So you’ve “gone agile” and have been relatively successful for a year or so. But how do you know how well you’re really doing? And how do you continuously improve your practices? When things get rocky, how do you handle the challenges without reverting to old habits? You realize that the path to high-performance agile testing isn’t easy or quick. It also helps to have a guide. So consider this workshop your guide to ongoing, improved, and sustained high-performance. Join Bob Galen and Mary Thorn as they share lessons from their most successful agile testing transitions. Explore actual team case studies for building team skills, embracing agile requirements, fostering customer interaction, building agile automation, driving business value, and testing at-scale—all building agile testing excellence. Examine the mistakes, adjustments, and the successes, and learn how to react to real-world contexts. Leave with a better view of your team’s strengths, weaknesses, and where you need to focus to improve.
Seven Keys to Navigating Your Agile Testing TransitionTechWell
So you’ve “gone agile” and have been relatively successful for a year or so. But how do you know how well you’re really doing? And how do you continuously improve your practices? And when things get rocky, how do you handle the challenges without reverting to old habits? You realize that the path to high-performance agile testing isn’t easy or quick. It also helps to have a guide. So consider this workshop your guide to ongoing, improved, and sustained high-performance. Join seasoned agile testing coach Bob Galen as he share lessons from his most successful agile testing transitions. You’ll explore actual team case studies for building team skills, embracing agile requirements, fostering customer interaction, building agile automation, driving business value, and testing at-scale stories of agile testing excellence. You’ll examine the mistakes, adjustments, and the successes—so you’ll learn how to react to real-world contexts. Leave with a better view of your team’s strengths, weaknesses, and where you need to focus to improve.
Seven Keys to Navigating Your Agile Testing TransitionTechWell
So you’ve “gone agile” and have been relatively successful for a year or so. But how do you know how well you’re really doing? And how do you continuously improve your practices? When things get rocky, how do you handle the challenges without reverting to old habits? You realize that the path to high-performance agile testing isn’t easy or quick. It also helps to have a guide. So consider this workshop your guide to ongoing, improved, and sustained high-performance. Join seasoned agile testing coach Bob Galen as he share lessons from his most successful agile testing transitions. Explore actual team case studies for building team skills, embracing agile requirements, fostering customer interaction, building agile automation, driving business value, and testing at-scale—all building agile testing excellence. Examine the mistakes, adjustments, and the successes, and learn how to react to real-world contexts. Leave with a better view of your team’s strengths, weaknesses, and where you need to focus to improve.
If testers sit passively through agile planning, important testing activities will be missed or glossed over. Testing late in the sprint becomes a bottleneck, quickly diminishing the advantages of agile development. However, testers can actively advocate for customers’ concerns while helping the team implement robust solutions. Rob Sabourin shows how testers contribute to the estimation, task definition, clarification, and the scoping work required to implement user stories. Testers apply their elicitation skills to understand what users need, collecting great examples that explore typical, alternate, and error scenarios. Rob shares many examples of how agile stories can be broken into a variety of test-related tasks for implementing infrastructure, data, non-functional attributes, privacy, security, robustness, exploration, regression, and business rules. Rob shares his experiences helping transform agile testers from passive planning participants into dynamic advocates who address the product owner’s critical business concerns, the team’s limited resources, and the project’s technical risks.
QA and test departments often are composed of employees with business backgrounds who have little training when it comes to software testing. Though they are engaged, these team members can get overwhelmed by the thousands of test cases they have to execute over and over, and they don’t see a future career path in testing. What can be done to address these challenges? Join Sophie Benjamin as she presents her personal step-by-step recipe to transform QA and test teams and position them for success within IT. She talks about the essential roles in QA and test teams, their skills and contributions within the software delivery cycle, and tips and tricks to keep employees motivated and willing to invest in their careers. Attendees will leave with practical advice on what leaders and managers can do to ensure that their QA and test teams deliver results and add value to their organizations, today and in the future.
You’ve “gone agile” and have been relatively successful. So, how do you know how well your team is really doing? And how do you continuously improve your practices? When things get rocky, how do you handle the challenges without reverting to old habits? You realize that the path to high-performance agile testing isn’t easy or quick. It also helps to have a guide. So consider this workshop your guide to ongoing, improved, and sustained high-performance. Join Bob Galen and Mary Thorn as they share lessons from their most successful agile testing transitions. Explore actual team case studies for building team skills, embracing agile requirements, fostering customer interaction, building agile automation, driving business value, and testing at-scale—all building agile testing excellence. Examine the mistakes, adjustments, and the successes, and learn how to react to real-world contexts. Leave with a better view of your team’s strengths, weaknesses, and where you need to focus to improve.
Seven Keys to Navigating Your Agile Testing TransitionTechWell
So you’ve “gone agile” and have been relatively successful for a year or so. But how do you know how well you’re really doing? And how do you continuously improve your practices? And when things get rocky, how do you handle the challenges without reverting to old habits? You realize that the path to high-performance agile testing isn’t easy or quick. It also helps to have a guide. So consider this workshop your guide to ongoing, improved, and sustained high-performance. Join seasoned agile testing coach Bob Galen as he share lessons from his most successful agile testing transitions. You’ll explore actual team case studies for building team skills, embracing agile requirements, fostering customer interaction, building agile automation, driving business value, and testing at-scale stories of agile testing excellence. You’ll examine the mistakes, adjustments, and the successes—so you’ll learn how to react to real-world contexts. Leave with a better view of your team’s strengths, weaknesses, and where you need to focus to improve.
Seven Keys to Navigating Your Agile Testing TransitionTechWell
So you’ve “gone agile” and have been relatively successful for a year or so. But how do you know how well you’re really doing? And how do you continuously improve your practices? When things get rocky, how do you handle the challenges without reverting to old habits? You realize that the path to high-performance agile testing isn’t easy or quick. It also helps to have a guide. So consider this workshop your guide to ongoing, improved, and sustained high-performance. Join seasoned agile testing coach Bob Galen as he share lessons from his most successful agile testing transitions. Explore actual team case studies for building team skills, embracing agile requirements, fostering customer interaction, building agile automation, driving business value, and testing at-scale—all building agile testing excellence. Examine the mistakes, adjustments, and the successes, and learn how to react to real-world contexts. Leave with a better view of your team’s strengths, weaknesses, and where you need to focus to improve.
If testers sit passively through agile planning, important testing activities will be missed or glossed over. Testing late in the sprint becomes a bottleneck, quickly diminishing the advantages of agile development. However, testers can actively advocate for customers’ concerns while helping the team implement robust solutions. Rob Sabourin shows how testers contribute to the estimation, task definition, clarification, and the scoping work required to implement user stories. Testers apply their elicitation skills to understand what users need, collecting great examples that explore typical, alternate, and error scenarios. Rob shares many examples of how agile stories can be broken into a variety of test-related tasks for implementing infrastructure, data, non-functional attributes, privacy, security, robustness, exploration, regression, and business rules. Rob shares his experiences helping transform agile testers from passive planning participants into dynamic advocates who address the product owner’s critical business concerns, the team’s limited resources, and the project’s technical risks.
QA and test departments often are composed of employees with business backgrounds who have little training when it comes to software testing. Though they are engaged, these team members can get overwhelmed by the thousands of test cases they have to execute over and over, and they don’t see a future career path in testing. What can be done to address these challenges? Join Sophie Benjamin as she presents her personal step-by-step recipe to transform QA and test teams and position them for success within IT. She talks about the essential roles in QA and test teams, their skills and contributions within the software delivery cycle, and tips and tricks to keep employees motivated and willing to invest in their careers. Attendees will leave with practical advice on what leaders and managers can do to ensure that their QA and test teams deliver results and add value to their organizations, today and in the future.
You’ve “gone agile” and have been relatively successful. So, how do you know how well your team is really doing? And how do you continuously improve your practices? When things get rocky, how do you handle the challenges without reverting to old habits? You realize that the path to high-performance agile testing isn’t easy or quick. It also helps to have a guide. So consider this workshop your guide to ongoing, improved, and sustained high-performance. Join Bob Galen and Mary Thorn as they share lessons from their most successful agile testing transitions. Explore actual team case studies for building team skills, embracing agile requirements, fostering customer interaction, building agile automation, driving business value, and testing at-scale—all building agile testing excellence. Examine the mistakes, adjustments, and the successes, and learn how to react to real-world contexts. Leave with a better view of your team’s strengths, weaknesses, and where you need to focus to improve.
We all know, given the right mindset, that Agile approaches are a great way to get results and for people to go home feeling that they have contributed.
But no one really asks why. Why does it work?
This presentation, given at the Agile Business Conference in London in 2013 provides a collection of Agile-independant thoughts and ideas to make people think.
Above all, it provides some take aways to help judge if the team has a solid understanding of purpose and if the team is just well, how can on say, "dysfunctional".
Many teams have a relatively easy time adopting the tactical aspects of agile methodologies. Usually a few classes, some tools introduction, and a bit of practice lead teams toward a fairly efficient and effective adoption. However, these teams often get “stuck” and begin to regress or simply start going through the motions—neither maximizing their agile performance nor delivering as much value as they could. Borrowing from his experience and lean software development methods, Bob Galen examines essential patterns—the thinking models of mature agile teams—so you can model them within your own teams. Along the way, you’ll examine patterns for large-scale emergent architecture, relentless refactoring, quality on all fronts, pervasive product owners, lean work queues, providing total transparency, saying No, and many more. Bob also explores why there is still the need for active and vocal leadership in defending, motivating, and holding agile teams accountable.
Have you ever wondered what makes a good Product Owner? It’s a broad and deep role that is often filled with a hodgepodge of differently skilled individuals. Many organizations struggle to understand its importance as they scale their agile transformations. What about exceptional Product Ownership? What does that entail? In this highly collaborative session, Bob Galen explores the Four Quadrants of Effective Product Ownership—Product Management, Project Management, Leadership, and Business Analysis. Each of these critical aspects of the Product Owner role supports the agile team. Together, they lead to well-constructed product backlogs with an emphasis on creating high quality and high value products. Leave this session with a better understanding of the breadth and depth associated with outstanding Product Owners, a newfound respect for how challenging the role is, and with immediate insights and actions for improving your organization’s Product Ownership.
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.
A Common Sense Guide to Agile Development and Testing that might just change your Agile approach forever.
Answering the 9 most common questions asked about Agile Testing:
- What is Agile Testing?
- Do we still need testers in Agile?
- What is an Agile Tester?
- What does a Software Tester Actually Do?
- Should we automate our testing?
- What tools should we use for our Agile Testing?
- How Much Should we Automate?
- How can we automate and still finish the sprint?
- How can we finish all our testing in the sprint?
A high quality download of the 9 points as a free "Print out and Keep" Poster is available at http://eviltester.com/agile
Scrum/XP using Team System (devLink & Agile 2009)Tommy Norman
This is the slide deck from my devLink 09 and Agile 2009 conference presentations. I skipped the Scrum intro slides at Agile 2009 since most of the crowd already had the basics down. This was nainly a demo so for over half the presentation I was not using slides.
This is the version of the talk that I did at Agilepalooza Charlotte and Agile 2009. I will be doing this talk at the PMI Global Congress and Agile Dev Practices in the next few months.
Антон Семенченко, опыт в IT более 10 лет, работает в компании ISSoft, специализируется в разработке и автоматизированном тестировании ПО плюс менеджмент\продажи. C++ Architect, Automation Practice Lead, PM, Group Manager
«Agile ValueTeam, учимся понимать Scrum». IT секция. Agile отделение. Для всех уровней подготовки.
«Как эффективно продавать Automation Service». IT секция. Продажи.
«Как эффективно организовать Автоматизацию, если у вас недостаточно времени, ресурсов и денег». Development секция. Отделение тестирования.
Антон Семенченко, опыт в IT более 10 лет, работает в компании ISSoft, специализируется в разработке и автоматизированном тестировании ПО плюс менеджмент\продажи. C++ Architect, Automation Practice Lead, PM, Group Manager
«Agile ValueTeam, учимся понимать Scrum». IT секция. Agile отделение. Для всех уровней подготовки.
«Как эффективно продавать Automation Service». IT секция. Продажи.
«Как эффективно организовать Автоматизацию, если у вас недостаточно времени, ресурсов и денег». Development секция. Отделение тестирования.
Leaping over the Boundaries of Boundary Value AnalysisTechWell
Many books, articles, classes, and conference presentations tout equivalence class partitioning and boundary value analysis as core testing techniques. Yet many discussions of these techniques are shallow and oversimplified. Testers learn to identify classes based on little more than hopes, rumors, and unwarranted assumptions, while the "analysis" consists of little more than adding or subtracting one to a given number. Do you want to limit yourself to checking the product's behavior at boundaries? Or would you rather test the product to discover that the boundaries aren't where you thought they were, and that the equivalence classes aren't as equivalent as you've been told? Join Michael Bolton as he jumps over the partitions and leaps across the boundaries to reveal a topic far richer than you might have anticipated and far more complex than the simplifications that appear in traditional testing literature and folklore.
A test strategy is the set of ideas that guides your test design. It's what explains why you test this instead of that, and why you test this way instead of that way. Strategic thinking matters because testers must make quick decisions about what needs testing right now and what can be left alone. You must be able to work through major threads without being overwhelmed by tiny details. James Bach describes how test strategy is organized around risk but is not defined before testing begins. Rather, it evolves alongside testing as we learn more about the product. We start with a vague idea of our strategy, organize it quickly, and document as needed in a concise way. In the end, the strategy can be as formal and detailed as you want it to be. In the beginning, though, we start small. If you want to focus on testing and not paperwork, this approach is for you.
We all know, given the right mindset, that Agile approaches are a great way to get results and for people to go home feeling that they have contributed.
But no one really asks why. Why does it work?
This presentation, given at the Agile Business Conference in London in 2013 provides a collection of Agile-independant thoughts and ideas to make people think.
Above all, it provides some take aways to help judge if the team has a solid understanding of purpose and if the team is just well, how can on say, "dysfunctional".
Many teams have a relatively easy time adopting the tactical aspects of agile methodologies. Usually a few classes, some tools introduction, and a bit of practice lead teams toward a fairly efficient and effective adoption. However, these teams often get “stuck” and begin to regress or simply start going through the motions—neither maximizing their agile performance nor delivering as much value as they could. Borrowing from his experience and lean software development methods, Bob Galen examines essential patterns—the thinking models of mature agile teams—so you can model them within your own teams. Along the way, you’ll examine patterns for large-scale emergent architecture, relentless refactoring, quality on all fronts, pervasive product owners, lean work queues, providing total transparency, saying No, and many more. Bob also explores why there is still the need for active and vocal leadership in defending, motivating, and holding agile teams accountable.
Have you ever wondered what makes a good Product Owner? It’s a broad and deep role that is often filled with a hodgepodge of differently skilled individuals. Many organizations struggle to understand its importance as they scale their agile transformations. What about exceptional Product Ownership? What does that entail? In this highly collaborative session, Bob Galen explores the Four Quadrants of Effective Product Ownership—Product Management, Project Management, Leadership, and Business Analysis. Each of these critical aspects of the Product Owner role supports the agile team. Together, they lead to well-constructed product backlogs with an emphasis on creating high quality and high value products. Leave this session with a better understanding of the breadth and depth associated with outstanding Product Owners, a newfound respect for how challenging the role is, and with immediate insights and actions for improving your organization’s Product Ownership.
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.
A Common Sense Guide to Agile Development and Testing that might just change your Agile approach forever.
Answering the 9 most common questions asked about Agile Testing:
- What is Agile Testing?
- Do we still need testers in Agile?
- What is an Agile Tester?
- What does a Software Tester Actually Do?
- Should we automate our testing?
- What tools should we use for our Agile Testing?
- How Much Should we Automate?
- How can we automate and still finish the sprint?
- How can we finish all our testing in the sprint?
A high quality download of the 9 points as a free "Print out and Keep" Poster is available at http://eviltester.com/agile
Scrum/XP using Team System (devLink & Agile 2009)Tommy Norman
This is the slide deck from my devLink 09 and Agile 2009 conference presentations. I skipped the Scrum intro slides at Agile 2009 since most of the crowd already had the basics down. This was nainly a demo so for over half the presentation I was not using slides.
This is the version of the talk that I did at Agilepalooza Charlotte and Agile 2009. I will be doing this talk at the PMI Global Congress and Agile Dev Practices in the next few months.
Антон Семенченко, опыт в IT более 10 лет, работает в компании ISSoft, специализируется в разработке и автоматизированном тестировании ПО плюс менеджмент\продажи. C++ Architect, Automation Practice Lead, PM, Group Manager
«Agile ValueTeam, учимся понимать Scrum». IT секция. Agile отделение. Для всех уровней подготовки.
«Как эффективно продавать Automation Service». IT секция. Продажи.
«Как эффективно организовать Автоматизацию, если у вас недостаточно времени, ресурсов и денег». Development секция. Отделение тестирования.
Антон Семенченко, опыт в IT более 10 лет, работает в компании ISSoft, специализируется в разработке и автоматизированном тестировании ПО плюс менеджмент\продажи. C++ Architect, Automation Practice Lead, PM, Group Manager
«Agile ValueTeam, учимся понимать Scrum». IT секция. Agile отделение. Для всех уровней подготовки.
«Как эффективно продавать Automation Service». IT секция. Продажи.
«Как эффективно организовать Автоматизацию, если у вас недостаточно времени, ресурсов и денег». Development секция. Отделение тестирования.
Leaping over the Boundaries of Boundary Value AnalysisTechWell
Many books, articles, classes, and conference presentations tout equivalence class partitioning and boundary value analysis as core testing techniques. Yet many discussions of these techniques are shallow and oversimplified. Testers learn to identify classes based on little more than hopes, rumors, and unwarranted assumptions, while the "analysis" consists of little more than adding or subtracting one to a given number. Do you want to limit yourself to checking the product's behavior at boundaries? Or would you rather test the product to discover that the boundaries aren't where you thought they were, and that the equivalence classes aren't as equivalent as you've been told? Join Michael Bolton as he jumps over the partitions and leaps across the boundaries to reveal a topic far richer than you might have anticipated and far more complex than the simplifications that appear in traditional testing literature and folklore.
A test strategy is the set of ideas that guides your test design. It's what explains why you test this instead of that, and why you test this way instead of that way. Strategic thinking matters because testers must make quick decisions about what needs testing right now and what can be left alone. You must be able to work through major threads without being overwhelmed by tiny details. James Bach describes how test strategy is organized around risk but is not defined before testing begins. Rather, it evolves alongside testing as we learn more about the product. We start with a vague idea of our strategy, organize it quickly, and document as needed in a concise way. In the end, the strategy can be as formal and detailed as you want it to be. In the beginning, though, we start small. If you want to focus on testing and not paperwork, this approach is for you.
Security Testing for Testing ProfessionalsTechWell
Today’s software applications are often security-critical, making security testing an essential part of a software quality program. Unfortunately, most testers have not been taught how to effectively test the security of the software applications they validate. Join Jeff Payne as he shares what you need to know to integrate effective security testing into your everyday software testing activities. Learn how software vulnerabilities are introduced into code and exploited by hackers. Discover how to define and validate security requirements. Explore effective test techniques for assuring that common security features are tested. Learn about the most common security vulnerabilities and how to identify key security risks within applications and use testing to mitigate them. Understand how to security test applications—both web- and GUI-based—during the software development process. Review examples of how common security testing tools work and assist the security testing process. Take home valuable tools and techniques for effectively testing the security of your applications going forward.
Top Practices for Successful Mobile Test AutomationTechWell
Mobile apps bring a new set of challenges to testing—fast-paced development cycles with multiple releases per week, multiple app technologies and development platforms to support, dozens of devices and form factors, and additional pressure from enterprise and consumers who are less than patient with low quality apps. And with these new challenges comes a new set of mistakes testers can make! Fred Beringer works with dozens of mobile test teams to help them avoid common traps when building test automation for mobile apps. Fred shares some useful best practices, starting with mobile test automation. He explains what and where to automate, how to build testability into a mobile app, how to handle unreliable back-end calls and different device performance, and how to automate the automation. Fred shares real customer stories and shows how small changes in process can make mobile apps ten times more reliable.
Billion Dollar Bugs: When and How to Test a SpreadsheetTechWell
The world has become increasingly dependent on computer-based models to make informed decisions. These models may be financial or engineering based and often are built with spreadsheets. We may not think of spreadsheets as software and therefore tend to overlook applying robust testing techniques to them. However, spreadsheet error rates are often ten times those found in rigorously tested commercial software. The consequences of spreadsheet failure can range from overspending the family budget, to designing a physical structure improperly, to accounting errors of all types, some costing billions of dollars. Spreadsheets have become so complex that spotting errors is no longer an easy or intuitive task. Spreadsheet users, who may not be domain or testing experts, may not be able to tell the difference between a reasonable answer and a bogus one. To improve the quality of your organization’s spreadsheets and the decisions based on them, Greg Pope shares spreadsheet defect prevention methods, some built-in auditing tricks, and manual and automated testing techniques.
Testing the Data Warehouse―Big Data, Big ProblemsTechWell
Data warehouses have become a popular mechanism for collecting, organizing, and making information readily available for strategic decision making. The ability to review historical trends and monitor near real-time operational data has become a key competitive advantage for many organizations. Yet the methods for assuring the quality of these valuable assets are quite different from those of transactional systems. Ensuring that the appropriate testing is performed is a major challenge for many enterprises. Geoff Horne has led a number of data warehouse testing projects in both the telecommunications and ERP sectors. Join Geoff as he shares his approaches and experiences, focusing on the key “uniques” of data warehouse testing including methods for assuring data completeness, monitoring data transformations, and measuring quality. He also explores the opportunities for test automation as part of the data warehouse process, describing how it can be harnessed to streamline and minimize overhead.
Many projects implicitly use some kind of risk-based approach for prioritizing testing activities. However, critical testing decisions should be based on a product risk assessment process using key business drivers as its foundation. For agile projects, this assessment should be both thorough and lightweight. PRISMA (PRoduct RISk MAnagement) is a highly practical method for performing systematic product risk assessments. Learn how to employ PRISMA techniques in agile projects using risk-poker. Carry out risk identification and analysis, see how to use the outcome to select the best test approach, and learn how to transform the result into an agile one page sprint test plan. Practical experiences are shared and results achieved employing product risk assessments. Learn how to optimize your test effort by including product risk assessment in your agile testing practices.
Managing Application Performance: A Simplified Universal ApproachTechWell
In response to increasing market demand for well-performing applications, many organizations implement performance testing programs, often at great expense. Sadly, these solutions alone are often insufficient to keep pace with emerging expectations and competitive pressures. Scott Barber shares the fundamentals of implementing T4APM™ including specific examples from recent client implementations. T4APM™ is a simple and universal approach that is valuable independently or as an extension of existing performance testing programs. The approach hinges on applying a simple and unobtrusive "Target, Test, Trend, Tune” cycle to tasks in your application lifecycle—from a single unit test through entire system production monitoring. Leveraging T4APM™ on a particular task may require knowledge specific to the task, but learning how to leverage the approach does not. Scott provides everything you need to become the T4APM™ coach and champion, and to help your team keep up with increasing demand for better performance, regardless of your current title or role.
Ambiguity Reviews: Building Quality RequirementsTechWell
Are you frustrated by the false expectation that we can test quality into a product? By the time an application is delivered to testing, our ability to introduce quality principles is generally limited to defect detection. So how do you begin to shift your team’s perceptions into a true quality assurance organization? Susan Schanta shares her approach to Shift Quality Left by performing ambiguity reviews against requirements documents to reduce requirement defects at the beginning of the project. By helping the business analyst identify gaps in requirements, you can help build quality in and improve the team’s ability to write testable requirements. Learn how to review requirements to identify ambiguities and document the open questions that need to be addressed to make requirements clear, concise, and testable. Susan demonstrates her approach to ambiguity reviews and how she turned lessons learned into a Business Analyst Style Guide to drive quality into the requirements gathering process.
The key to successful testing is effective and timely planning. Rick Craig introduces proven test planning methods and techniques, including the Master Test Plan and level-specific test plans for acceptance, system, integration, and unit testing. Rick explains how to customize an IEEE-829-style test plan and test summary report to fit your organization’s needs. Learn how to manage test activities, estimate test efforts, and achieve buy-in. Discover a practical risk analysis technique to prioritize your testing and become more effective with limited resources. Rick offers test measurement and reporting recommendations for monitoring the testing process. Discover new methods and develop renewed energy for taking your organization’s test management to the next level.
Have you ever needed a way to measure your leadership IQ? Or been in a performance review where the majority of time was spent discussing your need to improve as a leader? If you have ever wondered what your core leadership competencies are and how to build on and improve them, Jennifer Bonine shares a toolkit to help you do just that. This toolkit includes a personal assessment of your leadership competencies, explores a set of eight dimensions of successful leaders, provides suggestions on how you can improve competencies that are not in your core set of strengths, and describes techniques for leveraging and building on your strengths. These tools can help you become a more effective and valued leader in your organization. Exercises help you gain an understanding of yourself and strive for balanced leadership through recognition of both your strengths and your “development opportunities.”
Getting Your Message Across: Communications Skills for TestersTechWell
Communication is at the heart of our profession. No matter how advanced our testing capabilities are, if we can’t convey our concerns in ways that connect with key members of the project team, our contribution is likely to be ignored. Because we act solely in an advisory capacity, rather than being in command, our power to exert influence is almost entirely based on our communication skills. With people deluged with emails and suffering information overload, it is more important than ever that we craft succinct and effective messages, using a range of communication modalities. Join Thomas McCoy as he draws on techniques from journalism, public relations, professional writing, psychology, and marketing to help you get your message across. Key themes include: non-verbal communication, presentation skills, persuasive writing, influencing skills, graphic communication, and communicating in teams and meetings. A range of hands-on exercises will be used to practice the concepts being discussed.
Meet Big Agile: Testing on Large-Scale ProjectsTechWell
Are you embarking on a large-scale, globally distributed, multi-team scrum project? Have you already identified the potential testing challenges that lie ahead? Or have you belatedly encountered them and are now working on them in real-time? Five years and more than 200 projects into its agile journey, Dell Enterprise Solutions (ESG) has empirically determined that once a project extends beyond three scrum teams, interesting testing challenges arise—inconsistent “done” criteria, integration testing underscored by epic/story interdependencies across teams, test automation inconsistency, and uncoordinated regression testing. Worse yet, the more teams involved, the less likely it is that a single scrum team has the visibility to validate the overall product from a customer usage perspective as the product evolves through sprints. Geoff Meyer serves up some lessons learned from within the Dell ESG Validation organization as it evolved its agile testing and automation strategies from a waterfall-based environment to one that fully embraced agile Scrum across its entire software product portfolio.
The Three Pillars Approach to Your Agile Test StrategyTechWell
Far too often, agile transformations focus just on development teams, agile frameworks, or technical practices as adoption strategies unfold. Often the testing activity and the testing teams are left behind in agile strategy development or worse yet, they are only along for the ride. That’s simply not an effective transformation strategy. Join experienced agile coach Bob Galen as he shares the Three Pillars Framework for establishing a balanced strategic plan to effectively implement agile quality and testing. The pillars focus on development and test automation, testing practices, and whole-team collaboration activities that will ensure you have a balanced approach to agile testing and quality. Specifically the framework focuses on effective tactics of risk-based testing, exploratory testing, paired collaboration around agile requirements, agile test design, and TDD-BDD-functional testing automation. Leave with the tools to immediately initiate or rebalance a much more effective agile testing strategy.
Test Automation Strategies for the Agile WorldTechWell
With the adoption of agile practices in many organizations, the test automation landscape has changed. Bob Galen explores current disruptors to traditional automation strategies, and discusses relevant and current adjustments you need to make when developing your automation business case. Open source tools are becoming incredibly viable and beat their commercial equivalents in many ways―not only in cost, but also in functionality, creativity, evolutionary speed, and developer acceptance. Agile methods have fundamentally challenged our traditional automation strategies. Now we must keep up with incremental and emergent systems and architectures and their high rates of change. Bob explores new automation strategies, examining strategies for both greenfield applications and those pesky legacy projects. Learn how to wrap a business case and communication plan around them so you get the support you need. Leave the workshop with a serious game-plan for delivering on the promise of agile test automation.
The 3 Pillars Approach to Agile Testing Strategy with Bob Galen & Mary ThornTEST Huddle
Far too often agile adoptions focus just on the development teams, agile frameworks, or technical practices as a part of their adoption strategies. And then there’s the near perpetual focus on tooling or developing test automation without striking a balanced approach. Often the testing activity and the testing teams are “left behind” in agile strategy development or worse yet, they’re simply “along for the ride”. That is not an effective transformation strategy.
Join experienced agile coaches Bob Galen and Mary Thorn as they share the Three Pillars framework for establishing a balanced strategic plan for effective quality and testing. The Three Pillars focus on development and test automation, testing practices, and collaboration activities that will ensure you have a balanced approach to agile testing. Specifically, risk-based testing, exploratory testing, paired collaboration around agile requirements, agile test design, and TDD-BDD-Functional testing automation will be explored as tactic within a balanced Three Pillars framework. You will leave with the tools to immediately initiate or re-tool a much more effective and balanced agile testing strategy.
ortion pills to be shipped to house
The Three Pillars Approach to an Agile Testing StrategyTechWell
Far too often, organizations focus solely on the development teams and their technical practices as their agile adoption strategy. And then there’s the near constant focus on acquiring development tools. Often the testing activity and the testing teams are left behind in agile adoption, or even worse, they’re simply along for the ride. This is not an effective transformation strategy. Join experienced agile coach Bob Galen as he shares the Three Pillars framework for establishing a balanced strategic plan for quality and testing. The Three Pillars focus on development and test automation, testing practices, and collaboration activities that ensure you have a balanced approach to agile testing. Specifically, Bob explores risk-based testing, exploratory testing, paired collaboration around agile requirements, agile test design, and TDD-BDD-functional testing automation as tactics within a balanced framework. Leave with ideas to immediately initiate or re-tool a much more effective and balanced agile testing strategy.
The Three Pillars Approach to Your Agile Test Strategy Brian Estep
First of all, I’ve seen way too many teams who are just “testing” in agile teams without a map or a plan for improvement. I’ve also seen that Agile Adoption is mostly a developer-centric or technology-centric play. They “drive” and testing is “along for the ride”. Seatbelts please! And where’s the focus on “Quality”? And the how or practices & tactics?
Yin and Yang: Metrics within Agile and Traditional LifecyclesTechWell
Metrics are powerful tools when used to effect positive change in a project or organization. However, the value and benefits of metrics are often dependent on the context. While certain metrics provide information and insight to drive decision making for a traditional development approach, they may not be useful in an agile landscape—and vice versa. QA and agile experts Shaun Bradshaw and Bob Galen delve into the value, pitfalls, pros, and cons of various metrics in agile and waterfall development environments. Hear their experiences as they discuss and explore a variety of project-level, software development, and software testing metrics through the lens of both traditional and agile development contexts. Although Bob and Shaun respect each other’s knowledge and skill, they don’t often agree on metrics. And in this showdown, you’ll see why! Be prepared to learn, be entertained, and be ready to get in on the action as these two metrics titans go head-to-head.
Mary Thorn has had the opportunity in the past twenty years to work at many startups, creating several QA/test departments from scratch. For the past ten years, she has done this in agile software companies. Recently Mary moved from leading small agile test organizations to leading a large agile test organization where she has learned how to lead agile testers and agile testing in large contexts. Mary takes you through what she has learned, identifies the keys to transitioning your test organization as it grows, and discusses the techniques required to lead it through the changes. Agile testing is difficult; training your testers to be consistent and interchangeable across large scale agile teams is even more difficult; and still more difficult is test automation at scale. Join Mary as she shares her experience in creating an automation strategy that works in a large scale context and lessons learned from leading a large agile test organization.
The Three Pillars Approach to an Agile Testing StrategyTechWell
Far too often, organizations focus solely on the development teams and their technical practices as their agile adoption strategy. And then there’s the near constant focus on acquiring development tools. Often the testing activity and the testing teams are left behind in agile adoption, or even worse, they’re simply along for the ride. This is not an effective transformation strategy. Join experienced agile coach Bob Galen as he shares the Three Pillars framework for establishing a balanced strategic plan for quality and testing. The Three Pillars focus on development and test automation, testing practices, and collaboration activities that ensure you have a balanced approach to agile testing. Specifically, Bob explores risk-based testing, exploratory testing, paired collaboration around agile requirements, agile test design, and TDD-BDD-functional testing automation as tactics within a balanced framework. Leave with ideas to immediately initiate or retool a much more effective and balanced agile testing strategy.
Where Did My Testers Go? Test Management on Agile ProjectsTechWell
Substantial confusion exists about the roles and responsibilities of test managers in an agile software development process. Agile seeks to streamline project management and leadership under the role of a ScrumMaster. So, what does this mean for test managers? How do they stay involved in the process? What role do they fill? Is it possible that test managers are no longer needed? Join Jeffery Payne for a collaborative dialog on the challenges test managers face in an agile model. Learn the pros and cons of a variety of test management models he has seen used by organizations that have adopted agile. Discover how to best position yourself within the agile model to add value and continue to support your test teams. Take back practical knowledge on how test management is done within agile projects and what your options are—regardless of which test management model your organization chooses. Leave with valuable next-steps for raising this issue with management and getting your new role established.
Over the past twenty years, Mary Thorn has had the opportunity to work at many startups, creating several QA/test departments from scratch. For the past ten years, she has done this in agile software companies. Recently Mary moved from leading small agile test organizations to leading a large agile test organization. She has learned how to lead agile testers and agile testing in large contexts. Mary takes you through what she has learned, identifies the keys to transitioning your test organization as it grows, and discusses the techniques required to lead it through the changes. Agile testing is difficult, and training your testers to be consistent and interchangeable across large scale agile teams is even more difficult. And still more difficult is test automation at scale. Mary shares her experience in creating an automation strategy that works in a large scale context. Join Mary as she discusses her learnings from leading large agile test organizations.
A Tester’s Guide to Collaborating with Product OwnersTechWell
The role of the Product Owner in Scrum is only vaguely defined—owning the Product Backlog and representing the “customer.” In many organizations, Product Owners go it alone, trying their best to represent business needs to their teams. What’s often missing is a collaborative connection between the team’s testers and the Product Owner—a connection in which testers help to define and refine requirements, broaden the testing landscape and align it to customer needs, provide a conduit for collaboration between the customer and the team, assure that the team is building the right thing, and help demonstrate complete features. This relationship is central to the team and facilitates transparency to help gain feedback from the entire organization. Join seasoned agile coach Bob Galen as he shares techniques for doing just this. Return with new ideas and techniques for helping your Product Owner and team deliver better received and higher value products—not just by testing but by fostering collaboration.
Agile testing is the soware testing
methodology that stems from the Agile
soware development principles. The
essence of Agile testing practice is that it
incorporates testing into the dev process,
rather than keeping it a separate SDLC
phase.
Technology has come a long way and with it, the daunting task of delivering even quicker software releases. How can you keep up with the demand of ever increasing development cycles, agile methodologies and a desire to move as fast as possible while maintaining quality?
Crowdsourced testing delivers a unique, scalable and affordable option to deliver exactly the kind of quality your mobile apps and websites deserve. Find out the fundamentals of crowdsourced testing and determine exactly how to implement it within your own organisation.
Want to know more? Visit https://www.globalapptesting.com to learn more.
Why Agile Fail. *Hint* -it's more than just processTasktop
Presented by Zubin Irani, CEO, cPrime & Scot Garrison, Director of Professional Services, Tasktop
A successful Agile transformation requires a combination of people, process and technology, but too often these aspects are treated separately. Agile Coaches insist on remaining tool agnostic, and the agile management software experts often do not know the Agile process. Organizations with successful Agile teams often fail to replicate this success when they attempt to scale these practices throughout the software delivery organization.
To succeed in transforming to Agile, organizations must replace this fragmented approach with one that connects the entire application lifecycle with tools that are tightly integrated and automated to support processes. Join us as we demonstrate how this unified approach allows companies to
speed delivery through real-time collaboration
increase visibility of project status and compliance with cross tool traceability and reporting
encourage the use of specialized tools that support practitioners’ process.
Similar to Seven Keys to Navigating Your Agile Testing Transition (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.
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.
Scale: The Most Hyped Term in Agile Development TodayTechWell
Scrum is everywhere. More than 90 percent of agile teams use it. But for many organizations wanting to scale agile, one team using Scrum is not enough. Dave West says the Nexus Framework, created by Ken Schwaber, the co-creator of Scrum, provides an exoskeleton for Scrum. Nexus allows multiple teams to work together to produce an integrated increment regularly. It addresses the key challenges of scaling agile development by adding new yet minimal events, artifacts, and roles to the Scrum framework. Dave discusses Nexus, addresses its boundaries, and explains what else is needed for agile to thrive in an organization. Dave explores how organizations have transitioned to agile, and examines their successes and challenges in implementing Scrum, how they envision scaling with Nexus, and goals for creating a Scrum Studio.
Essentials of Automations: Optimizing FME Workflows with ParametersSafe Software
Are you looking to streamline your workflows and boost your projects’ efficiency? Do you find yourself searching for ways to add flexibility and control over your FME workflows? If so, you’re in the right place.
Join us for an insightful dive into the world of FME parameters, a critical element in optimizing workflow efficiency. This webinar marks the beginning of our three-part “Essentials of Automation” series. This first webinar is designed to equip you with the knowledge and skills to utilize parameters effectively: enhancing the flexibility, maintainability, and user control of your FME projects.
Here’s what you’ll gain:
- Essentials of FME Parameters: Understand the pivotal role of parameters, including Reader/Writer, Transformer, User, and FME Flow categories. Discover how they are the key to unlocking automation and optimization within your workflows.
- Practical Applications in FME Form: Delve into key user parameter types including choice, connections, and file URLs. Allow users to control how a workflow runs, making your workflows more reusable. Learn to import values and deliver the best user experience for your workflows while enhancing accuracy.
- Optimization Strategies in FME Flow: Explore the creation and strategic deployment of parameters in FME Flow, including the use of deployment and geometry parameters, to maximize workflow efficiency.
- Pro Tips for Success: Gain insights on parameterizing connections and leveraging new features like Conditional Visibility for clarity and simplicity.
We’ll wrap up with a glimpse into future webinars, followed by a Q&A session to address your specific questions surrounding this topic.
Don’t miss this opportunity to elevate your FME expertise and drive your projects to new heights of efficiency.
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
Dev Dives: Train smarter, not harder – active learning and UiPath LLMs for do...UiPathCommunity
💥 Speed, accuracy, and scaling – discover the superpowers of GenAI in action with UiPath Document Understanding and Communications Mining™:
See how to accelerate model training and optimize model performance with active learning
Learn about the latest enhancements to out-of-the-box document processing – with little to no training required
Get an exclusive demo of the new family of UiPath LLMs – GenAI models specialized for processing different types of documents and messages
This is a hands-on session specifically designed for automation developers and AI enthusiasts seeking to enhance their knowledge in leveraging the latest intelligent document processing capabilities offered by UiPath.
Speakers:
👨🏫 Andras Palfi, Senior Product Manager, UiPath
👩🏫 Lenka Dulovicova, Product Program Manager, UiPath
The Art of the Pitch: WordPress Relationships and SalesLaura Byrne
Clients don’t know what they don’t know. What web solutions are right for them? How does WordPress come into the picture? How do you make sure you understand scope and timeline? What do you do if sometime changes?
All these questions and more will be explored as we talk about matching clients’ needs with what your agency offers without pulling teeth or pulling your hair out. Practical tips, and strategies for successful relationship building that leads to closing the deal.
Let's dive deeper into the world of ODC! Ricardo Alves (OutSystems) will join us to tell all about the new Data Fabric. After that, Sezen de Bruijn (OutSystems) will get into the details on how to best design a sturdy architecture within ODC.
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
Software Delivery At the Speed of AI: Inflectra Invests In AI-Powered QualityInflectra
In this insightful webinar, Inflectra explores how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming software development and testing. Discover how AI-powered tools are revolutionizing every stage of the software development lifecycle (SDLC), from design and prototyping to testing, deployment, and monitoring.
Learn about:
• The Future of Testing: How AI is shifting testing towards verification, analysis, and higher-level skills, while reducing repetitive tasks.
• Test Automation: How AI-powered test case generation, optimization, and self-healing tests are making testing more efficient and effective.
• Visual Testing: Explore the emerging capabilities of AI in visual testing and how it's set to revolutionize UI verification.
• Inflectra's AI Solutions: See demonstrations of Inflectra's cutting-edge AI tools like the ChatGPT plugin and Azure Open AI platform, designed to streamline your testing process.
Whether you're a developer, tester, or QA professional, this webinar will give you valuable insights into how AI is shaping the future of software delivery.
Accelerate your Kubernetes clusters with Varnish CachingThijs Feryn
A presentation about the usage and availability of Varnish on Kubernetes. This talk explores the capabilities of Varnish caching and shows how to use the Varnish Helm chart to deploy it to Kubernetes.
This presentation was delivered at K8SUG Singapore. See https://feryn.eu/presentations/accelerate-your-kubernetes-clusters-with-varnish-caching-k8sug-singapore-28-2024 for more details.
State of ICS and IoT Cyber Threat Landscape Report 2024 previewPrayukth K V
The IoT and OT threat landscape report has been prepared by the Threat Research Team at Sectrio using data from Sectrio, cyber threat intelligence farming facilities spread across over 85 cities around the world. In addition, Sectrio also runs AI-based advanced threat and payload engagement facilities that serve as sinks to attract and engage sophisticated threat actors, and newer malware including new variants and latent threats that are at an earlier stage of development.
The latest edition of the OT/ICS and IoT security Threat Landscape Report 2024 also covers:
State of global ICS asset and network exposure
Sectoral targets and attacks as well as the cost of ransom
Global APT activity, AI usage, actor and tactic profiles, and implications
Rise in volumes of AI-powered cyberattacks
Major cyber events in 2024
Malware and malicious payload trends
Cyberattack types and targets
Vulnerability exploit attempts on CVEs
Attacks on counties – USA
Expansion of bot farms – how, where, and why
In-depth analysis of the cyber threat landscape across North America, South America, Europe, APAC, and the Middle East
Why are attacks on smart factories rising?
Cyber risk predictions
Axis of attacks – Europe
Systemic attacks in the Middle East
Download the full report from here:
https://sectrio.com/resources/ot-threat-landscape-reports/sectrio-releases-ot-ics-and-iot-security-threat-landscape-report-2024/
Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey 2024 by 91mobiles.pdf91mobiles
91mobiles recently conducted a Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey in which we asked over 3,000 respondents about the TV they own, aspects they look at on a new TV, and their TV buying preferences.
Builder.ai Founder Sachin Dev Duggal's Strategic Approach to Create an Innova...Ramesh Iyer
In today's fast-changing business world, Companies that adapt and embrace new ideas often need help to keep up with the competition. However, fostering a culture of innovation takes much work. It takes vision, leadership and willingness to take risks in the right proportion. Sachin Dev Duggal, co-founder of Builder.ai, has perfected the art of this balance, creating a company culture where creativity and growth are nurtured at each stage.
PHP Frameworks: I want to break free (IPC Berlin 2024)Ralf Eggert
In this presentation, we examine the challenges and limitations of relying too heavily on PHP frameworks in web development. We discuss the history of PHP and its frameworks to understand how this dependence has evolved. The focus will be on providing concrete tips and strategies to reduce reliance on these frameworks, based on real-world examples and practical considerations. The goal is to equip developers with the skills and knowledge to create more flexible and future-proof web applications. We'll explore the importance of maintaining autonomy in a rapidly changing tech landscape and how to make informed decisions in PHP development.
This talk is aimed at encouraging a more independent approach to using PHP frameworks, moving towards a more flexible and future-proof approach to PHP development.
Mission to Decommission: Importance of Decommissioning Products to Increase E...
Seven Keys to Navigating Your Agile Testing Transition
1. TK
Half-day Tutorials
5/6/2014 8:30:00 AM
Seven Keys to Navigating
Your Agile Testing
Transition
Presented by:
Bob Galen
Mary Thorn
Brought to you by:
340 Corporate Way, Suite 300, Orange Park, FL 32073
888-268-8770 ∙ 904-278-0524 ∙ sqeinfo@sqe.com ∙ www.sqe.com
2. Bob Galen
Velocity Partners
An agile methodologist, practitioner, and coach based in Cary, NC, Bob Galen helps guide
companies in their adoption of Scrum and other agile methodologies and practices. Bob is a
principal agile evangelist at Velocity Partners, a leading agile nearshore development partner;
president of RGCG; and frequent speaker on software development, project management, software
testing, and team leadership at conferences and professional groups. He is a Certified Scrum
Coach, Certified Scrum Product Owner, and an active member of the Agile and Scrum Alliances. In
2013 Bob published Scrum Product Ownership–Balancing Value from the Inside Out. Reach him
at bob@rgalen.com.
Mary Thorn
ChannelAdvisor
Mary Thorn is a Director of QA at ChannelAdvisor in Morrisville, North Carolina. She has a broad
testing background that spans automation, data warehouses, and web-based systems in a wide
variety of technologies and testing techniques. During her more than fifteen years of experience in
healthcare, HR, agriculture, and SaaS-based products, Mary has held manager and contributor level
positions in software development organizations. She has a strong interest in agile testing
methodologies and direct experience leading agile teams through Scrum adoption and beyond.