Conference Presentations

Free Test Tools are Like a Box of Chocolates

You never know what you are going to get! Until you explore, it can be hard to tell whether a free, shareware, or open source tool is an abandoned and poorly documented research project or a robust powerhouse of a tool. In this information-filled presentation, Danny Faught shows you where open source and freeware tools fit within the overall test tool landscape. During this double session, Danny installs and tries out several tools right on the spot and shares tips on how to evaluate tools you find on the Web. Find out about licensing, maintenance, documentation, Web forums, bugs, and more. Discover the many different types of testing tools that are available for free and where to find them. Danny demonstrates examples of tools that you can put to use as soon as you get back to the office.

Danny Faught, Tejas Software Consulting
Testers and Testing in the Agile Development

You have heard about agile software development techniques such as eXtreme Programming (XP), Scrum, and Agile Modeling (AM). The industry is buzzing with everything from "this is the greatest thing ever" to "it's just hacking with a fancy new name." Comments like "there is no place for testers because developers and users do the testing now" and "testers play an important role in the agile methods" are both common. Scott Ambler, an early proponent of the agile movement, explains the fundamentals, values, and principles of agile development. He describes a range of agile techniques and explores many myths and misconceptions surrounding agility. Agile software development is real, it works, and it may be an important part of your future in testing. Better testing and improved quality are critical aspects of agile software development, but the roles of traditional testers and QA professionals on agile projects remain unclear.

Scott Ambler, Ronin International, Inc.
A Strategic Approach - "Beta the Business"

Beta testing is an industry standard practice to obtain user feedback prior to general availability of software. Have you ever considered that the Beta release can be used to validate the software's value to customers and application users? Extending the Beta concept will result in higher customer satisfaction (and higher revenue for commercial products). Also, you can employ Beta testing to evaluate not only the software product, but the distribution (and sales) process, training, customer support, and usage within your customers' environments. Far beyond just finding defects in the product, you can focus Beta testing on how well the software is meeting your customers' needs. What does that mean to the Development team and the organization as a whole? What are the risks and challenges that we face? What are the rewards?

Pete Conway, EMC Corporation
Continuous Integration Using an Open Source Platform Architecture

Continuous integration is the process of performing a fully automated build, run often, usually daily, during software development. How do you develop a robust platform architecture to automatically integrate your software into builds? How can open source tools fill the gaps in your platform architecture? After examining the benefits of continuous integration, Paul Duvall discusses techniques, such as architectural validation, configuration management, automated unit testing, and report generation within the process. From a working reference implementation in Java, learn the attributes of an effective platform architecture for continuous integration. Additionally, Paul will introduce you to open source tools, such as Ant, Maven, CruiseControl, Eclipse, xUnit, and others that can help you implement a continuous integration architecture in your environment.

Paul Duvall, Cigital, Inc.
Configuration Managment at Work in the Project and the Enterprise

For configuration management (CM) processes and systems, one size does NOT fit all. Although CM processes are applicable across all projects and product lines, you need an approach tailored to the size and complexity of each project and the systems you develop and support. GTRI/ELSYS has deployed a flexible configuration management approach that meets and exceeds these needs. Learn about the features that all CM systems should have, such as: the ability to reproduce product baselines, version control of all product related work products, flexible levels of control, and support for other management processes such as audit, peer reviews, and requirements. Find out how to organize work products to support multiple baselines, document build instructions, and verify baselines. Walk away with a new perspective on how to deliver robust, cost-effective CM capabilities for both large and small projects.

Mark Pellegrini, Georgia Tech Research Institute
Continuous Integration—Your Project's Unlikely Hero

Code sandboxes of the world, unite behind a new leader: Continuous Integration (CI). Automated and customizable, CI gives you the ability to know at the push of a button whether your application is working or whether it needs a tweak. It brings together the disparate code of countless developers and provides a real-time gauge of your application's health. Never fear nightly (or, egads! weekly) builds again. Rely on the strength of CI.

Jeffrey Frederick
Fault Injection to Stress Test Windows Applications

Testing an application's robustness and tolerance for failures in its natural environment can be difficult or impossible. Developers and testers buy tool suites to simulate load, write programs that fill memory, and create large files on disk, all to determine the behavior of their application under test in a hostile and unpredictable environment. Herbert Thompson describes and demonstrates new, cutting edge methods for simulating stress that are more efficient and reliable than current industry practices. Using Windows Media Player and Winamp as examples, he demonstrates how new methods of fault injection can be used to simulate stress on Windows applications.

  • Runtime fault injection as a testing and assessment tool
  • Cutting edge stress-testing techniques
  • An in-depth case study on runtime fault injection
Herbert Thompson, Security Innovation
Re-Engineering the Testing Organization: Get Into the Future

This article discusses how updating current processes will make your test team better able to accomplish project goals. Change is good when it is implemented the right way.

Clyneice Chaney, Application Services
Software Testing Turnovers

This paper was originally presented at an SQE STAR conference. It is offered here unedited in its original format.

 

Jeffrey S. Davis
Agile Codeline Management

Software developers often view version management tools and techniques as a necessary evil. This is particularly true of developers practicing agile techniques. However, version management, can be an aid to agility rather than something that gets in the way.

Steve Berczuk's picture Steve Berczuk

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