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A "Follow the Sun" Test Automation Strategy In this case study of an award winning project, Andy Redwood describes how his team used "best shoring" of testing services to reduce costs, reuse assets, and get the best from their test automation tools. In an enterprise-wide transformation process at a large investment bank, his team used available infrastructure, technology, tools, and process to reduce business risk from software changes with a new automated regression test suite. With some facts and figures and a little hindsight, you will learn how to provide global, automated testing services on a twenty-four hours a day/seven days a week, on-demand basis. Find out what metrics you need to accurately measure the costs and benefits of a "follow the sun" test automation strategy.
- A successful outsource project that measurably improved business resilience
- The do's and don'ts of offshore testing
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Andy Redwood, Buttonwood Tree Group
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Applying eXtreme Programming Techniques to Automated Testing "Automating manual tests was taking too long and we believed that overhead would become too high to maintain the automated tests. As the code base evolved and expanded, the performance and value of older automated tests deteriorated noticeably. What to do? Taking a lesson from developers in an eXtreme programming (XP) framework, we began applying these practices to our test automation project." Join Neill McCarthy as he shares his test team's adventurous journey from a traditional, plan-driven automation project to a set of agile practices including test-driven development. Learn from their failures, triumphs, and measures of success as Neill outlines the new automation framework that he employs today.
- Why adopt XP for test automation
- The people challenges of using XP in testing
- A framework for agile test automation development
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Neill McCarthy, BJSS
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Test Automation using Scripting Languages Unless you have an automation tool for functional testing, you probably do not have time to execute all the manual tests you should. Even if you have such a tool, you may not have the quantity of licenses necessary for reaching your desired level of efficiency. An alternative is to automate tests using scripting languages, such as VBScript, Ruby, or Perl. Scripting languages are at your fingertips every time you sit in front of your computer and are imbedded in many popular, commercially available automated test tools. With examples using VBScript and Internet Explorer, Dion Johnson reveals a step-by-step approach for creating and implementing automated tests via scripting languages. This eye-opening presentation offers valuable information for all who are truly serious about test automation.
- Accessing and implementing scripting languages
- Creating automated tests using a scripting language, e.g., VBScript
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Dion Johnson, DiJohn Innovative Consulting
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STARWEST 2004: Testing Dialogues - Technical Issues Is there an important technical test issue bothering you? Or, as a test engineer, are you looking for some career advice? If so, join Esther Derby and Elisabeth Hendrickson, experienced facilitators, for "Testing Dialogues - Technical Issues." Practice the power of group problem solving and develop novel approaches to solving your big problem. This double session takes on technical issues, such as automation challenges, model-based testing, testing immature technologies, open source test tools, testing Web services, and career development. You name it! You will share your expertise and experiences, learn from the challenges and successes of others, and generate new topics in real-time. Discussions are structured in a framework so that the participants will receive a summary of their work product after the conference.
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Facilitated by Esther Derby and Elisabeth Hendrickson
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Rescuing a Runaway Test Project As a testing consultant Geoff Horne often is called upon to help rescue runaway testing projects. In this presentation, Geoff looks at common causes of such problems, what to do to remedy them, and how to prevent their recurrence. If your testing is taking longer than planned ... or you are finding too many (or too few) defects... or your test project has simply lost its way, then this session is for you. Find out if you are operating with faulty assumptions, learn how to identify the root causes of your problems, and develop a strategy and plan to fix them. Whether your issues relate to test planning, analysis, design, execution, management, or reporting, you will take away an assortment of tools and approaches to help get your testing project back on track-and keep it there.
- How to re-scope your test strategy and move forward
- Stringent incident logging and management procedures
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Geoff Horne, iSQA
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The Four Schools of Software Testing Testing experts often disagree. Why? Different testers have different understandings of the role and mission of software testing. This session presents four schools of software testing, each with a different understanding of the purpose and foundation of testing. One school sees testing based on mathematics. Another sees it as an activity that needs to be planned and managed. A third sees it as a basis for understanding and improving software process. And the fourth sees it as an intelligence service, providing actionable information. These all sound reasonable enough, but each has provided the foundation for a school of testing and different hierarchies of values. Learn more about the four schools of software testing and the effects they have on your life. You may find that you, your colleagues, and management are operating in different schools.
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Bret Pettichord, ThoughtWorks
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Load Testing the MSNBC 2002 Winter Olympics Web Site When the Canadian pairs figure skating controversy erupted during the 2002 Winter Olympics, TV viewers hit the MSNBC Web site with a fury. But the site was ready and responded without a hitch due to the carefully planned and executed load testing of the voting applications. The MSNBC site received four to five million visitors a day with sudden bursts of traffic due to breaking news. In this session, Suzanne Wagstaff reviews the process she used for planning and preparing to test the MSNBC site, revealing a performance test methodology that works for any scale Web site. Learn about hardware profiling and a process that identifies distributed and on-site risks, including software, hardware, and personnel, to ensure a successful application rollout.
- A scalable methodology for performance testing
- How to identify performance and load risks prior to testing
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Suzanne Wagstaff, KeyLabs
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Testing In Session: Making Exploratory Testing Accountable Like the music in a jam session, exploratory testing is supposed to be non-scripted and spontaneous. Its unstructured nature makes it an effective test method when requirements are lacking, time is short, or other methods are not yielding important bugs. But some project managers dismiss exploratory testing because the traditional implementation does not have mechanisms to measure progress and does not meet the need for traceability back to requirements. Jon Bach, co-inventor of an exploratory testing method called Session-Based Test Management, discusses how managers can solve these problems with exploratory testing using a simple, effective test measurement technique. By measuring three basic activities of testing (setup, execution, and reporting), this session can help testers and test managers estimate their efficiency and the time it takes to explore the same features on the next release.
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Jon Bach, Quardev Laboratories
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Managing the Hand-off from Development More than half the battle in testing is managing the hand-off from development into the testing workflow. New software development technologies and methods can result in more functionality, delivered faster but with decreased testability. As a test manager, you need to know how the application was built, including the use of dynamic code and third party components, to develop an effective test strategy and a meaningful schedule. Unless you set clear and specific expectations from the development team and have the ammunition to back up your testability requirements, you will find your test efforts compromised by programming shortcuts that speed development but make testing difficult, expensive, and time-consuming.
- How the latest programming techniques and productivity tools can cripple testing
- The minimum testability requirements for software under development
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Michael Hansen, WorkSoft
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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.
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Scott Ambler, Ronin International, Inc.
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