STAREAST 2007 - Software Testing Conference

PRESENTATIONS

STAREAST 2007: The Nine Forgettings

People forget things. Simple things like keys and passwords and the names of friends long ago. People forget more important things like passports and anniversaries and backing up data.

Lee Copeland, Software Quality Engineering

Stop Finding Bugs, Start Building Quality

Many testers believe that their job is to find bugs. While finding bugs is indeed an important aspect of testing, detecting bugs earlier or preventing them from ever occurring has a far greater impact on improving software quality. You have probably seen charts showing the exponential increase in cost of fixing bugs late in the product development cycle; yet despite calls to "move quality upstream", the end of the product cycle is where many software projects focus their testing efforts.

Alan Page, Microsoft Corporation

Test Automation Centers of Excellence

Many organizations want to automate their testing efforts, but they aren't sure how to begin. Successful test automation requires dedicated resources and automation tool expertise-two things that overworked test teams do not have. Nationwide Insurance's solution was to create a Test Automation Center of Excellence, a group of experts in automation solution design. Members of this team partner with various project test teams to determine what to automate, develop a cost-benefit analysis, and architect a solution.

Jennifer Seale, Nationwide Insurance
Test Estimation: A Pain or ... Painless?

Agile methodologies may be coming soon to a project near you. Agile software development holds the promise of faster development, less cost, fewer defects, and increased customer value, all while maintaining a sustainable work pace in a high morale environment. As a tester, you may be wondering, "How will agile affect me?" We've all heard stories that agile methodologies have no place for testers. In this presentation, Jean Tabaka changes that perspective.

Lloyd Roden, Grove Consultants

Testing Requirements: Ensuring Quality Before the Coding Begins

Software that performs well is useless if it ultimately fails to meet user needs and requirements. Requirements errors are the number one cause of software project failures, yet many organizations continue to create requirements specifications that are unclear, ambiguous, and incomplete. What's the problem? All too often, requirements quality gets lost in translation between business people who think in words and software architects and engineers who prefer visual models.

Joe Marasco, Ravenflow
Testing the Heathrow Terminal 5 Baggage Handling System (Before It Is Built)

London Heathrow Terminal 5 will open in March 2008. This new terminal will handle 30 million passengers a year, and all of these passengers will expect their baggage to accompany them on their flights. To achieve this end, a new baggage handling system is being built that will handle more than 100,000 bags a day. The challenge of testing the integrated software is related not only to its size and complexity but also to the limited time that will be available to test the software in its actual environment.

Roger Derksen, Transfer Solutions BV
Testing Web Applications for Security Defects

Approximately three-fourths of today's successful system security breaches are perpetrated not through network or operating system security flaws but through customer-facing Web applications. How can you ensure that your organization is protected from holes that let hackers invade your systems? Only by thoroughly testing your Web applications for security defects and vulnerabilities.

Michael Sutton, SPI Dynamics
The Case of a Failed Project: A Mystery Solved

John Scarborough recounts the aftermath of a test project failure that stunned engineers and managers alike. The project was highly strategic yet very challenging. Team members were proud to be assigned to it. Early warning signs did not go unheeded. However, after the customer rejected a release of code, confidence plummeted, and the controls that the team had put in place were no longer sufficient to keep deliveries on track. The harder they worked, the more their deficiencies became apparent. Fortunately, all was not lost.

John Scarborough, AZTECSOFT - itest
The Great Testers of our Time and Times Past

What can today's software testers learn from present and past testing masters, many of whom have put their own lives on the line to make amazing contributions to the world in which we live? Clive Bates is thinking about testers such as Chuck Yeager, Yuri Gagarin, Andy Green, Leonardo da Vinci, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Isambard who? Isambard Kingdom Brunel was one of the greatest engineers in British history.

Clive Bates, Grove Consultants
The New IEEE 829 Testing Standard: What You Need to Know

You know about it. You've used it. Maybe you've even loved it. But now, after all these years, the IEEE 829 standard, the only international standard for test documentation, has been radically revised. As a leader on the IEEE committee responsible for this update, Claire Lohr has detailed insight into what the changes mean to you. You'll discover that all of the old documents, with one exception, are still included.

Claire Lohr, Lohr Systems

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