Conference Presentations

STAREAST 2012 Keynote: What Managers Think They Know about Test Automation—But Don’t
Video

Managers play a critical role in the success or failure of test automation. Although most testers and some test managers have a realistic view of what automation can and cannot do, many senior managers have firm ideas about automation that are misguided—or downright wrong.

Dorothy Graham, Independent Test Consultant
Collaborative Web-based Testing for Product and Software Development
Video

How to establish instantaneous traceability with Requirements and Development Artifacts. How to automatically process and identify unit test methods and promote as "First Class Citizens". How to perform any test. Test any product. Test on any device. Anywhere.

David Merrill, Polarion
Quality Interactions: Bulding Effective Working Relationships

As software professionals, we all care about quality. We focus our efforts on building quality into the code and testing to assess quality and find errors before our customers do. However, there is an important element of quality that comes before all that and is critical to delivering reliable software: quality working relationships and quality interactions. Esther Derby covers pragmatic strategies for building, strengthening, and maintaining working relationships with all stakeholders-managers, customers, team members, and peers. The first step is to build a foundation of trust and respect. Then, we must focus on interests rather than positions and seek joint solutions to problems. We should use the richest communication channel available for our interactions and make a generous interpretation of others’ actions.

Esther Derby, Esther Derby Associates Inc
Cosmic Truths about Software Requirements

The history of many software projects shows that requirements mistakes are the most expensive ones to correct late in development. So, why do we make big requirements errors over and over, even in mission-critical software projects? Karl Wiegers, author of a best-selling book on software requirements and a consultant on many such projects, shares his top ten requirements principles to help your organization produce accurate, consistent, and unambiguous requirements. Although there are few absolute truths in software development, Karl has found several that almost universally apply to software projects. These principles emphasize the critical contribution that good requirements make to a project's success, and the critical contribution that customer involvement makes to good requirements.

Karl Wiegers, Process Impact
A Defined Process for Requirements Peer Reviews

Most software projects include reviews-whether or not they are officially part of the development process. Unfortunately, these reviews are often inefficient, and even unproductive. Implementing a defined peer review process for requirements is an excellent means to both improve your requirements and kick-start overall process improvement because participants can immediately see timesaving and increased quality in work products. Find out how to measure benefits and potential savings from these reviews and how they can identify major gaps in other project processes. Take away a Peer Review Toolkit that allows your team members to start their first effective requirements review right away.

  • A simple, efficient peer review process with a 30-minute training program
  • Instant results and metrics, including potential savings
  • A Peer Review Toolkit to get started.
Rob Wyatt, Wachovia
Refining Requirements with Test Cases

Requirements are supposed to be the basis of most test cases, but can you use test cases to define what the system needs to do--to improve or to actually become the requirements? To some degree, your development process dictates the opportunities you have for test cases to define or refine requirements. However, everyone can benefit from test case writing techniques to identify missing requirements, surface ambiguous statements, and expose implied requirements early in the process. Find out how Tanya Martin-McClellan produces test cases that accurately reflect the requirements, as they are understood at the time, and conducts team reviews to find the gaps and misunderstandings. Although more time is spent writing and rewriting test cases, less time is spent later discussing requirements.

  • Find the vaguely defined parts of the requirement definition
  • A template of implied requirements you can customize
Tanya Martin-McClellan, Texas Mutual Insurance Company
Expressing Requrirements as Users Stories - an Agile Approach

Expressing requirements as user stories is one of the most broadly applicable techniques introduced by eXtreme Programming and adopted by other agile development processes. User stories are an effective approach for capturing requirements from an agile project, not just those using XP. In this session learn what user stories are, how they differ from other requirements approaches, and why you should consider using them. You also will learn the six attributes all good stories must exhibit and see how to get started with user stories. Whether you are a developer, requirements analyst, tester, manager, or even a customer interested in applying agile techniques to your projects, this session is for you.

  • The differences between user stories and other requirements documentation
  • Attributes of "good" user stories
  • Examples of User Stories from agile development projects
Mike Cohn, Mountain Goat Software
RequireMINTS - Fresh Approach to Analyzing Requirements

Studies show that most application defects are introduced before a single line of code is developed-with many (if not most) of these defects attributed to poor requirements. Studies also show that it is less costly to identify and correct these defects prior to code development. Despite this data, many of us have requirements analysis approaches that have become stale and are ineffective. Many analysts acknowledge that their processes need some improvement but feel helpless to do much about the problem. Dion Johnson offers a package of small yet effective "RequireMINTs" that will freshen up those stale requirements processes in a highly practical way. You will take away a road map for collecting metrics that make a case for requirements improvements, identifying necessary improvements, and implementing these improvements.

  • Reverse the reverse-engineering trend with better requirements
Dion Johnson, DiJiMax Consulting, Inc.
Common Requirements Traps - And How to Avoid Them

This article details common requirements traps that teams fall into. Tips to help your team avoid these traps are also included.

Karl Wiegers, Process Impact
How to Test Without Testable Requirements

This paper discusses why testing without requirements can create a problem for your project. Testing without the proper requirements can lead to less reliable software results and more software failures.

Mark Taylor, Analex Corporation

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