Conference Presentations

Testing "Best Practices": From Microsoft's Context to Yours

Testing is a never-ending series of trade-off decisions, what to test and what not to test; when to stop testing and release the product; how to budget your testing resources for automated vs. manual testing; how much code coverage is good enough; and much more. To make these difficult judgement calls, we often turn to the "best practices" recommended by testing experts and others who have encountered similar problems. The key to successful implementation is matching their "best practices" to your own context (team make-up, company culture, market
environment, etc.). Barry Preppernau shares his insights gathered from over 20 years of testing experience at Microsoft. You'll learn about the tools and processes that have been successful within Microsoft and ways for you to identify, adapt, and implement successful test improvement
initiatives within your organization.

Barry Preppernau, Microsoft Corporation
Becoming a Trusted Advisor to Senior Management

How can Test Managers present information about test results so that the correct message is received by decision-makers? Testing generates a huge amount of raw data, which must be analyzed, processed, summarized, and presented to management so the best decisions can be made quickly. Lloyd Roden shares his experiences as a test manager and as a consultant about communicating with and disseminating information to various levels of senior management. Develop your skills to become a "trusted advisor" to senior management rather than the "bearer of bad news". Find out innovative ways to keep the information flowing to and from management and avoid losing control of the test process, particularly near the delivery date. Learn the seven monitoring techniques Lloyd recommends for reporting on different aspects of the system under test.

Lloyd Roden, Grove Consultants
Model-Driven Architecture

Powerful new development technologies such as model-based code generation will overwhelm test teams that continue to create tests by hand. It's time for testers to put their own productivity into a higher gear. Harry Robinson tells you all about it in this column.

Harry Robinson's picture Harry Robinson
Compressing Test Execution Time to a 24-Hour Cycle

Software development projects face a growing trend of tighter schedules, more complex environments, and increased time-to-market pressures. Thomas Poirier presents a composite case study that explores how frequently encountered situations can severely impact the duration of the Test Execution Cycle (TEC). Learn strategies and tactics to shorten the TEC to within a 24-hour cycle without sacrificing test coverage.

Thomas Poirier, Conduciv inc.
STARWEST 1999: Testing and Test Automation: Establishing Effective Architectures

This presentation provides a practical guide for addressing three essential testing challenges: how to design and document a highly inspectable test suite; how to effectively architect an automated regression test library; and how to integrate test design and automation technology using Action Words. In this double-track session, Ed Kit and Hans Buwalda provide examples, case studies, and demonstrations to illustrate a proven test automation architecture. Learn of the common automation problems and how to overcome them. Discover how to create a process for test design that supports effective test automation.

Edward Kit and Hans Buwalda, Software Development Technologies
Software Inspection: Taking a Step Forward to Completion

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Neela Majumder, Intel Corporation
Exploiting a Broken Design Process

A major flaw in the way most code is designed allows you to break the code by exploiting the flaw. Learn how this "trick" can force software into a state from which it produces incorrect results. Observe live demonstrations on applying this "trick" to popular software programs and code. Discuss ways to build test automation that methodically searches for these flaws.

James Whittaker, Florida Tech, Computer Science
Database Design for Test Information Management

Every test organization must report its findings in a concise, timely, and comprehensive way. Using a relational database to manage test information can dramatically reduce the cost and effort of such reporting. Learn the pitfalls to avoid when designing a test information database. Examine a concrete example of good test database design that you can apply immediately.

Stephen Liss, Motorola
Test Automation of Large System Testing

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) traded over $10 trillion last year. Three years ago, NYSE established an initiative to improve the productivity and quality of software validation efforts. Learn the key architecture and infrastructure elements of that initiative.

Al Lowenstein, SIAC
Does Test Length Matter?

According to popular testing folklore, long tests are more likely to find bugs than short ones. Based on a series of experiments using formal traversal tools, Shmuel Ur demonstrates that long tests do indeed achieve better coverage and are lower in costs than test suites built of short tests. Explore the trade-offs between short and long tests while learning the effective strategies of converting test requirements to test plans.

Shmuel Ur, IBM Research

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