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Using Mind Maps to Document Exploratory Testing Mind maps were developed in the late 1960s by Tony Buzan as a way of helping students take notes using only key words and images. Mind maps are quick to record and because of their visual approach, much easier to remember and review. Samuli Lahnamäki describes how mind mapping can be used as a
logging tool for exploratory testing and what information can be later derived from the testing maps. A pair of testers, one performing exploratory testing while the other records their journey with a mind map, is an effective documentation style. One concern with exploratory testing has always been its lack of a testing trail. Mind maps provide the documentation that can be converted to a formal test script if required.
- Discover how mind maps can be an effective documentation tool in exploratory testing
- Convert mind maps to testing scripts
- Explore the mind mapping technique
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Samuli Lahnamäki, Tieto-X
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Keyword-Driven Methodology: An Automation Success Story Successfully implementing any automation tool is challenging. Using keyworddriven testing for system and regression testing is an additional challenge. Paulo Barros shares the techniques he used to build, manage, and deliver
effective testing using a custom built keyword-driven automation tool. Paulo describes in depth six important changes that must be implemented. First, organizational change where testers adopt a generalist rather than a specialist approach. Second, creating a support infrastructure for the tool. Third, developing the processes to be used by testers, developers, and project
managers. Fourth, implementing a training plan giving testers the required tool skills to effect organizational change. Fifth, creating a new test design methodology that focuses on automation rather than manual testing. And sixth, creating a team to support other testers making the transition to automation.
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Paulo Barros, Progressive Insurance
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Rapid Thinking: When Time Is Tight How many different kinds of yellow fruit can you name in one minute? Try it and the tension may feel familiar, like testing under a deadline-ideas quickly come to mind (or perhaps they don't), flashes of victory when you find a good
one, keeping your mind agile-but-organized as time counts down. Since the main constraint on most software projects is time, Jon Bach will demonstrate some heuristics to trigger your imagination that will help you rapidly generate a variety of meaningful test ideas, whether through quiet contemplation or group brainstorming. Jon will discuss a way to help you know when you've thought of
enough ideas-achieving a reasonable sense of completeness and minimizing the chance that you have overlooked some important test.
- Learn techniques for triggering your imagination
- Research and results from brainstorming experiments
- Discover a heuristic framework reaching "completeness"
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Jon Bach, Quardev Laboratories
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Management Networking Sometimes, it feels as if you're the only test/development/projectmanager/director/VP you know with your particular problems. But I can guarantee you this-you're not alone. If you have problems you'd like to
discuss and start to solve, this session is for you. Each participant will have a chance to both air their concerns and help others. You'll have a chance to meet other managers across industries and countries; hear how your peers have solved problems; listen to the current issues your peers are addressing; solve some problems; hear from experts; and build your personal contact network. Bring your notebook, a pen, and plenty of business cards.
- Learn multiple problem-solving techniques
- Practice some peer coaching
- Ask for and receive expert advice
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Johanna Rothman, Rothman Consulting Group, Inc.
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ISTQB Certification: Setting the Standard for Tester Professionalism A good test certification program confirms, through objective exams, the knowledge and professional capabilities of software testers. The International
Software Testing Qualifications Board (ISTQB™) was formed as a non-profit organization to develop and promote just such a certification throughout the world. The ISTQB™ is comprised of volunteer representatives from eighteen
national boards, including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Israel, India, Japan, Korea, Poland, and other European countries. Rex Black, current President of both the ISTQB™ and the US national board
(ASTQB), presents an overview of the first truly international tester certification program. He describes the development of the standard syllabus outlining
required knowledge and skills and presents an overview of the three levels of certification available to professional testers.
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Rex Black, Rex Black Consulting
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Introducing Test Automation: The Pain and Gain of the First Year Are you contemplating moving from totally manual testing to automated testing? Andy Redwood shares a case study of a leading financial organization in the UK that did exactly that. Their goal was to automate testing using the
latest tools across multiple projects. They have just finished the first year of the project and have learned some valuable lessons. Andy will describe this
organization's starting position and the goals they set; a step-by-step tour through the processes, tasks, and activities they performed; the new roles that were needed; and how the organizational structure was changed to support
automation. Andy will also share the mistakes they made with decisions, processes, environments, and automation and how they dealt with them. Overall, after the first year, they have laid a foundation for future success based
on sound automation principles.
- Learn how to create an automation strategy
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Andy Redwood, Neutrino Systems
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A Risk-Based Approach to End-to-End System Testing You've performed unit, integration, functional, performance, security, and usability testing. Are you ready to go live with this new application? Not unless you've performed end-to-end system testing. What's so important about endto-end testing? It is the only testing that exercises the system from the users'point of view. Marie Was presents a case study detailing the introduction of a new insurance product in her organization. Their first step was to create an endto-end system diagram showing how transactions and data flowed through the system. Next, the risk associated with each of those flows was evaluated. Test cases, and their order of execution, were derived based on the risks identified through interviews of subject matter experts and past experience. A "subway map" identifying the various flows was created and color-coded to help nontechnical business stakeholders understand the testing approach.
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Marie Was, CNA Insurance Co
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Step Away from the Tests: Take a Quality Break Designing, implementing, and executing tests is critically important, but testers sometimes need to take a break. John Lambert describes four un-testing techniques that can quickly improve quality: watching bugs, helping
developers, talking to other testers, and increasing positive interactions. Watching bugs enables us to see defect patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed. Helping developers allows you to understand their process and help
them understand yours. Talking to other testers helps you learn new techniques and share your experience. Increasing positive interactions builds a cohesive team that works together to solve problems. Join John as he presents ways to easily incorporate these un-testing activities into your schedule to help improve the quality of your products.
- Learn why testers need to step away from their daily testing activities
- Make a positive impact on your systems' quality
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John Lambert, Microsoft Corporation
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Building a Fully-Virtualized Test Lab For many organizations, creating a testing environment to replicate every combination of hardware and software that their users have is cost prohibitive. If your organization faces this challenge, the solution may be to create an infrastructure that is based upon virtual machines. Virtualization allows a single physical server to run the workloads of many different servers. Virtual test environments save time and money and support sophisticated test cases that are not possible in a traditional physical environment. For multi-tiered systems, an interconnected set of servers (application server, Web server, database server, domain controller, and firewall) can be implemented within a family of virtual machines running on a single system.
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Ian Robinson, VMware
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Ruby And WATIR: Your New Test Automation Tools Ready to start writing your own test scripts? Not sure of what tools to use? Kalen Howell discovered Ruby, a powerful scripting language that is easy to learn. Using Ruby led Kalen to WATIR, an open source tool written in Ruby. WATIR is used to drive Web sites through Internet Explorer just as a user would. Just by following a few examples, Kalen was able to create automated test scripts in a matter of minutes. Learning more about Ruby enabled Kalen to write more robust scripts. Ruby connects to databases, writes XML, creates and reads data files, and can be used to create customized libraries. Combining the powerful features of WATIR with the robust and easy to learn language of Ruby gives the tester powerful tools for automated scripting.
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Kalen Howell, LexisNexis
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