the foundation of high-quality software? Competent and skilled people—combined with good process—can consistently produce higher-quality software. When we look for a spouse, we go out on a date, then another, and another as part of an information gathering process. We collect several months or even years of information to make this critical decision. So, why do we often make long-term employment decisions with a few brief interviews? Philip Lew shares his ideas on how to find the best testers. Determining what qualities and characteristics to look for, what questions to ask, and which non-traditional activities or exercises to employ can be done as part of the interview process. Phil says that adapting our questions and methods can help us not only find people suited for our development processes but also help us hire for the long term.
The mix of ever-smarter mobile devices and the constant connectivity of wireless networks have changed the way users access applications—and the way we develop and test them. Deployed applications deliver different content and functionality depending on whether the user is accessing them via a browser, smartphone, or tablet. And applications are accessed over myriad network configurations, including wireless and mobile networks. Brad Stoner presents an in-depth look at performance testing challenges for mobile applications including recording from devices, playing back device-specific requests, and accounting for variances in users’ geographical locations. Discover some of the best mobile performance testing approaches such as emulating mobile networks with varying connection speeds, packet loss, and latency during load tests. Find out when to use real devices vs. emulators to ensure high mobile application performance delivery to all end-users, at all times—on any device or network.
Develop a Defect Prevention Strategy—or Else!TechWell
Defects occurring throughout the development of a software project penalize the project. The effort spent remediating these defects robs the project team of valuable time, resources, and money that could otherwise be used for further innovation and delivering the highest possible quality product to wow the customer. The occurrence of a large percentage of these defects can be avoided with preventive defect removal strategies. Scott Aziz describes various methods for removing defects during the early design and development phases―long before testing. Methods include requirements-based testing that eliminates 95 percent of requirements defects prior to the coding phase, code reviews and inspections, and establishing model-based test design practices that allow for testing business requirements before any code is developed. Take back and adopt in your environment some of the most effective early defect prevention practices known and practiced in the industry today.
Seven Deadly Habits of Dysfunctional Software ManagersTechWell
As if releasing a quality software project on time were not difficult enough, poor management dealing with planning, people, and process issues can be deadly to a project. Presenting a series of anti-pattern case studies, Ken Whitaker describes the most common deadly habits-and ways to avoid them. These seven killer habits are mishandling employee incentives; making key decisions by consensus; ignoring proven processes; delegating absolute control to a project manager; taking too long to negotiate a project's scope; releasing an "almost tested" product to market; and hiring someone who is not quite qualified-but liked by everyone. Whether you are an experienced manager struggling with some of these issues or a new software manager, you'll take away invaluable tips and techniques correcting these habits-or better yet, avoiding them altogether. As a bonus, every attendee will receive a copy of Ken's full-color 7 Deadly Habits comic .
Deliver Double the Value in Half the TimeDavid Hawks
This session was presented at the PMI Austin Development Day Conference in Sept 2014. We explore the difference between "Doing Agile" vs. "Being Agile." Establishing a learning culture is critical. Six problems are presented and solutions are shown which lead to the team's ability to deliver double the value in half the time.
Critical Metrics for Talent Management in Reporting to Boards and InvestorsHuman Capital Media
Many talent management professionals may be unaware of the swell of interest in their work by boards and investors. Aware or unaware, there’s no denying that the interest is there.
This is why powerful groups such as the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board and the International Integrated Reporting Council are pushing forward reporting standards that include reporting on human capital.
To help talent management professionals understand, be ready for and comply with these standards, industry experts David Creelman, Laurie Bassi and Andrew Lambert are preparing a major report on what’s happening in the industry.
Join David Creelman in this webinar as he reveals what these changes mean for talent management professionals, including critical metrics, the landmines to be avoided and the opportunities to be seized.
Key takeaways:
Why are there suddenly big changes in reporting to investors?
How will that affect what we in talent management have to report to management?
What aspects of our performance will be particularly under scrutiny?
What is the secret in turning talent management data into a story business leaders care about?
Ken Whitaker shares pragmatic techniques to help project managers and software development leaders put into practice innovative scheduling techniques, make consistent customer-centric decisions, reduce project risk, quickly negotiate with product owners the most important project scope, and transition teams to become more agile. Ken shares revealing statistical data on how waterfall is simply not suited for modern-day adaptive software development projects. With fellow participants, you’ll spend time performing a “Scrum walkabout” to get the idea of just how an agile project really works. These best practices are presented to motivate your team to deliver projects on time, every time. Although this tutorial doesn’t incorporate intensive role-play, we’ll have lively interaction that will incorporate lessons learned from actual case studies and attendees’ project experiences. Take away powerful, yet simple, ways to bridge the gap between PMI’s PMBOK® Guide and agile.
Talk for Business of Software 2015 (Boston) laying out some laws of gravity for the software business. Also serialized as 4 long posts on www.mironov.com
There are a few fundamental laws of software economics that should drive executive-level decisions about business and product strategies. It’s easy to forget them, or decide they don’t apply to our special situation.
Rich Mironov lays out the Four laws of software economics, and sketch the kinds of strategic trouble we can avoid by keeping them in mind.
Your development team will never be big enough (Law of Ruthless Prioritization)
All of the profits are in the nth copy (Law of Build Once, Sell Many)
Software bits are not the product (Law of Whole Products)
You can’t outsource your strategy (Law of Judgment)
Robots, Ninjas, Pirates and Building an Effective Vulnerability Management Pr...Security Weekly
A robot, a ninja and a pirate get into a fight. The question is: who wins? While we can debate this question until the end of time, likely have fun in the process; it’s a waste of time. Who are the robots, ninjas and pirates in your environment? What roles do they play in the vulnerability management process? We debate how to build a vulnerability management program all the time, however we are still spinning our wheels. Unlike the robot, ninja, pirate battle, there are concrete facts that will help you build a successful program, and avoid smoke bombs, swords, and robot death rays. Who wins? Find out in this presentation and learn how to protect your booty.
The most important person (not) in the roomXebiaLabs
Slides from the presentation "The most important person (not) in the room" by Andrew Phillips at the Unicom event Digital Transformation: Re-Engineering the Enterprise.
See http://conferences.unicom.co.uk/digital-transformation/
Hire Indians InfoTech (P) Limited is one of the leading, fastest growing and professional managed web design and custom software development company headquartered in Noida (Delhi Ncr) India with offices in US, UK and Australia. We provide varied services ranging from web application development, custom software development, e-commerce sites, hire a developer and many more to its client’s globally in various technologies and multiple domains.
Similar to Seven Deadly Habits of Ineffective Software Managers (20)
Do you ever feel you have lost confidence in your own abilities? Why does this happen? Isabel Evans spends a lot of time painting. Someone once commented, “Why are you doing this, when you are not very good at it?” And gradually she stopped drawing and painting, after being intimidated by a conventional vision of what good art should look like. At the same time, she experienced a parallel loss of confidence in her professional abilities. Attempting creative pursuits like drawing and painting is essential to cognitive, emotional, creative abilities and she began to understand the correlation between her creative activities and her confidence. Making errors, being wrong, failing – that is a generous gift we receive when we practice outside our skill level. By staying in a comfort zone and repeating successes, we stagnate. As Isabel started to create again she thought “I don’t feel good at it, I do feel good doing it” The difference was that she was learning, having ideas and the act of re-engaging with failure, together with the comradeship of friends and colleagues, including at Women Who Test, Isabel has regained her confidence in her professional abilities, and been able to reboot her career and joy. Join Isabel to share a journey from self-perceived failure, to recovery and renewed learning.
Instill a DevOps Testing Culture in Your Team and Organization TechWell
The DevOps movement is here. Companies across many industries are breaking down siloed IT departments and federating them into product development teams. Testing and its practices are at the heart of these changes. Traditionally, IT organizations have been staffed with mostly manual testers and a limited number of automation and performance engineers. To keep pace with development in the new “you build it, you own it” environment, testing teams and individuals must develop new technical skills and even embrace coding to stay relevant and add greater value to the business. DevOps really starts with testing. Join Adam Auerbach as he explains what DevOps is and how it relates to testing. He describes how testing must change from top to bottom and how to access your own environment to identify improvement opportunities. Adam dives into practices like service virtualization, test data management, and continuous testing so you can understand where you are now and identify steps needed to instill a DevOps testing culture in your team and organization.
Test Design for Fully Automated Build ArchitectureTechWell
Imagine this … As soon as any developed functionality is submitted into the code repository, it is automatically subjected to the appropriate battery of tests and then released straight into production. Setting up the pipeline capable of doing just that is becoming more and more common and something you need to know about. But most organizations hit the same stumbling block—just what IS the appropriate battery of tests? Automated build architectures don't always lend themselves well to the traditional stages of testing. In this hands-on tutorial, Melissa Benua introduces you to key test design principles—applicable to organizations both large and small—that allow you to take full advantage of the pipeline's capabilities without introducing unnecessary bottlenecks. Learn how to make highly reliable tests that run fast and preserve just enough information to let testers and developers determine exactly what went wrong and how to reproduce the error locally. Explore ways to reduce overlap while still maintaining adequate test coverage. Take back ideas about which test areas could benefit from being combined into a single suite and which areas could benefit most from being broken out altogether.
System-Level Test Automation: Ensuring a Good StartTechWell
Many organizations invest a lot of effort in test automation at the system level but then have serious problems later on. As a leader, how can you ensure that your new automation efforts will get off to a good start? What can you do to ensure that your automation work provides continuing value? This tutorial covers both “theory” and “practice”. Dot Graham explains the critical issues for getting a good start, and Chris Loder describes his experiences in getting good automation started at a number of companies. The tutorial covers the most important management issues you must address for test automation success, particularly when you are new to automation, and how to choose the best approaches for your organization—no matter which automation tools you use. Focusing on system level testing, Dot and Chris explain how automation affects staffing, who should be responsible for which automation tasks, how managers can best support automation efforts to promote success, what you can realistically expect in benefits and how to report them. They explain—for non-techies—the key technical issues that can make or break your automation effort. Come away with your own clarified automation objectives, and a draft test automation strategy to use to plan your own system-level test automation.
Build Your Mobile App Quality and Test StrategyTechWell
Let’s build a mobile app quality and testing strategy together. Whether you have a web, hybrid, or native app, building a quality and testing strategy means (1) knowing what data and tools you have available to make agile decisions, (2) understanding your customers and your competitors, and (3) testing your app under real-world conditions. Jason Arbon guides you through the latest techniques, data, and tools to ensure the awesomeness of your mobile app quality and testing strategy. Leave this interactive session with a strategy for your very own app—or one you pretend to own. The information Jason shares is based on data from Appdiff’s next-gen mobile app testing platform, lessons from Applause/uTest’s crowd, text mining hundreds of millions of app store reviews, and in-depth discussions with top mobile app development teams.
Testing Transformation: The Art and Science for SuccessTechWell
Technologies, testing processes, and the role of the tester have evolved significantly in the past few years with the advent of agile, DevOps, and other new technologies. It is critical that we testing professionals evaluate ourselves and continue to add tangible value to our organizations. In your work, are you focused on the trivial or on real game changers? Jennifer Bonine describes critical elements that help you artfully blend people, process, and technology to create a synergistic relationship that adds value. Jennifer shares ideas on mastering politics, maneuvering core vs. context, and innovating your technology strategies and processes. She explores how new processes can be introduced in an organization, what the role of organizational culture is in determining the success of a project, and how you can know what tools will add value vs. simply adding overhead and complexity. Jennifer reviews critically needed tester skills and discusses a continual learning model to evolve your skills and stay relevant. This discussion can lead you to technologies, processes, and skills you can stake your career on.
We’ve all been there. We work incredibly hard to develop a feature and design tests based on written requirements. We build a detailed test plan that aligns the tests with the software and the documented business needs. And when we put the tests to the software, it all falls apart because the requirements were changed without informing everyone. Mary Thorn says help is at hand. Enter behavior-driven development (BDD), and Cucumber and SpecFlow, tools for running automated acceptance tests and facilitating BDD. Mary explores the nuances of Cucumber and SpecFlow, and shows you how to implement BDD and agile acceptance testing. By fostering collaboration for implementing active requirements via a common language and format, Cucumber and SpecFlow bridge the communication gap between business stakeholders and implementation teams. In this workshop, practice writing feature files with the best practices Mary has discovered over numerous implementations. If you experience developers not coding to requirements, testers not getting requirements updates, or customers who feel out of the loop and don’t get what they ask for, Mary has answers for you.
Develop WebDriver Automated Tests—and Keep Your SanityTechWell
Many teams go crazy because of brittle, high-maintenance automated test suites. Jim Holmes helps you understand how to create a flexible, maintainable, high-value suite of functional tests using Selenium WebDriver. Learn the basics of what to test, what not to test, and how to avoid overlapping with other types of testing. Jim includes both philosophical concepts and hands-on coding. Testers who haven't written code should not be intimidated! We'll pair you up to make sure you're successful. Learn to create practical tests dealing with advanced situations such as input validation, AJAX delays, and working with file downloads. Additionally, discover when you need to work together with developers to create a system that's more easily testable. This tutorial focuses primarily on automating web tests, but many of the same concepts can be applied to other UI environments. Demos and labs will be in C# and Java using WebDriver. Leave this tutorial having learned how to write high-value WebDriver tests—and stay sane while doing so.
DevOps is a cultural shift aimed at streamlining intergroup communication and improving operational efficiency for development and operations groups. Over time, inclusion of other IT groups under the DevOps umbrella has become the norm for many organizations. But even broadening the boundaries of DevOps, the conversation has been largely devoid of the business units’ place at the table. A common mistake organizations make while going through the DevOps transformation is drawing a line at the IT boundary. If that occurs, a larger, more inclusive silo within the organization is created, operating in an informational vacuum and causing operational inefficiency and goal misalignment. Sharing his experiences working on both sides of the fence, Leon Fayer describes the importance of including business units in order to align technology decisions with business goals. Leon discusses inclusion of business units in existing agile processes, benefits of cross-departmental monitoring, and a business-first approach to technology decisions.
Eliminate Cloud Waste with a Holistic DevOps StrategyTechWell
Chris Parlette maintains that renting infrastructure on demand is the most disruptive trend in IT in decades. In 2016, enterprises spent $23B on public cloud IaaS services. By 2020, that figure is expected to reach $65B. The public cloud is now used like a utility, and like any utility, there is waste. Who's responsible for optimizing the infrastructure and reducing wasted expenses? It’s DevOps. The excess expense, known as cloud waste, comprises several interrelated problems: services running when they don't need to be, improperly sized infrastructure, orphaned resources, and shadow IT. There are a few core tenets of DevOps—holistic thinking, no silos, rapid useful feedback, and automation—that can be applied to reducing your cloud waste. Join Chris to learn why you should include continuous cost optimization in your DevOps processes. Automate cost control, reduce your cloud expenses, and make your life easier.
Transform Test Organizations for the New World of DevOpsTechWell
With the recent emergence of DevOps across the industry, testing organizations are being challenged to transform themselves significantly within a short period of time to stay meaningful within their organizations. It’s not easy to plan and approach these changes considering the way testing organizations have remained structured for ages. These challenges start from foundational organizational structures and can cut across leadership influence, competencies, tools strategy, infrastructure, and other dimensions. Sumit Kumar shares his experience assisting various organizations to overcome these challenges using an organized DevOps enablement framework. The framework includes radical restructuring, turning the tools strategy upside down, a multidimensional workforce enablement supported by infrastructure changes, redeveloped collaborations models, and more. From his real world experiences Sumit shares tips for approaching this journey and explains the roadmap for testing organizations to transform themselves to lead the quality in DevOps.
The Fourth Constraint in Project Delivery—LeadershipTechWell
All too often, the triple constraints—time, cost, and quality—are bandied about as if they are the be-all, end-all. While they are important, leadership—the fourth and larger underpinning constraint—influences the first three. Statistics on project success and failure abound, and these measurements are usually taken against the triple constraints. According to the Project Management Institute, only 53 percent of projects are completed within budget, and only 49 percent are completed on time. If so many projects overrun budget and are late, we can’t really say, “Good, fast, or cheap—pick two.” Rob Burkett talks about leadership at every level of a team. He shares his insights and stories gleaned from his years of IT and project management experience. Rob speaks to some of the glaring difficulties in the workplace in general and some specifically related to IT delivery and project management. Leave with a clearer understanding of how to communicate with teams and team members, and gain a better understanding of how you can be a leader—up and down your organization.
Resolve the Contradiction of Specialists within Agile TeamsTechWell
As teams grow, organizations often draw a distinction between feature teams, which deliver the visible business value to the user, and component teams, which manage shared work. Steve Berczuk says that this distinction can help organizations be more productive and scale effectively, but he recognizes that not all shared work fits into this model. Some work is best handled by “specialists,” that is people with unique skills. Although teams composed entirely of T-shaped people is ideal, certain skills are hard to come by and are used irregularly across an organization. Since these specialists often need to work closely with teams, rather than working from their own backlog, they don’t fit into the component team model. The use of shared resources presents challenges to the agile planning model. Steve Berczuk shares how teams such as those providing infrastructure services and specialists can fit into a feature+component team model, and how variations such as embedding specialists in a scrum team can both present process challenges and add significant value to both the team and the larger organization.
Pin the Tail on the Metric: A Field-Tested Agile GameTechWell
Metrics don’t have to be a necessary evil. If done right, metrics can help guide us to make better forward-looking decisions, rather than being used for simply managing or monitoring. They can help us identify trade-offs between options for what to do next versus punitive or worse, purely managerial measures. Steve Martin won’t be giving the Top Ten List of field-tested metrics you should use. Instead, in this interactive mini-workshop, he leads you through the critical thinking necessary for you to determine what is right for you to measure. First, Steve explores why you want to measure something—whether it’s for a team, a portfolio, or even an agile transformation. Next, he provides multiple real-life metrics examples to help drive home concepts behind characteristics of good and bad metrics. Finally, Steve shows how to run his field-tested agile game—Pin the Tail on the Metric. Take back this activity to help you guide metrics conversations at your organization.
Agile Performance Holarchy (APH)—A Model for Scaling Agile TeamsTechWell
A hierarchy is an organizational network that has a top and a bottom, and where position is determined by rank, importance, and value. A holarchy is a network that has no top or bottom and where each person’s value derives from his ability, rather than position. As more companies seek the benefits of agile, leaders need to build and sustain delivery capability while scaling agile without introducing unnecessary process and overhead. The Agile Performance Holarchy (APH) is an empirical model for scaling and sustaining agility while continuing to deliver great products. Jeff Dalton designed the APH by drawing from lessons learned observing and assessing hundreds of agile companies and teams. The APH helps implement a holarchy—a system composed of interacting organizational units called holons—centered on a series of performance circles that embody the behaviors of high performing agile organizations. Jeff describes how APH provides guidelines in the areas of leadership, values, teaming, visioning, governing, building, supporting, and engaging within an all-agile organization. Join Jeff to see what the APH is all about and how you can use it in your team and organization.
A Business-First Approach to DevOps ImplementationTechWell
DevOps is a cultural shift aimed at streamlining intergroup communication and improving operational efficiency for development and operations groups. Over time, inclusion of other IT groups under the DevOps umbrella has become the norm for many organizations. But even broadening the boundaries of DevOps, the conversation has been largely devoid of the business units’ place at the table. A common mistake organizations make while going through the DevOps transformation is drawing a line at the IT boundary. If that occurs, a larger, more inclusive silo within the organization is created, operating in an informational vacuum and causing operational inefficiency and goal misalignment. Sharing his experiences working on both sides of the fence, Leon Fayer describes the importance of including business units in order to align technology decisions with business goals. Leon discusses inclusion of business units in existing agile processes, benefits of cross-departmental monitoring, and a business-first approach to technology decisions.
Databases in a Continuous Integration/Delivery ProcessTechWell
DevOps is transforming software development with many organizations adopting lean development practices, implementing continuous integration (CI), and performing regular continuous deployment (CD) to their production environments. However, the database is largely ignored and often seen as a bottleneck in the DevOps process. Steve Jones discusses the challenges of database development and why many developers find the database to be an impediment to the CD process. Steve shares the techniques you can use to fit a database into the DevOps process. Learn how to store database code in a version control system, and the differences between that and application code. Steve demonstrates a CI process with SQL code and uses automated testing frameworks to check the code. Steve then shows how automated releases with manual gates can reduce the stress and risk of database deployments while ensuring consistent, reliable, repeatable releases to QA, UAT, and production.
Mobile Testing: What—and What Not—to AutomateTechWell
Organizations are moving rapidly into mobile technology, which has significantly increased the demand for testing of mobile applications. David Dangs says testers naturally are turning to automation to help ease the workload, increase potential test coverage, and improve testing efficiency. But should you try to automate all things mobile? Unfortunately, the answer is not always clear. Mobile has its own set of complications, compounded by a wide variety of devices and OS platforms. Join David to learn what mobile testing activities are ripe for automation—and those items best left to manual efforts. He describes the various considerations for automating each type of mobile application: mobile web, native app, and hybrid applications. David also covers device-level testing, types of testing, available automation tools, and recommendations for automation effectiveness. Finally, based on his years of mobile testing experience, David provides some tips and tricks to approach mobile automation. Leave with a clear plan for automating your mobile applications.
Cultural Intelligence: A Key Skill for SuccessTechWell
Diversity is becoming the norm in everyday life. However, introducing global delivery models without a proper understanding of intercultural differences can lead to difficulty, frustration, and reduced productivity. Priyanka Sharma and Thena Barry say that in our diverse world, we need teams with people who can cross these boundaries, communicate effectively, and build the diverse networks necessary to avoid problems. We need to learn about cultural intelligence (CI) and cultural quotient (CQ). CI is the ability to relate and work effectively across cultures. CQ is the cognitive, motivational, and behavioral capacity to understand and respond to beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviors of individuals and groups. Together, CI and CQ can help us build behavioral capacities that aid motivation, behavior, and productivity in teams as well as individuals. Priyanka and Thena show how to build a more culturally intelligent place with tools and techniques from Leading with Cultural Intelligence, as well as content from the Hofstede cultural model. In addition, they illustrate the model with real-life experiences and demonstrate how they adapted in similar circumstances.
Turn the Lights On: A Power Utility Company's Agile TransformationTechWell
Why would a century-old utility with no direct competitors take on the challenge of transforming its entire IT application organization to an agile methodology? In an increasingly interconnected world, the expectations of customers continue to evolve. From smart meters to smart phones, IoT is creating a crisis point for industries not accustomed to rapid change. Glen Morris explains that pizzas can be tracked by the minute and packages at every stop, and customers now expect this same customer service model should exist for all industries—including power. Glen examines how to create momentum and transform non-IT-focused industries to an agile model. If you are struggling with gaining traction in your pursuit of agile within your business, Glen gives you concrete, practical experiences to leverage in your pursuit. Finally, he communicates how to gain buy-in from business partners who have no idea or concern about agile or its methodologies. If your business partners look at you with amusement when you mention the need for a dedicated Product Owner, join Glen as he walks you through the approaches to overcoming agile skepticism.
Providing Globus Services to Users of JASMIN for Environmental Data AnalysisGlobus
JASMIN is the UK’s high-performance data analysis platform for environmental science, operated by STFC on behalf of the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). In addition to its role in hosting the CEDA Archive (NERC’s long-term repository for climate, atmospheric science & Earth observation data in the UK), JASMIN provides a collaborative platform to a community of around 2,000 scientists in the UK and beyond, providing nearly 400 environmental science projects with working space, compute resources and tools to facilitate their work. High-performance data transfer into and out of JASMIN has always been a key feature, with many scientists bringing model outputs from supercomputers elsewhere in the UK, to analyse against observational or other model data in the CEDA Archive. A growing number of JASMIN users are now realising the benefits of using the Globus service to provide reliable and efficient data movement and other tasks in this and other contexts. Further use cases involve long-distance (intercontinental) transfers to and from JASMIN, and collecting results from a mobile atmospheric radar system, pushing data to JASMIN via a lightweight Globus deployment. We provide details of how Globus fits into our current infrastructure, our experience of the recent migration to GCSv5.4, and of our interest in developing use of the wider ecosystem of Globus services for the benefit of our user community.
Gamify Your Mind; The Secret Sauce to Delivering Success, Continuously Improv...Shahin Sheidaei
Games are powerful teaching tools, fostering hands-on engagement and fun. But they require careful consideration to succeed. Join me to explore factors in running and selecting games, ensuring they serve as effective teaching tools. Learn to maintain focus on learning objectives while playing, and how to measure the ROI of gaming in education. Discover strategies for pitching gaming to leadership. This session offers insights, tips, and examples for coaches, team leads, and enterprise leaders seeking to teach from simple to complex concepts.
How Recreation Management Software Can Streamline Your Operations.pptxwottaspaceseo
Recreation management software streamlines operations by automating key tasks such as scheduling, registration, and payment processing, reducing manual workload and errors. It provides centralized management of facilities, classes, and events, ensuring efficient resource allocation and facility usage. The software offers user-friendly online portals for easy access to bookings and program information, enhancing customer experience. Real-time reporting and data analytics deliver insights into attendance and preferences, aiding in strategic decision-making. Additionally, effective communication tools keep participants and staff informed with timely updates. Overall, recreation management software enhances efficiency, improves service delivery, and boosts customer satisfaction.
Unleash Unlimited Potential with One-Time Purchase
BoxLang is more than just a language; it's a community. By choosing a Visionary License, you're not just investing in your success, you're actively contributing to the ongoing development and support of BoxLang.
TROUBLESHOOTING 9 TYPES OF OUTOFMEMORYERRORTier1 app
Even though at surface level ‘java.lang.OutOfMemoryError’ appears as one single error; underlyingly there are 9 types of OutOfMemoryError. Each type of OutOfMemoryError has different causes, diagnosis approaches and solutions. This session equips you with the knowledge, tools, and techniques needed to troubleshoot and conquer OutOfMemoryError in all its forms, ensuring smoother, more efficient Java applications.
Strategies for Successful Data Migration Tools.pptxvarshanayak241
Data migration is a complex but essential task for organizations aiming to modernize their IT infrastructure and leverage new technologies. By understanding common challenges and implementing these strategies, businesses can achieve a successful migration with minimal disruption. Data Migration Tool like Ask On Data play a pivotal role in this journey, offering features that streamline the process, ensure data integrity, and maintain security. With the right approach and tools, organizations can turn the challenge of data migration into an opportunity for growth and innovation.
Paketo Buildpacks : la meilleure façon de construire des images OCI? DevopsDa...Anthony Dahanne
Les Buildpacks existent depuis plus de 10 ans ! D’abord, ils étaient utilisés pour détecter et construire une application avant de la déployer sur certains PaaS. Ensuite, nous avons pu créer des images Docker (OCI) avec leur dernière génération, les Cloud Native Buildpacks (CNCF en incubation). Sont-ils une bonne alternative au Dockerfile ? Que sont les buildpacks Paketo ? Quelles communautés les soutiennent et comment ?
Venez le découvrir lors de cette session ignite
Designing for Privacy in Amazon Web ServicesKrzysztofKkol1
Data privacy is one of the most critical issues that businesses face. This presentation shares insights on the principles and best practices for ensuring the resilience and security of your workload.
Drawing on a real-life project from the HR industry, the various challenges will be demonstrated: data protection, self-healing, business continuity, security, and transparency of data processing. This systematized approach allowed to create a secure AWS cloud infrastructure that not only met strict compliance rules but also exceeded the client's expectations.
Climate Science Flows: Enabling Petabyte-Scale Climate Analysis with the Eart...Globus
The Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) is a global network of data servers that archives and distributes the planet’s largest collection of Earth system model output for thousands of climate and environmental scientists worldwide. Many of these petabyte-scale data archives are located in proximity to large high-performance computing (HPC) or cloud computing resources, but the primary workflow for data users consists of transferring data, and applying computations on a different system. As a part of the ESGF 2.0 US project (funded by the United States Department of Energy Office of Science), we developed pre-defined data workflows, which can be run on-demand, capable of applying many data reduction and data analysis to the large ESGF data archives, transferring only the resultant analysis (ex. visualizations, smaller data files). In this talk, we will showcase a few of these workflows, highlighting how Globus Flows can be used for petabyte-scale climate analysis.
We describe the deployment and use of Globus Compute for remote computation. This content is aimed at researchers who wish to compute on remote resources using a unified programming interface, as well as system administrators who will deploy and operate Globus Compute services on their research computing infrastructure.
Check out the webinar slides to learn more about how XfilesPro transforms Salesforce document management by leveraging its world-class applications. For more details, please connect with sales@xfilespro.com
If you want to watch the on-demand webinar, please click here: https://www.xfilespro.com/webinars/salesforce-document-management-2-0-smarter-faster-better/
First Steps with Globus Compute Multi-User EndpointsGlobus
In this presentation we will share our experiences around getting started with the Globus Compute multi-user endpoint. Working with the Pharmacology group at the University of Auckland, we have previously written an application using Globus Compute that can offload computationally expensive steps in the researcher's workflows, which they wish to manage from their familiar Windows environments, onto the NeSI (New Zealand eScience Infrastructure) cluster. Some of the challenges we have encountered were that each researcher had to set up and manage their own single-user globus compute endpoint and that the workloads had varying resource requirements (CPUs, memory and wall time) between different runs. We hope that the multi-user endpoint will help to address these challenges and share an update on our progress here.
Modern design is crucial in today's digital environment, and this is especially true for SharePoint intranets. The design of these digital hubs is critical to user engagement and productivity enhancement. They are the cornerstone of internal collaboration and interaction within enterprises.
How to Position Your Globus Data Portal for Success Ten Good PracticesGlobus
Science gateways allow science and engineering communities to access shared data, software, computing services, and instruments. Science gateways have gained a lot of traction in the last twenty years, as evidenced by projects such as the Science Gateways Community Institute (SGCI) and the Center of Excellence on Science Gateways (SGX3) in the US, The Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) and its platforms in Australia, and the projects around Virtual Research Environments in Europe. A few mature frameworks have evolved with their different strengths and foci and have been taken up by a larger community such as the Globus Data Portal, Hubzero, Tapis, and Galaxy. However, even when gateways are built on successful frameworks, they continue to face the challenges of ongoing maintenance costs and how to meet the ever-expanding needs of the community they serve with enhanced features. It is not uncommon that gateways with compelling use cases are nonetheless unable to get past the prototype phase and become a full production service, or if they do, they don't survive more than a couple of years. While there is no guaranteed pathway to success, it seems likely that for any gateway there is a need for a strong community and/or solid funding streams to create and sustain its success. With over twenty years of examples to draw from, this presentation goes into detail for ten factors common to successful and enduring gateways that effectively serve as best practices for any new or developing gateway.
Accelerate Enterprise Software Engineering with PlatformlessWSO2
Key takeaways:
Challenges of building platforms and the benefits of platformless.
Key principles of platformless, including API-first, cloud-native middleware, platform engineering, and developer experience.
How Choreo enables the platformless experience.
How key concepts like application architecture, domain-driven design, zero trust, and cell-based architecture are inherently a part of Choreo.
Demo of an end-to-end app built and deployed on Choreo.