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Leading Change When You’re Not in ChargeTuesday, April 19, 2016 | 8:30 am – 12:00 pm You try to implement a change in your organization and it doesn’t get the support that you thought it would and you can’t figure out why. You have a great idea but can’t get the resources required for successful implementation. Determine which ideas will and will-not work within your organization using Jennifer’s shared toolkit. Learn five rules for change management. Use a checklist to determine the type of change process needed in your organization. Master techniques for communicating your ideas to your target audience and a set of questions you can ask to better understand your executives’ goals, and methods for overcoming resistance to change from teams you don’t lead. These tools, together with an awareness of your organization’s core culture, will help you identify which changes you can successfully implement and which you should leave until another day. Learning Objectives:
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Agile Metrics – It’s Not About VelocityTuesday, April 19, 2016 | 8:30 am – 12:00 pm When implementing software quality metrics, we need to first understand the purpose of the metric and who will be using it. Will the metric be used for measuring people, the process, illustrate the level of quality in software products, or drive towards a specific objective? QA managers typically want to deliver productivity metrics while management may want to see metrics that support customer or user satisfaction or cost related (ROI) initiatives. With agile development methods, we often lose sight that our primary objective is the same, quality. Many organizations are myopic on the primary objective of velocity. However, velocity means little without quality. Define quality for your organization with an agile looking glass with intermediate metrics that lead to both quality and velocity. Learn to develop and implement software quality metrics with actions toward improving on these two primary objectives. Learning Objectives:
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Making Requirements and User Stories TestableTuesday, April 19, 2016 | 8:30 am – 12:00 pm Regardless of the format, requirements are often written without adequate attention to how they can be tested and accepted by the business stakeholders. During this interactive session the participants will be given a practical framework for understanding how to strengthen the testability of use cases, user stories, and requirements specifications. Learning Objectives:
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Maintaining Testing Integrity Under PressureTuesday, April 19, 2016 | 8:30 am – 12:00 pm Effective quality assurance / testing adds critical value to a project providing that project managers, stakeholders and test leads understand its purpose and plans, and carry out execution effectively. This session describes different types of testing that need to occur and what they need to accomplish. It addresses options and respective pros and cons of testers with different skills and backgrounds participating at different times during a project. It reviews common challenges that test leads face when planning and executing testing and suggests approaches for handling these effectively. This session provides the opportunity for attendees to participate in realistic testing scenario exercises, share their testing challenges, and benefit from others’ experiences in similar situations. Learning Objectives:
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The Development and Implementation of an Automation FrameworkTuesday, April 19, 2016 | 8:30 am – 12:00 pm “Shift left testing” has created a strong push in the market to apply new tools and techniques to support faster, leaner test automation earlier in the SDLC. While this is an important and logical step in the evolution of test automation, it causes many organizations to lose sight of the still critical regression phase of testing. Regression testing remains the phase of testing where you are most likely to realize the greatest ROI utilizing test automation. With the ever-growing speed with which software must go to market and the number of platforms it must support, it’s imperative to have a regression test automation strategy allowing fast script development, solid data management, and minimal maintenance. Dean provides an automation strategy that supports your organization’s culture, resources and budget by determining the type of framework to implement along with a plan to accomplish it. Keep your regression testing effective and maintainable by using this framework. Learning Objectives:
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What’s Your Leadership IQ?Tuesday, April 19, 2016 | 1:00 pm – 4:30 pm Need a way to measure your leadership IQ or improve as a leader? Find out your core leadership competencies and how to build on and improve them. Jennifer shares a toolkit to help you with all of the above including personal assessment of your leadership competencies. Use the toolkit to explore a set of eight dimensions of successful leaders and improve competencies that are not in your core set of strengths. Use these tools to become a more effective and valued leader in your organization. This interactive session will involve team activities and case studies on leadership situations. Exercises help you gain an understanding of yourself and strive for balanced leadership through recognition of both your strengths and your “development opportunities.” Learning Objectives:
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Value Stream Mapping and Kaizen in Agile RetrospectivesTuesday, April 19, 2016 | 1:00 pm – 4:30 pm Continuous self-improvement in agile teams is traditionally done through agile retrospectives, a form of post-mortem after the completion of an iteration. More often than not, retrospectives begin to fade and the list of action items keeps growing until teams simply succumb to business-as-usual practices. Learning Objectives:
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(Almost) Everything I know about testing I learned playing pokerTuesday, April 19, 2016 | 1:30 pm – 4:30 pm What do software testing and Texas Hold ‘Em poker have in common? More than you might think. Risk assessments, planning (but not writing a plan), bluffing, reading a bluff, resource allocation and many more software testing techniques are found in playing poker. In this highly interactive session Mr. Eakin will walk some “volunteers” through one (or many) hands of Texas Hold ‘Em. With each turn of the cards we will apply testing techniques familiar to us to (hopefully) win the hand. Don’t worry, unlike real life poker we’re not going to take your money! At least not all of it. Learning Objectives:
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Usability Goes MobileTuesday, April 19, 2016 | 1:00 pm – 4:30 pm The introduction of mobile devices and applications presents new challenges to traditional usability testing practices. Identifying the differences between usability testing techniques for mobile applications and traditional desktop applications is critical to ensuring the acceptance and use of mobile applications. New equipment requirements for the mobile platforms testing add to the transition issues. Experience a short mobility usability test and identify the process changes that need to be considered for your change to the mobile platform. Create a plan that will help you transition your traditional usability testing program into a mobile environment. Learn a series of tips that will smooth the path of starting to test in the mobile area. Join Susan to make your transition into the mobile testing field successful. Join Susan to expand your skills in Mobile Usability Testing Learning Objectives:
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Introduction to ATDD using Ruby, Cucumber, Watir-WebDriverTuesday, April 19, 2016 | 1:30 pm – 4:30 pm There are multiple challenges with automating in an agile context however, there are some tools that can make this easier. Using Behavior Driven Development (BDD) and Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) with Cucumber and WATiR-WebDriver, we will show how it is possible to automate within a sprint. This class introduces students to agile automation using Open Source tools Ruby, Cucumber, and WATiR. By the end of the class, students will have a functioning project and basic test script. Join Joseph to see how easy this technology is and start on a path of continued automation and ATDD learning. This will be a hands on workshop where everyone will learn, through doing, how to automate running a browser, how to tie tests into living specifications, and basic ATDD principles, all guided by one of our senior subject matter experts. Learning Objectives:
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