Join us this summer for our tenth annual conference in downtown Grand Rapids at the beautiful Grand Plaza Hotel August 3-5, as we explore “Moving Testing Forward.”
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Install web app: bookmark http://cast2015.sched.org/mobile/ on your iPhone, Android, or Blackberry
All testers know to derive functional tests from the available requirements. But the key problems in mobile app testing is factoring in mobile devices integrated features like orientation, location tracking, notifications and demanding and impatient mobile phone users.
Join Dhanasekar Subramaniam to discover how to create better test coverage models using mind maps for apps build on iOS and Android. Explore to design tests using LONG FUN CUP test model at the UI level to identify issues beyond the usual functional and non-functional testing. Even if a smartphone app has a sleek UI, users will uninstall the app if it drains their battery, crashes frequently or wastes the user’s data plan. Learn how to design mobile tests and what tools he uses to uncover issues hidden under mobile UI.
Dhanasekar will demonstrate and consult the audience on providing better test coverage for mobile apps using mind maps, do session based testing, simplify a complex looking testing problem and ensure no wandering and accountable mission based mobile app testing success.
A passion for the truth is essential for a tester. But the truths we uncover in the exercise of our craft can be bad news to our co-workers or to people who hold more power in the hierarchy than we do.
Testers are paid to deliver unwelcome messages. Too often, the interaction doesn’t go as well as we’d like and we have to deal with adverse reactions ranging from merely disbelieving to downright hostile.
Delivering bad news well takes courage and skill, as does dealing with many of the recipient’s reactions. For most people, the ability to do these things at all—let alone well—does not come easily.
In this tutorial, we will practice delivering difficult messages and addressing the fallout, building relevant skills and knowledge along the way. We will explore the factors that can inhibit us in delivering a message, as well as those that might influence a recipient’s reactions.
Topics we’ll cover include:
Delivering unwelcome news isn’t fun, but we can have fun exploring and practicing how to do it. This tutorial will consist primarily of experiential exercises and debriefs. We will practice with real situations that have happened for real testers, including past or current problems brought by participants.
Through years of experience you have mastered testing in your domain. But are important bugs still slipping by? Can you transfer your skills to new applications? Why can’t others get the job done? Test fundamentals can help.
Rob Sabourin breaks testing fundamentals into five areas, philosophy, scientific method, problem solving, math and rhetoric. Test philosophy improves purposeful testing revealing truths about what testing can and cannot do. Scientific method provides frameworks to advance knowledge confirming or refute conjectures while designing great test experiments. Many problem solving strategies exist based on modeling knowledge and the unknown. Math (discrete, logic, combinations and probability) improves test design and result interpretation. Rhetoric skills improve tester’s communication, argumentation and persuasion.
Applying testing fundamentals focuses testing, closes gaps, eliminates waste and helps you do the right things well. Rob teaches you “how to know about what to test” and “what to know about how to test”.
Is testing really keeping up with the advances of software development? Are our testing approaches evolving as quickly as the new technologies, or are we being left behind, using the same methods and techniques as we did a decade ago?
Testing needs to get more innovative, find new ways to test more efficiently and effectively, and to better adapt to each unique context. The first step is to realize that testing is not about finding answers, but about asking questions. Nobel laureate Dr. Michael Smith advocated “follow-your-nose research” in his field, biotechnology; he was willing to pursue new ideas even if it meant that he had to learn new methods or technologies. Similarly testers should do “follow-your nose testing”, exploring new approaches and questioning old habits.
This tutorial suggests an approach for test planning that encourages innovation and overcomes barriers to quality. Through a cogent discussion of ideas around brainstorming, collaboration and creativity, you are provided with new insights that can help you revolutionize the test industry! Working in smaller groups we explore different examples of test challenges we have experienced ourselves, covering topics ranging from tools and environments to methodologies and teams. Using our new tools for encouraging innovation through collaboration, we try to come up with revolutionary suggestions for how to address these challenges. Focusing on asking the right questions, we might also come up with a few answers.
Takeaways
This is an extra session, not part of the conference or tutorials. Grand Rapids has been featured in several beer magazines and was named “Beer City” for the number an quality of the breweries that call the city home. We are offering a “Tour” of some of the local breweries, including Founders, Mitten Brewing and Grand Rapids Brewing Company.
This features a rotating shuttle from the venue to each of the locations, with around 15 minutes between each bus pulling up. The shuttles will run between 7:00 PM and 11:00 PM.
The per-person cost is $15 to cover the cost of the shuttle buses. This does not include any beer – just hassle-free transportation.
Starting at 7:00 PM, Monday evening, a shuttle bus will leave the Grand Plaza (Lyon Street entrance) and head to the following locations:What is our current knowledge base? What gaps in our knowledge do we want to address? Who and where can we look to for continued learning? Karen outlines a way forward which includes contemplating yourself, your coworkers, the leaders in your life and the wider professional community. She envisions a future that involves more than just technology changes, but also changes in the business world and the evolving global economy.
Karen looks at how business influences our careers, our opportunities and our future. After her ideas on how to think about how these ideas come together to move forward, Karen ends the session answering your questions, and ends with a proposal for how you can move testing forward.
Sometimes we recognize a need for improvement in our test organization, but it can be difficult to accomplish when you are not in a formal leadership position. For me, the solution was to first commit to self-improvement. I read blogs, magazines, and Twitter, and joined groups like Weekend Testing, Miagi-Do, and Software Development 24/7. I learned techniques like pair/collaborative testing and evaluating risks to determine what to test.
New projects and hallway discussions helped me introduce these techniques to my team. My relationships with the Customer Support team allowed me to introduce pair testing for training, replacing assigning scripts to new trainees. I improved coverage and reduced effort on a regression project by evaluating risk to determine which test cases to include. I started a team discussion on our existing test cases, and as a result, I've been asked to study how the team can write better test cases. By sharing self-improvement ideas and ways to build relationships inside and outside of the test team, attendees can learn to improve their test team’s effectiveness.
Do you feel misunderstood? Do you feel like what you do isn’t respected by those you work with? Are you afraid for the future of testing at your company? You aren’t alone. Those feelings are common in the testing community. Most people feel that there is nothing they can do to help the situation.
This interactive talk will give individuals the tools they can practically use to become the solution they are looking for. We’ll dive into how to own your own reputation, the importance of setting clear expectations, and how to talk to non-testers about testing. This may sound like marketing … and that’s because it is.
As the Director of Quality Assurance at a Digital Advertising Agency Kate Falanga has seen where marketing and testing can successfully merge. Testing is a brand and you represent that brand. Are you Walmart or Tiffany’s? You decide. Here’s how.
In United States and parts of Canada, Accessibility is the hot topic because of the laws (Section 508, AODA) and compliance deadlines that are coming up. Businesses are struggling in attempts to meet the compliance requirements both "in the letter and in the spirit". It is indeed tricky, especially for the Web Accessibility.
Often, software developers find themselves unfamiliar with the requirements model, given by Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Product owners find holistic accessibility concept conflicting with feature-driven delivery approach. Testers are getting lost, too - there are no clear expected results they are used to verify.
In the workshop, authors provide practical and effective heuristic methods of accessibility testing regardless of availability of detailed requirements. In agile team, testers will also be able to contribute to accessible design and development.
Presentation includes overview of the following:
Accessibility Testing techniques include coverage of the following:
We talk about context and we identify ourselves as driven by context. But do we really understand what “context” means? Let’s get together and find out!
In this interactive workshop, we’ll use group exercises to explore the idea of context and some practical means for helping to discover it:
A final debrief will give participants the opportunity to consolidate and share their insights and experiences.
Join us for a cocktail, light hors d’ oeuvre, and socializing.
As skilled testers, asking good questions about the object under test is of the utmost importance. However, asking just any random questions will not do. How do we, as testers, decide what questions to ask? Social science, specifically the practices used in qualitative research, can provide testers with methods to ask more revealing questions, enhancing our testing process and providing our stakeholders with better information to make decisions about the product.
Attendees of this talk will learn about specific questioning techniques, such as becoming more mindful of harmful assumptions, embracing doubt, and examining themselves and their non-testing experiences as generative to their own testing process.Many companies are risk averse, especially when the risk is to human life and/or involve significant financial impact. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) builds, launches and operates spacecraft that flyby, orbit and roam planets, moons and asteroids in our Solar System. Loss of a mission and the scientific knowledge that can be obtained by the mission is the highest concern, and engineers focus their talents on obtaining high science return by ensuring spacecraft safety. In addition, because spacecraft are unique and can cost billions of dollars to build and operate, the loss of a spacecraft is very costly. The development and operations environments for missions are process heavy and risk averse, yet change is necessary to reduce costs and improve the quality of software used for the missions. It is difficult to marry change and risk aversion. An approach for changing software, software testing and processes include:
1. understanding the application and use cases
2. brainstorming ideas with yourself and/or with others
3. performing changes incrementally
4. obtaining approval or asking for forgiveness instead of permission
5. implementing the changes
This presentation will describe changes in the software testing at JPL (including pictures and videos) as well as describing the processes that leads to those changes.
Most of us have had to deal with red builds blocking our testing or have been told to test on flaky environments where half the issues you find would ‘never happen in production’. As a tester, I used to think this wasn’t my problem.
What happens though when a thinking tester decides this is her problem and wants to be part of the solution?
This talk exposes some of the possible causes why builds stay red or an environment is “flaky”. For instance:
1. There are bugs in your build.
2. You are dependent on a third-party system that is not functioning correctly.
3. Your deployment may have gone awry, something may be missing.
4. Your environment is not set up in a consistent way.
We’ll look at some approaches that target each of these causes and show testers how they can acquire the skills necessary to take control of their test environment.
In case of bugs in existing functionality, you need to ask yourself: Are you running automated checks against the build? If yes, either you don’t have the right checks in place, are ignoring failed checks, or, even worse, the issue is intermittent. Testers that seek out a deep technical understanding of their product can be capable of chasing an issue down the whole technology stack without relying on a developer.
Stubbing out a third-party service can counteract uncertainty about the functionality of your own product. To deal with the real issue though, a tester can communicate directly with the third-party team, providing information to and from both sides.
Testers can get involved with the automation of both the deployment and environment setup, which are traditionally Operations roles. This is also often the realm of “magic scripts” that are not considered part of the deliverables and are not properly tested. A tester’s input can be very valuable here.