STARWEST 2005 - Software Testing Conference

PRESENTATIONS

Testing with Styles

Walt Disney is famous for characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, but there were three special characters he used as thinking tools. No, not Huey, Duey, and Louie, Donald's nephews, but three special character styles. These styles are dreamer, realist, and spoiler. Often Walt participated in meetings having adopted one of these styles. We can also use these styles to guide software development, reviews and testing, user-system interactions, and system-to-system interactions.
Erik Petersen, Emprove
Testing with the Open Source DBUnit Framework

Many enterprise applications are tightly coupled to a database. Consequently testing application code that depends on a database is challenging because the act of testing changes the database, often making retesting a problem. When it comes to white box testing, databases present dependency scenarios that are sometimes difficult to set-up. Fortunately, the open source DBUnit framework, which employs XML datasets, provides an elegant solution for controlling database dependencies within applications.
Andrew Glover, Vanward Technologies
Testing XML Documents for Information Content

More and more applications are generating XML documents as their primary or secondary outputs because XML is much easier to parse than traditional formats. However, simple string comparison is often too naïve to properly test XML documents. Instead, they must be evaluated for information content. XML has many syntactic options that make testing output more difficult than testing traditional, less rich formats.
Elliotte Harold, Polytechnic University
The Next Stop in Test Automation: Test Environment Setup

To achieve the most effective test automation, you need to go beyond automated test case creation and implement automated environment setup. In tracking the testing time spent over several projects, the Clustering group Amit Mathur worked with found that more staff time was being spent on setup than on actual testing. He discusses and demonstrates the Environment Configuration System (ECS) his group developed to automatically set up test environments and trigger automated test execution.
Amit Mathur, VERITAS Software Corporation
The Value-added Manager: Five Pragmatic Practices

What do great managers do that others don't? Great managers focus their efforts, increase their productivity, and develop their people. In this session, Esther Derby describes five pragmatic practices that managers can apply to improve both work results and worker satisfaction-give both positive and corrective feedback weekly, consciously decide what not to do, limit multitasking, develop people, and meet with staff individually and as a group every week. Esther says these ideas are not rocket science.
Esther Derby, Esther Derby Associates Inc
The Venerable Triangle Redux

Jerry Weinberg's venerable triangle problem has been around since 1966 and was popularized in Glenford Myers' book The Art of Software Testing. To assess a tester's effectiveness, many software companies have used the triangle problem as an interview question. But, past studies indicate testers' effectiveness at solving the problem is relatively low. Recent studies by noted experts indicate that a significant number of testers in the industry lack formal training in software testing techniques.
William Rollison, Microsoft Corporation
What Hollywood Taught Me About Software Testing

Powerful lessons can be learned from some of the great epic movies of our day: "Star Wars" and bug triage, "Indiana Jones" and requirements, "Monty Python" and configuration management, "Jurassic Park" and unit testing, "The Usual Suspects" and teamwork, and "Star Trek" and SLAs. There are important metaphors within these movie stories that you can apply to real test management problems.
Robert Sabourin, AmiBug.com Inc
What the US Marine Corp Taught Me About Test Management

When we think of teams and teamwork, who epitomizes the team concept more than the US Marine Corps? From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli or to the hallways of your company, success requires teamwork. Are you building, overhauling, or just wanting to improve your test team? Looking for new ideas and approaches to tackle testing obstacles? A crucial part of success in testing is the motivation and effectiveness of the test team.
Sean Buck, The Capital Group Companies Inc

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