Conference Presentations

Bottlenecks Exposed: The Most Frequently Found Performance Problems

Dan Downing's experience with stress testing projects has revealed a handful of common denominators present in most Web site performance problems. These include memory starvation; a CPU-gobbling database access; improperly sized heaps, caches, and pools; poor application design; and load balancing that doesn't balance. This presentation uses actual B2C and B2B project examples to show you a symptom-measurement-diagnostic approach to understanding, exposing, and documenting these common problems.

Dan Downing, Mentora
Software Code Inspection for Defect Prevention

Thousands of hours are spent testing, but most software professionals find that traditional testing simply isn't enough to ensure code quality. This presentation gives software professionals a complementary approach: software inspection. Learn how software inspection differs from traditional testing, and gain an understanding of principal inspection techniques.

Jasper Kamperman, Reasoning
Is Quality Negotiable? Experiences of an eXtreme Programming Tester

If you want a higher quality product in an eXtreme Programming (XP) project, you must be prepared to pay a higher price. We make decisions and compromises based on quality versus cost every day. Extreme programming teams are driven to do their best work, but customers have the right to specify and pay for only the level of quality they require. This presentation explores ways to resolve these two potentially conflicting points of view.

Lisa Crispin, BoldTech Systems
STARWEST 2001: Bug Hunting: Going on a Software Safari

This presentation is about bugs: where they hide, how you find them, and how you tell other people they exist so they can be fixed. Explore the habitats of the most common types of software bugs. Learn how to make bugs more likely to appear and discover ways to present information about the bugs you find to ensure they get fixed. Drawing on real-world examples of bug reports, Elisabeth Hendrickson reveals tips and techniques for capturing the wiliest and most squirmy critters crawling around in your software.

Elisabeth Hendrickson, Quality Tree Software
Evolution of Automated Testing for Enterprise Systems

The key to accelerating test automation in any project is for a well-rounded, cohesive team to emerge that can marry its business knowledge with its technical expertise. This session is an in-depth case study of the evolution of automated testing at the BNSF Railroad. From record-and-playback to database-driven robust test scripts, this session will take you through each step of the $24 billion corporation's efforts to implement test automation.

Cherie Coles, BNSF Railroad
Introduction to Usability Testing

What is usability? Why is it important? If these questions wake you in the middle of the night, then this presentation is for you. Cheryl Nesta discusses the relevance of usability testing within the broad framework of quality assurance and appropriate expectations based on its uses and applicability. Explore methodology, process flow, goal identification, and definition. Real-world examples create a hands-on introductory experience.

Cheryl L. Nesta, Vanteon
Performance Testing 101

Organizations are often so eager to "jump in" and use load testing tools that the critical steps necessary to ensure successful performance testing are sometimes overlooked-leading to testing delays and wasted effort. Learn the best practices and tips for successful automated performance testing in areas such as assembling a proper test team, planning, simulating a production environment, creating scripts, and executing load tests.

David Torrisi, Mercury Interactive
Mining the Gold from Your Web Server Logs

How often have you wished that you knew what your customers really thought of your Web site? You can extract a gold mine of information from your Web server's log to reveal how your site is used. Learn ways for your team to use this information to organize browser testing based on user statistics, improve testing coverage of your Web site, and plan more realistic load testing.

Karen Johnson, Peapod, Inc.
Wireless Application Testing

Putting the Web on cellular phones, PDAs, and other wireless devices is all the rage. Still in its infancy, the idea of doing online transactions via mobile devices has created a new buzzword: "M-Commerce." However, some companies in their quest to be first-to-market have overlooked the fact that this new technology is still in need of basic testing for quality, performance under load, and usability. Discover the importance of testing wireless applications, and learn how to identify common bottlenecks and problems.

Scott Moore, CommerceQuest
A Reusable Web Load Testing Process

You've purchased the tools. Now you're ready to start Web load testing. Learn how one company developed a process that supports-in a repeatable manner-the planning, coordination, results analysis, and results reporting that are necessary to make a Web load test cost-efficient and effective. Using information gained from lessons learned, documentation templates, and planning templates, get a jump start on your process.

Glen Schulze, PHH Arval

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