Full-Day Classes: Monday, April 19th
- Agile Methods
- Measurement
- Requirements
- Test Automation
- Leadership
Agile Testing Practices
Megan Sumrell, Mosaic ATM
Track 1: 8:30 - 4:30
When a software development team embraces agile practices, the testing team often struggles to understand their role in the project. This class provides participants with an overview of how testing changes when a project team adopts agile methods. Using a combination of presentations and hands on exercises, the class will cover agile principles and practices, the role of the agile tester, and collaboration within agile teams. You will learn how agile teams shift to a test first mentality and how testers are instrumental in facilitating this transformation. Finally, you will gain an understanding of executable requirements and will learn how to use FitNesse to create them. You will leave this class with a clear understanding of how traditional testers can navigate the unfamiliar waters of an agile based project.
- Understand the role of an agile tester and how they collaborate and work on an agile team
- Discover how agile teams shift to a test first mentality and how testers facilitate this shift
- Learn what executable requirements are and how to create them using FitNesse
About the instructor...
Megan Sumrell is the Quality Architect for Mosaic ATM. In this role, she is establishing new quality practices within the organization including project management, project planning and tracking, and testing. Megan is a Certified Scrum Practitioner with over 14 years of software testing experience. She has worked as a developer, quality engineer, Director of QA, QA architect, SCRUM Master, agile coach, and agile trainer. Megan has built QA organizations at several software companies including CommerceOne and ChannelAdvisor. Prior to joining to Mosaic ATM, she served as the Director of Transformation Services at Valtech. Megan specializes in process improvement and agile testing and has worked with many teams to help them transition from waterfall to agile practices.
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Meaningful Software Measurement
Robin F. Goldsmith, JD, Go Pro Management, Inc.
Track 2: 8:30 - 4:30
To know what you are doing, you must meaningfully measure the right things at the right times in the right ways. Clearly, information technology’s frequently reported poor project results are due in large part to inadequate measurement. Not only do we tend to miss important measures, but often, we also overwhelm ourselves with too many measurements. This interactive presentation describes a minimum set of metrics that IT needs to know and the context needed to make those measures meaningful. Various ways to measure the effectiveness of our practices will also be demonstrated. Techniques will be suggested for overcoming resistance when getting started. Exercises will enhance learning by allowing participants to practice applying practical techniques to realistic examples.
- Understand how to relate measurement to processes and distinguish real from presumed processes
- Learn key variable dimensions that a measurement set needs to address
- Practice presenting and reporting measurements so that people pay attention
About the instructor...
Robin F. Goldsmith, JD is President of Go Pro Management, Inc., consultancy. He works directly with business and systems professionals in requirements, quality and testing, metrics, ROI, software acquisition, and project and process management. Previously, he has held development, quality, and lead roles with the City of Cleveland, leading financial institutions, and a "Big 4" consulting firm. A member of the IEEE Software Test Documentation Std. 829-2008 Revision Committee, IIBA BABOK subject expert and reviewer, and formerly International Vice President of the Association for Systems Management, and Executive Editor of the Journal of Systems Management, Robin is the author of the Proactive Testing™ methodology and the recent book, Discovering REAL Business Requirements for Software Project Success.
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Use Cases: Systematically Elaborating Requirements to Test Cases
Timothy Korson, PhD, Qualsys Solutions
Track 3: 8:30 - 4:30
Uses cases are a powerful technique for elaborating requirements in a format that is especially useful to testers. Each use case contains a number of use scenarios. If these use scenarios are written at a sufficiently detailed level, they can serve directly as test scenarios. If not, then the tester may derive multiple test scenarios from each use scenario. This highly participatory class explores industry best practices for use cases as well as common pitfalls. The class will cover the proper format for documenting use cases, how to systematically identify all of the alternate use scenarios for a use case, how to systematically derive test cases from use cases, and how to avoid the most common issues when using use cases.
- Learn how to create and document use cases
- Understand how to derive testing scenarios from these use cases
- Avoid common problems associated with the applying use cases to testing
About the instructor...
Dr. Timothy Korson has had over a decade of significant experience working on a large variety of systems developed using modern software engineering techniques. This experience includes distributed, real time, embedded systems as well as business information systems in an n-tier, client-server environment. Tim's typical involvement on a project is as a senior management consultant with additional technical responsibilities to ensure high quality, robust test and quality assurance processes and practices. Tim has authored numerous articles, and co-authored a book on Object Technology Centers, Object Technology Centers of Excellence. He has given frequent invited lectures at major international conferences and has contributed to the discipline through original research. The lectures and training classes he presents receive uniformly high marks.
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Test Automation with Robot Framework
C. Martin Taylor, Texas Instruments, Inc.
Track 4: 8:30 - 4:30
This full-day, hands-on class is a practical, applied introduction to test automation. The class will begin by introducing a model for a generic test case. That model will then be used to derive requirements for a test automation framework. Martin will lead you through a survey of commercial and open source test automation frameworks and an analysis of how these tools meet the derived requirements. Next, you will focus on Robot Framework, an open source, keyword-driven, test automation framework that has an easy-to-use, tabular syntax for creating test cases. After a demonstration of the various types of systems that Robot Framework can test, you will participate in a hands-on learning experience, creating keyword-driven test cases in Robot Framework. You will also see how to build specialized keywords and data tables to enable data driven testing in Robot Framework. Attendees should come with their own laptop. All software used in the tutorial will be provided.
- Understand the concepts of keyword-based test automation
- Gain practical experience in applying these concepts using the open source Robot Framework tool
- Learn how to implement data driven testing in Robot Framework
About the instructor...
C. Martin Taylor, currently a Senior Test Automation Specialist for Texas Instruments, has 25 years of experience as a software developer. Over the last ten years, Martin has built software test automation frameworks for four different companies. Martin has become one of the major users of the open source tool Robot Framework. He adapted his own framework's test engines to Robot Framework and has built a number of add-ons and customizations for the tool that are now in use at Texas Instruments. Martin has worked with TI’s SQA team to implement over 2 million Robot Framework test cases.
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Creating and Leading High Performance Test Organizations
Robert Galen, RGCG, LLC
Track 5: 8:30 - 4:30
The challenges to software teams are ever increasing. Less people, less time, constantly changing technologies, and rapidly growing business expectations are clearly the norm for today’s project teams. Nowhere is this more apparent than within testing teams where the pressure increases steadily as we move down through the life cycle. This creates a tremendous leadership challenge for anyone chartered with directing software testing efforts. The opportunity is ripe, therefore, for effective test leaders to differentiate themselves and their teams as they meet and exceed organizational expectations. You just need the tools and the will. Rather than improving your planning and test management skills in this tutorial, you will focus on the leadership skills required for today’s environment. We will share lessons and high impact methods that will fundamentally change the way you build and lead your teams and the way that you engage with your projects and stakeholders.
- Learn what and how to effectively communicate at all levels of the organization
- Understand the use of an “Operations Plan” model for guiding your testing team efforts
- Become agile and adaptable, learn to change with the organizational landscape
About the instructor…
Bob Galen is an agile methodologist, practitioner, and coach who helps to guide companies and teams in their adoption and organizational shift towards Scrum and other agile practices. He is currently the Director of R&D and Agile Coach at iContact, an email marketing SaaS provider. He is also President and Principal Consultant for RGCG, LLC. Bob has over 25 years of experience working in a wide variety of companies. He is a Certified Scrum Master Practicing (CSP), Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), and an active member of the Agile Alliance and Scrum Alliance. Is the author of several books including Scrum Product Ownership – Balancing Value from the Inside Out. The book addresses the gap in guidance towards effective agile product management.
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