san antonio - qaiquest.orgqaiquest.org/2018/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/2018_quest_magazine.pdf ·...

WELCOME MESSAGEWelcome to the Quality Engineered Software and Testing (QUEST) Conference and EXPO! We are excited to welcome back those of you who have attended QUEST regularly. To our first-time guests, we welcome you and want to assure you that we will work hard to make your QUEST experience fantastic.

Professional conferences provide many great opportunities for attendees. The QUEST motto of LEARN | ACCESS | APPLY | CONNECT states very distinctly the goals we have for you, our conference guests.

To facilitate your opportunity to LEARN, the conference provides full-day courses, half-day tutorials, great keynote speakers, presentations from industry thought leaders and one-on-one coaching sessions. The solutions benchmarking sessions led by professional practitioners along with the expert panel on Friday allows you to ACCESS your organization against similar organizations. Learning and accessing are one thing, but the ability to APPLY what you learn is critical to your ROI for attending. The Manager’s Solutions Workshop, best practices workshops, and the roundtable discussion groups help you consider the application of new ideas for your team back home. Finally, the opportunity to CONNECT with your professional peers in a variety of activities is invaluable. Each night of the QUEST Conference there are events planned for you to meet your fellow conference attendees and broaden your professional network. Take the time to walk the river walk and experience the beauty of San Antonio with new professional friends.

The QUEST Conference team has worked hard to ensure your time here is both rewarding and enjoyable. But we can only do so much. Now you must plan your QUEST Experience carefully to seize the opportunity to LEARN, ASSESS, APPLY and CONNECT with fellow quality advocates and testing professionals both locally and worldwide.

Tom Ticknor Nancy KastlCOO, QAI Global QUEST Conference Chair

5 Manager’s Workshop 6 Networking Events 11 Full-Day Classes 13 Half-Day Tutorials16 Keynote Presentations20 Certification Prep23 Hotel Map23 QUEST at a Glance26 EXPO Talks30 Early Bird Sessions & Panel Discussion32 Presentations/Workshops43 Sponsors, Exhibitors & Supporters

What’s INSIDE

SAN ANTONIO

CALL 866.724.6013 OR 407.363.1111 EXT 301 TO REGISTER OR WWW.QAIQUEST.ORG/2018

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS & FEATURED ARTICLES

Featured ArticlesGetting Started with Functional Test AutomationBy Alissa Lydon ............................................................................................................................... 8

The Future is API TestingBy Rajeev Rai ..............................................................................................................................10

What can we learn about Process Architecture from Justin Bieber? By Jeff Dalton .............................................................................................................................. 19

When It’s Not User Acceptance Test, But User Readiness Evaluation By Paul Herzog .......................................................................................................................... 21

Successful Test Practices in the Era of IoT By Amir Rozenberg .................................................................................................................... 28

Why Your Teams Keep Failing By Mike Kaufman ...................................................................................................................... 31

3

The Hyatt Regency San Antonio River Walk 123 Losoya Street San Antonio, Texas 78205 - Phone: (210) 222-1234

About the Hotel QUEST 2018 will be held at the Hyatt Regency San Antonio. Located along the banks of the world famous River Walk, the Hyatt Regency is the best location in San Antonio with the city’s cultural hot spots, historic sites, world-class restaurants and exciting night life just steps away. Each of the luxurious guest rooms and suites features all the comfort and amenities for which Hyatt has become known.Overlooking the historic Alamo mission, the Hyatt Regency San Antonio River Walk hotel brings the charm of the exciting waterway district inside their doors. Enjoy an authentic San Antonio atmosphere, from the moment you step into the soaring atrium lobby. For more information visit: https://sanantonio.regency.hyatt.com


HOTEL & CONFERENCE OVERVIEW

Manager’s Solutions Workshop (2 Days)

�� 2-day Manager’s Solutions Workshop with experts leading solutions discussions

Classes & Tutorials (2 Days)

�� 5 full-day skills based classes

�� 10 half-day skills based tutorials

Certification Opportunities

�� Prep class for Certified Software Tester (CSTE)

�� Prep class for Certified Software Quality Analyst (CSQA)

�� Practice tests for CSTE and CSQA

Conference (3 Days)

�� 3 keynote presentations by industry leaders

�� 48 sessions by leading industry experts and corporate practitioners in concurrent conference tracks

�� 10 extended workshop sessions

�� 2 bonus sessions

�� 20 roundtable discussion groups

�� Panel with 5 industry experts

Exhibitor EXPO and Talks (2 Days)

�� Exhibitors to browse

�� 10 EXPO Talk products/services demonstrations

Networking

�� Hundreds of quality professionals to network with

�� Manager’s Solutions Workshop Connection Dinner

�� Welcome Reception

�� Attendee Appreciation Evening Event

�� Evening reception with exhibitors

Why QUEST? The QAI Global Institute’s Quality Engineered Software and Testing Conference (QUEST) is a week of classes, tutorials, educational sessions, hands-on workshops, discussion groups, and networking events for IT professionals from around the world. QUEST’s unique learning opportunities address high interest topics and aids IT professionals in increasing their knowledge and skills in this dynamically changing industry.

Why attend QUEST?

» LEARN from industry thought leaders through attending sessions, participating in workshops and discussion groups, and coaching sessions » ASSESS your practices against those of other companies and organizations as presented by peer managers and practitioners » APPLY your experience and knowledge to produce solutions during classes, tutorials, and interactive work groups » CONNECT with fellow practitioners, contribute to the industry, and explore career possibilities. Enjoy four outstanding networking events

Leadership �� Change Management�� Competencies�� Collaboration�� Communication�� High Performance Teams�� Measurement�� Problem Solving�� Risk Management�� Selling Quality�� Strategy Roadmap�� Testing Debt�� Transformation

Built-in Software Quality

�� Agile�� Architecture�� CMMI�� Data Privacy�� Enterprise Agility�� Lean�� Performance testing�� Planning & Design�� Process Improevement�� Regulatory�� Test Data�� Test Strategy

Automation & Tools

�� APIs and Services�� Appium�� Assessments�� ATDD�� BDD�� Frameworks�� Jmeter�� Open Source�� Protractor�� ROBOT�� Selenium�� TDD

Testing Innovations

�� AI�� CI�� Cloud�� Data/Ops�� Dev/Ops�� IoT�� Mobile�� Predictive Analytics�� SaaS�� Security�� Software Integrity�� UAT

SPONSORS

4

R

QAI GLOBAL INSTITUTE

*Participating entities are as of April 30, 2018. All logos are trademarks of their respective companies and/or organizations.


PARTICIPATING COMPANIES/ORGANIZATIONS

Participating Companies:

ADEX VENTURESABC Supply CompnayAbridge TechnologyAccentureAdvantage LeadershipAgile CxOAlamo PMI ChapterAmerican ExpressAmerican Hospital AssociationAnthem AppleApplitoolsARAGArch DevOps AssetWorks AvracomBed Bath & BeyondBottle RocketBuckingham Strategic WealthCASTCheckpoint TechnologiesChicago Stock ExchangeChaiLatte ConsultingChoice Hotels InternationalCIBCCigna HealthspringCigniti TechnologiesCISQCognizant Technology SolutionsConde Nast Co/LabDairyland Power CooperativeDarden RestaurantsDaring SystemsDataScanDell EMCDelphixDelta Dental of WisconsinDerivcoElavonElectronic Theatre Controls

EllationEllucianEndurance International GroupEpiqE-QUALLITY SA DE CVEquifaxErie Insurance GroupExport Development CanadaExxonMobilFamilySearchFanshawe CollegeFirst Citizens BankFirstbankFollettForte Research SystemsFullestFWHGEM LeadersGogo GraingerGreat HealthWorksGuidewll Florida BlueHasbroHealthequityHealthNow NYHealthPartnersHeartland Payment SystemHERE TechnologiesIBMIBM Watson Health ImagingIdaho State Insurance FundIDEXX LaboratoriesInflectionInsperityInstrumentation LaboratoryInsurance Auto AuctionsInternational Software Certification

Board (ISCB)JFR ConsultingKanda Software

Kaufman Agile ConsultingKiddie AcademyKiewitLeidosLighthouse TechnologiesMD Financial ManagementMecklenburg County, NCMiami UniversityMITREMobile LabsModern Woodmen of AmericaMulti-Dimensional MaturityNational Life GroupNationwideNew BalanceNuance CommunicationsOctoPerfOhio Mutual Insurance GroupOntario Teachers Pension Plan

BoardOUCParasoftPathGroup LabsPerfectoPINPrincipal Financial Group Progressive Insurance CompanyPulse SystemsPVH CorpQAI Global InstituteQASourceQASymphonyQualiTest GroupQuality PerspectivesQuality SquaredResource InteractiveRice Consulting ServicesSalesforce Sauce LabsSentinel One

Sodoto SolutionsSouthern Farm Bureau Life

Insurance CompanySPR ConsultingStone River ProductionsStonejo Coaching and ConsultingSunLife FinancialSynopsysTableau Softwaretap|QATechArcis SolutionsTechnology Strategy ResearchTelemundo/NBC UniversalTestim.ioThe Canadian Nuclear Safety

Commission (CNSC)The Pokémon Company

InternationalTom Cagley & AssociatesTotal Performance ConsultingTPCiTrissentialUlta BeautyU.S. BankUtopia SolutionsVanderbilt University Medical

CenterVGTVision Point SystemsVW Credit Wells FargoWillowTreeWillowWoodWiproWolters KluwerWPS Health SolutionsWyndham Vacation OwnershipZenergy Technologies Zephyr

CCCCCCCCEEEEEEEEEE FFFFIIIIIIIIICCCCCCERTIFICATIONSSSSS eeeeeeeeSoftware

5

R



QAI EXCLUSIVE MANAGER’S SOLUTIONS WORKSHOP

The Manager’s Solutions Workshop focuses on the top challenges facing managers in building, testing, and delivering quality software applications and products in today’s fast-paced and demanding environment. This intense and interactive workshop provides a unique opportunity for managers to learn from the QAI Global Institute’s professional staff and industry leaders and to develop solutions with their peers from other companies. Each attendee will have the opportunity to have their specific challenges and concerns addressed during the workshop. An example of some of the challenges that have been addressed in past Manager’s Solutions Workshops include:

• Proving the value of software quality and testing

• Transitioning to Agile

• Defining quality and testing metrics

• Improving the software testing process

• Building quality in throughout the software development process

• Making test automation work

• Establishing a testing center of excellence

• Estimating the testing effort

• Improving requirements

• Building effective teams

Why Attend QAI Global Institute’s studies show that if an IT organization forms an internal team to develop a solution to a current challenge, the cost to the organization can range from $10,000 to $50,000. By attending the Manager’s Solutions Workshop you will get solutions to your work challenges at a fraction of this cost, plus connect with peers who can be contacted for advice in the future.

Workshop Format Prior to the Manager’s Solutions Workshop, participants complete a survey about their current challenges. These challenges are consolidated into a list of potential topics, which are ranked in order of importance to the workshop participants. Four to six challenges become the agenda for the workshop.

Each challenge is introduced to the workshop participants, who then break into small work groups. Using the QAI Global Institute’s problem-solving approach, the work groups define the challenge and develop potential solutions based on their collective experiences and shared knowledge. Each group selects one of their potential solutions and defines “how to” tactics for the solution. Each group presents their proposed best solution which is critiqued by the workshop’s leaders and guest industry experts. Additional time is spent by the guest industry thought leaders to share their solutions and answer specific questions from the workshop participants. All workshop participants are given opportunities throughout the workshop to bring their specific challenge before the group to ask for friendly group advice. Participants will leave the workshop with a series of potential solutions to today’s quality challenges.

Connections Dinner In addition to the two-days interactive workshop, participants will also have the opportunity to attend the Manager’s Connection Dinner. This evening will provide the workshop attendees a chance to discuss the topics and related quality issues in a more relaxed setting, and provides an ideal opportunity for networking with peers and exchanging ideas. Who Should Attend This workshop is designed for managers responsible for the building, testing, and delivering quality software applications within their companies or software products for the marketplace. Persons who would benefit the most from attending the Manager’s Workshop are those holding positions of, or similar to:

• IT/IS Vice Presidents and Directors

• Quality Managers

• Quality Assurance Managers

• Testing Managers

• Project Managers

Thought Leaders

Testimonies “The Manager’s Workshop is a valuable way to share your lessons learned, current needs, concerns, and challenges. I highly recommend attending and look forward to returning next year.”

“Well chose and well balanced selection of topics presented. A nice diverse group of attendees. Well worth the time. Thanks.”

“An awesome lineup of guest experts! Great venue!”

“I love the excellent practical experience that I can actually implement! Very nice.”

Don’t miss this great opportunity to be part of a select group of managers and industry thought leaders who will aggressively tackle today’s most pressing quality issues!

Manager’s Solutions WorkshopMonday & Tuesday, May 21 & 22

**The Manager’s Solutions Workshop is an entirely independent function of the QUEST Conference. Prior registration is required to attend.**

Clyneice Chaney Costa Avradopoulos

Jennifer Bonine Bob Crews

Lynn McKee Randy Rice Jeremy Berriault

Nancy Kastl, Moderator

Shaun Bradshaw

6

R



NETWORKING EVENTS

Opportunities to ConnectManager’s Workshop Connection Dinner

Monday, May 21st ~ 5:45 to 8:30 PMHosted by Tom Ticknor, QAI COO and Nancy Kastl, QUEST Conference ChairReserved for the attendees of the Manager’s Solutions Workshop, this dinner event provides an opportunity to continue discussions from the workshop and connect with industry peers, the QAI faculty, and thought leaders in a more informal setting. Managers at QUEST San Antonio will enjoy a memorable experience at the Little Rhein Steak House. With a trip by water taxi down the San Antonio River to this beautiful venue on the river bank, the Connection Dinner evening outing is an ideal forum for networking as well as sharing and exchanging ideas and experiences.

EXPO Reception

Thursday, May 24th ~ 5:00 - 6:30 PM

Sponsored by EXPO Exhibitors

The closing event of the Exhibitors EXPO is a reception open to all conference attendees. This is a great opportunity to meet with the exhibitors in a social setting and to network with fellow conference attendees. The main event at this reception will be the raffle of exhibitors’ prizes. There is also surprise entertainment planned for this reception!

Welcome Reception

Tuesday, May 22nd ~ 4:30 - 6:00 PM

Sponsored by

The Tuesday evening reception welcomes all guests to the QUEST Conference and to San Antonio. Designed specifically as an opportunity to meet fellow conference attendees in an informal setting, our guests enjoy delicious appetizers, drinks, and raffles while participating in some fun networking games. Meet people and make plans to learn during the day and enjoy the San Antonio River Walk area by night!

R


Wednesday, May 23rd ~ 5:30 - 9:00 PM

Sponsored by

Come on board with your professional peers, industry experts, and the QUEST Conference Team for an unforgettable night of dining and entertainment at San Antonio’s Historic Sunset Station, a landmark rich in history and charm that has been pristinely renovated to honor the architectural legacy of the historic Southern Pacific Railroad depot terminal. Enjoy a Texan barbecue dinner, drinks, the San Antonio Illusionist show and a great opportunity to network with fellow attendees in a casual and lively setting! QUEST Conference attendee’s admission to this event is included in eligible conference packages.

Dinner and Entertainment at Sunrise Station in San Antonio

Getting Started with Functional Test Automation By Alissa Lydon

Functional testing, also known as acceptance testing, is a critical step to ensure high-quality applications are delivered to customers. Its focus on business value versus technical correctness ensures your app is creating an ideal customer experience. Unfortunately, it’s often viewed as overly time consuming and painful. By its very nature, functional testing is a more complex task than most developer-level testing such as unit, integration, or system/API testing.

However, with automation in place, functional testing can bring extraordinary value to your team’s’ efforts. In this article, we will explore some of the key things you should consider when making the move to automated functional testing and which pitfalls to avoid, in order to continuously test the most critical, high-value aspects of your applications.

Preparing for Functional Testing Like most projects, successfully implementing automated functional testing begins at the planning stages. Teams should consider a few key factors during this phase regarding automation.

KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TESTING First and foremost, your team will need clear acceptance criteria for your application’s features. For the majority of scenarios, these need to be expressed as user tasks rather than deep technical statements. Think less of “Order summary pages shall return in less than two seconds under expected system load” and more of “Orders with out-of-stock items will create a summary notification message in the inventory management message queue. That summary message will include the item’s stock number and link to customer orders which weren’t able to be filled.”

HAVE ALL THE RIGHT DEPENDENCIES Functional testing will require an environment that’s as close to production as possible, including integrations with full data, external systems, etc. Of course, testing should be done along the way as the app is being developed, but the final functional tests will need access to all applicable dependencies. However, keep in mind that functional testing doesn’t have the same hardware requirements as performance testing. As a result, your team should be more concerned about integration versus hardware.

MANAGE YOUR DATA CAREFULLY Good data for your functional testing is critical, and is yet another reason to start your functional testing early in your development cycle. Your application may be relying on upstream systems to create or transform data for you. Determining data in complex environments is a time-consuming, highly iterative process. You don’t want to start that a few days before you’re planning to hit your functional testing hard!

GET YOUR TESTING TOOLS READY Most teams will look to automate the highest-value functional test scenarios. This means you’ll need to be ready to work with tools like Selenium, API frameworks, deployment tool sets, data management tools, etc. You want to ensure that the proper infrastructure is in place to run these tests against your application, such as an internal grid or a cloud-based infrastructure, along with reporting systems that meet your requirements.

Setting A Direction for Success Unfortunately, test automation has often been a misunderstood practice. Too often it’s seen as a panacea for cutting the time needed for regression and release testing. Worse, too many organizations don’t understand that automated functional tests are a software engineering effort requiring many of the same skills and disciplines used to develop the application. Teams with successful automation projects understand how to treat these tests.

WHAT TO AUTOMATE Functional automation should never be approached from the mindset of “We’ll automate all our manual tests!” Instead, good functional automation focuses on high-value business use cases. Additionally, automation should focus on scenarios it makes sense to repeat. For example, checking successful integration of a third-party control on a web page doesn’t generally make sense to automate, as the third party control isn’t under the team’s development, nor is anything about its binding on the page changing.

TEST AUTOMATION CODE IS PRODUCTION CODE It’s important to give test code the same care and attention as your production code—because it is production code. Creating well-crafted, maintainable automated test scripts is critical to any project’s long-term success. This means you’ll need at least a few people on your teams who understand software development principles and can help guide and mentor others writing automation. Your team will need to live and breathe concepts like Page Object Pattern, abstraction, Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY), and other principles.

Writing Good Automated Tests Once you’ve cleared up which tests to automate, take time to clearly lay out how you’ll write those tests. Good test construction will help keep tests accurate and maintainable throughout the life of the project.

TEST ONE THING AT A TIME Good tests exercise one function. They don’t conflate multiple features or workflows. That one specific function/workflow may be a complex test with a number of checks against multiple items; however, you’re still evaluating the outcome of one specific action. One could easily write one single test to check multiple actions. However, if that test were to fail, it would be too difficult to understand the root of the failure as the test itself is too complex.

KEEP TESTS INDEPENDENT FROM EACH OTHER It’s easy to see the attraction of sharing information between tests: set things up once, then easily run a bunch of tests using the same data. Unfortunately, history has shown this to be an ill-advised practice. Creating dependencies between tests regularly leads to failures, especially when tests are run in parallel.

Conclusion Making the move to automated functional testing is no easy undertaking, but when your team takes these factors into consideration it can create a much easier path. With automation replacing slow and manual processes, your team is free to focus on innovating your applications, all while ensuring that your customers’ have a quality experience.

8

R



FEATURED ARTICLE

R



The Future is API Testing By Rajeev Rai

10 FEATURED ARTICLE

APIs — application program interfaces — are not new. We’ve been using them since the mainframe days of the 1960s to power rather mundane backend operations. Their relatively uninspiring definition is that APIs allow the capabilities of one computer program to be used by another through simple authenticated calls; they are the means by which two different software programs are able to communicate, irrespective of their technologies. So why do you need to worry about them now? Long story short: Much has changed in 50 years, and APIs now play a massive role in our interconnected lives. They create value by integrating processes and data, enabling smart devices, the Internet of Things, and everything that we do on the web.

The Rise of APIs There are more than 20 billion connected devices in the world today, and that number is projected to grow to more than 50 billion as soon as 2020. All of these devices are connected through APIs, causing them to rise to the forefront of the connected world. Just a few years ago, everyone was building mobile-first applications. Today it is API-first, mobile-second and web-third. In fact, many leading web applications are replacing the web experience — or moving toward replacing it — with APIs that enable enterprises to plug directly into their clients’ systems. Salesforce is a prime example of this strategy. Salesforce once touted its “No Software” approach to SaaS, and its clients used the web to run their Salesforce front end. The need to integrate with various systems in the enterprise, however, forced Salesforce to expose its APIs — creating a huge potential for Salesforce in ways its executives probably never initially imagined. Today, more than 50% of Salesforce revenue is derived from API usage that enables the building of applications in areas in addition to sales, and across a variety of industries. APIs can be public or private. An API such as Google’s map API can be available to millions of developers across the world, or it could be private and available only to a handful of internal developers to build creative solutions. As a matter of fact, there is a tremendous amount of work being done building private APIs, far more than public ones.

The Benefits of APIs That’s because APIs are driving a new wave of innovation based on interconnectedness. APIs are enabling organizations to connect with customers, streamline their operations, and grow their businesses more rapidly than ever before. APIs have given rise to composite enterprises. In composite enterprises, a competitive advantage arises out of unique collections of functionality and microservices — for which organizations are discovering new uses in an increasingly interconnected world. APIs are the connections: Developers draw on these unique collections of data and put it to use in creating new types of businesses, improving existing ones, and inspiring innovation. Meanwhile, consumers like APIs because API-powered apps are compatible with more devices and operating systems, and provide a richer, more seamless technological experience. For example, Uber’s integration with OpenTable enables foodies to book an Uber to the restaurant at which they’ve just made a reservation; and Amazon’s integration with American Express allows members to shop with reward points at Amazon.com.

Testing APIs is the Future of Testing The exponential growth of APIs and their importance in modern day software makes them the highest-priority test candidates. Testing APIs is of utmost importance: They not only run the business logic of applications, but they also manage applications’ integration with the outside world. Meanwhile, development lifecycles are becoming faster and more Agile. API testing saves functional GUI testing time, representing a more cost-effective way of achieving better test coverage, particularly in more complex technology. The watercooler talk is dominated by IoT and Big Data testing, but API testing is the workhorse that makes it all possible. There are multiple areas which we need to cover in API testing wherein the tester must verify if the API is able to meet functional requirements, integrate well with third-party APIs or applications, publish outcomes to other consumers consistently, handle to load — and all the while, ensure it is not susceptible to hacking. Next, I’ll give an overview on how to ship accurate, scalable and safe APIs.

Best Practices for Testing APIs Here are some practices that will give you better results when testing APIs:

• Acquire programming skills — you are going to need them

• Learn an API automation tool

• Automate as much as possible or be left behind

• When automating, ensure no hard-coded values, parameterize test data, prioritize and group your tests, validate responses and handle exceptions

• Ensure you are testing the business logic, not just pass and fail

• Ensure you are doing both positive and negative testing

• Ensure your API will fail gracefully when and if it fails

• Ensure you are testing for expected and unexpected peak loads

• Ensure you stress test your API with peak loads, sustained loads and load overtime

• Ensure and treat APIs with same concern and specificity as any other security risk such as authentication, authorization and permissions, and of course, hacking

• Prepare an API test plan that accounts for integrations, functionality, performance and security testing of API

In conclusion, API testing is where it’s all headed. Are you prepared for this shift?

11

R



FULL-DAY CLASSES

Monday, May 21, 8:30 AM - 4:30 PM

LEADERSHIP Becoming an Influential Test Team LeaderRandall Rice, Rice Consulting ServicesTest team leadership has many unique challenges and many test team leaders (especially new ones) find themselves ill-equipped to deal with the problems they face on a daily basis. The test team leader must be able to motivate and influence people, while keeping the test on track with time and budget constraints. This class is for people who have been thrust into the role of test team leader or people who have been in a test team leadership role and want to hone their leadership skills.

The morning session will focus on how to grow as a leader and how to influence your team and those around you. You will learn how to become a person of influence, deal with interpersonal issues, lead your team to work as a team, and how to influence your team in building their skills and value. The afternoon session will focus on influencing those outside of your team. You will learn how to communicate your value to management, how to stand firm when asked to compromise and how to improve by learning from successes and failures. Finally, you will develop your own action plan to implement the things you plan to do to grow as a leader.

AGILE Essential Patterns of Mature Agile TestersJason Schreuder, Zenergy Technologies Testing in agile teams is still one of the great mysteries of the agile world. In many organizations, testers are sort of marginalized or the testing is relegated to the developers. In others, the testers are active, but rarely understand or reach the full breadth and depth of their role.

In this class, we’re going to explore the practices and mindset of “fully empowered” agile testers on high-performance agile teams. Jason Schreuder has been coaching agile teams for over 10 years, and has seen it all – dysfunction to under-performance to high-performance. He’ll share with you real world tactics that will help you guide your team towards higher performance. For example, we’ll explore defect management, test planning, documentation, test development & execution in agile contexts. We’ll also look at different testing strategies covering risk-based, automated, exploratory, and other manual testing practices. But beyond all of that, Jason will leave you fully armed with an agile testing mindset that will focus on whole team collaboration, respect, and results.

Learning Objectives:• Review how testing is different in agile contexts vs. traditional testing• Explore the characteristics of strong agile testers• Delve into patterns of effective agile testers and test teams that can be modeled in other organizations• Review cautionary tells of anti-patterns that slip in from traditional testing• Introduce the 3-Pillars model for guiding agile quality and testing transformations

AUTOMATION Making Test Automation Live Up to Its PromisesBob Crews, Checkpoint Technologies Why are many organizations struggling, and often failing, in their efforts to implement an effective automation process? When implementing test automation why is the test case analyzed and the test requirements ignored? Why do organizations base their automated processes on manual tests? How must the test automation strategy differ in an Agile or Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery environment?

This highly-interactive class will present “tried and true” implementation strategies covering both methodologies and technical tips and techniques (regardless of the automation solution you are using). An overview of strategic frameworks for Agile/DevOps and Waterfall disciplines will be presented. You will learn an approach utilizing Requirements Based Testing and Risk Based Analysis which will significantly increase your effectiveness in implementing test automation. This class will present pseudo-code design and real-world framework examples designed to decrease automated test development cycles and increase the value of test automation.

Learning Objectives:• Learn how to lead a lead a team by personal influence• Mentor your team members to become leaders• Market testing and software quality to the rest of the

organization, especially management• Motivate your team

Learning Objectives:• How can the value of test automation be accurately measured• The most common reasons for failure when implementing test

automation• How does the design of a test case impact automation

• Get the most value from each member of your team• Solve the right problems• Measure your progress• Evaluate your team members• Understand how to learn from your experiences

• Code design techniques for more efficient and effective automated processes

• When is a test automation framework essential• Immediate action items for quick wins with automation

R



FULL-DAY CLASSES

Monday, May 21, 8:30 AM - 4:30 PM

MEASUREMENT Test Metrics & Measurement: What’s Working, What’s Not and WhyLynn McKee, Quality Perspectives A concerning assumption is being made today by many software testing professionals. They are assuming that they understand how decisions are made about testing progress and quality. Peering into the minds of our stakeholders, we begin to understand the context that informs their decisions. This insight will challenge our assumptions about test reporting, and lead to shifts in our test management, leadership and reporting approaches.

In this class, join Lynn as we explore testing metrics to understand what’s working, what’s not and why. First, we will explore the concept of context and how it shapes our perceptions, expectations and decision making. From there we will look to understand measurement dysfunctions and the dangers they pose to our teams and stakeholder decision making. We will step into the shoes of our stakeholders to understand what really informs their decision making and how test reporting fits in. We will explore how best to meet stakeholder needs by evaluating different approaches including traditional metrics, dashboards and information radiators. We will wrap up by developing an action plan for your project and sharing important considerations when leading change.

MOBILE De-Mystifying Mobile Application TestingRaj Subramanian, ChaiLatte ConsultingAs mobile devices, tools, operating systems, and web technologies rapidly evolve, testers must quickly adapt their thinking in this changing domain. Testers often struggle to find important vulnerabilities and bugs in mobile applications due to lack of guidance, experience, and the right resources. However, mobile testing is NOT complicated.

In this class, you will learn how to get started with mobile testing, or if you are already doing mobile testing, you will learn new testing approaches, tools and different trends to help you do your job better within the mobile ecosystem. This class will have multiple hands-on exercises, live demos and screenshots for attendees to better relate to the class topics. Included in the class is a hands-on paired testing session on a real live mobile application using Session Based Exploratory Testing (SBTM). You’ll leave this class feeling re-assured that the concepts, approaches and strategies testers use when testing other applications can be applied to mobile as well.

Learning Objectives:• Understand how context shapes our perceptions, expectations and

decision making• Review why we measure and common measurement dysfunctions• Explore the stakeholder decision making process• Review “traditional” metrics, dashboards and information radiators

• Understand leading change and how to influence a shift on your projects• Explore scalability of approach from small projects to large scale

programs• Develop an action plan for shifting metrics on your projects

Learning Objectives:• Understand the basics of the mobile ecosystem• Learn how to set up a mobile testing process quickly• Gain insight to different testing approaches to get quick feedback on the mobile application• Experience session based exploratory testing in mobile

12

Mike Kaufman, Kaufman Agile Consulting & Joanne Stone, Stonejo Coaching & Consulting Have you been to an open space? Open Space is a way to self-organize meetings around what is most important to people. The underlying concepts of open space are simple, yet powerful. It brings people together around a topic or need. They create their own agenda, form groups to brainstorm, debate, and discuss the topic. The overall Open Space is opened and held by a single facilitator. Truth is, open space facilitators are very similar to servant leaders. A servant leader puts the needs of others first with an aim to achieve results for their organization. Each holds a space that promotes safety, collaboration, empowerment with little direction and very simple laws. Join Mike and Joanne as they invite you to explore how to apply the open space concepts to improve your leadership skills with your testing teams or Agile teams.

Key Learning Points:• What is open space and holding space and how to hold space with their teams• Why holding space is similar to servant leadership• What are the benefits of holding space• Experience holding space to grow leadership skills

R



HALF-DAY TUTORIALS

Tuesday, May 22, 8:30 AM - 12:00 PM

LEADERSHIP

Clyneice Chaney, Quality Squared QA and testing budgets have experienced unprecedented and worrying climbs while still struggling to meet increased demands for efficiency, more and quicker test results, and good product quality. To make testing quicker and leaner, we must consider compared to what. Even though the techniques covered in this tutorial provide leaner, more rapid testing, the gains experienced will be relative to your current state of effectiveness and how effective you are at implementing the techniques. Leaner, agile testing is an overarching process of understanding what is to be achieved within the test project and maximizing the value of given time. It involves cutting out anything that isn’t necessary and reconceiving testing as a process of inquiry, instead of a clerical task. This tutorial provides an approach that testing organizations can use to optimize the testing processes in their organizations. We know that there are many challenges facing testing groups today, and this tutorial provides potential solutions to those challenges.

Key Learning Points:• Gain understanding of lean concepts in the context of testing• Be introduced to leaner testing strategies• Practice leaner testing techniques for effective lean strategy

AGILE Agile Testing: How Lean Can You Get?

Eran Kinsbruner, Perfecto Being successful in continuous test automation requires both testers and feature teams to be “masters” in the software delivery processes, tools, and test automation authoring practices. Many organizations are choosing Behavior Driven Development (BDD) and Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) as their software delivery practice of choice to bridge the gaps and overcome challenges in people skills, processes, and tools. In this tutorial, you will learn the basics of BDD test automation and how to build a BDD project that can be expanded as the project matures or changes. Using BDD practices, you will learn how to define the most accurate test automation coverage for native mobile, web, and responsive sites for continuous regression testing. You’ll experience first-hand a working BDD project using an open-source framework (Quantum) being built for mobile native apps as well as responsive sites and executed through a cloud based solution.

Key Learning Points:• What is BDD and its key advantages and disadvantages• What are the material differences in test automation between Mobile, Web and Responsive apps• How to build a BDD project that is based on a page object model that runs in parallel on various platforms

AUTOMATION Mastering BDD Test Automation

Craig Laufer, Erie Insurance Group Privacy is not a new issue. It was formally debated in Ancient Greece, and it is still debated today. Mention privacy in the context of test data and be prepared for a variety of reactions. The two main camps are (A) “The best testing requires production data.” and (B) “Production data should never be used in test environments.” In this tutorial, Craig Laufer will start with a brief discussion about privacy in general, but quickly turn to a technical view of test data privacy. He will review technologies that help with privacy and discuss the advantages and challenges. Masking has been discussed for the last decade, but it cannot solve all issues. Synthetic data generation gives supreme protection, but at the cost of limited test coverage. New technologies are emerging like blockchain and tokenization as well as hybrids. Join Craig to learn positive ways to move forward today to protect data by combining current technology with governance-driven business practices.

Key Learning Points:• Learn from the past from privacy philosophies ranging from Aristotle to Charles Schulz• Review technologies that can help with privacy• Delve into an often- overlooked fact about blockchain

TEST DATA From Ancient Greeks to Modern Geeks: Focusing on Data Privacy

Improving your Leadership Skills with Open Space Concepts

13

HALF-DAY TUTORIALS14

R



Tuesday, May 22, 8:30 AM - 12:00 PM

Tuesday, May 22, 1:00 PM - 4:30 PM

Costa Avradopoulos, Avracom According to the World Quality Report, “over half of organizations (56%) do not have the right process or methods in place to test mobile and IoT applications and 52% don’t have access to required devices.” Gartner states in a recent report, “companies that use traditional testing methods for emerging technologies like mobile/IoT, will fail 90% of the time”. Join Costa to explore the unique challenges of mobility and IoT. We start by covering the test strategy and continue with the top challenge of designing a proper device lab, given thousands of unique devices in the market. Next Costa provides insight into choosing the right devices to optimize test coverage and reduce risks. Then we dive deep into requirements and test cases and how those deviate from traditional methods. Lastly, Costa will explain leveraging existing tools and evaluating automation options. With the knowledge gained, you’ll keep your team current with the faster pace of mobility, IoT and other emerging technologies.

Key Learning Points:• Take a deep dive into learning what really makes Mobile and IoT different• Creating a proper Mobile/IoT test strategy• Choosing devices for testing, including a hands-on exercise for building a

mobile lab• Inspecting & reviewing requirements for technology nuances

MOBILE/IOT Tackling Mobile/IoT Testing Workshop

Diane Brescher, Ed.D., GEM Leaders | DB Consulting Partners Building and maintaining effective teams is the mark of any effective leader. Making a team functional and cohesive requires levels of courage and leadership particularly when working with individuals who do not report to you. In this interactive, experiential workshop, you will have the opportunity to explore what makes teams successful with the emphasis on leadership actions in building and maintaining teams. You’ll realize what makes teams functional vs. dysfunctional. Core team concepts will be discussed such as the five stages of team development from forming through adjourning along with the leadership actions at each stage. To build cohesive, high performing teams, you will learn how to apply a model of five leadership behaviors focused on trust, conflict, commitment, accountability and results. Through small group and class exercises, you’ll be able to apply these concepts and create your own leadership action plan.

Key Learning Points:• Describe what successful teams look like• Outline the different stages of team development• Define your team’s stage and how to become a high performing team

LEADERSHIP

Jeff Van Fleet & Julie Hagan, Lighthouse Technologies As the shift to Agile has helped project teams deliver software releases faster than ever, it’s putting tremendous strain on testing and QA teams to deliver quality results in less time. Backlogs grow, pressure mounts, and costly defects leak into production—all because QA cannot keep up. The problem isn’t the testers, it’s the methodology. All too often, QA teams fail to amend their approach when they shift to Agile—leading them to implement Waterfall solutions in a decidedly non-Waterfall world to oftentimes disastrous results. And when those approaches fail, teams often abandon their methodologies completely—opting instead for an ad-hoc approach that’s unmeasured, inconsistent, and uncontrollable. In this tutorial, we’ll discuss the benefits of applying a measurable, metrics-based testing methodology that’s built for Agile from the ground up.

Key Learning Points:• Understanding fundamental principles of Agile testing• Establishing a quantitative test plan• Preventing QA from bottlenecking sprints

AGILE Quality at Speed: Maximizing Efficiency with an Agile Testing Methodology

Jim Trentadue, VGT Test Automation is one of the most talked about topics in the software testing industry today. Everyone wants it, everyone wants to be involved with it, yet almost 70% of the QA industry is testing manually. Test leaders must respond to automation – why they aren’t doing more or why they aren’t doing it at all. Come join this ‘first of its kind’ tutorial that is geared to those professionals that do not have working knowledge with test automation. You are guaranteed to have a strong knowledge base when leaving the tutorial. Whether you are a Test Leader, Test Analyst, or supporting IT professional, this tutorial is perfect for you. All Test Automation solutions are built on three key principles – accessibility, modularity, and reliability. This tutorial is tool-agnostic, but we’ll talk about the tools that may be in your organization.

Key Learning Points:• Understand, learn and apply the ACCESSBILITY principle• Understand, learn and apply the MODULARITY principle• Understand, learn and apply the RELIABILITY principle

AUTOMATION Test Automation Foundations and Principles

Leading High Performance Teams

• Writing test cases for mobile/IoT to ensure proper scope & test coverage

• Exploring pros/cons of various mobile/IoT testing tools

• Follow a model to help build functional teams• Influence team members over whom you have no

direct authority

• Testing early work products to improve quality• Assessing Agile testing maturity and building a

roadmap for continuous improvement

HALF-DAY TUTORIALS

Clareice Chaney, MITRE Corporation and Clyneice Chaney, Quality Squared Outcome is one of the new buzz words and is central to aligning organizational or project visions and goals to measurable expectations. Testing organizations, as service entities, need to provide information about both product readiness as well as service quality. Many testing organizations struggle with how best to define both their service and their outcomes within a testing relationship. Testing as a Service (TaaS) organizations in particular are interested in better alignment of their work to outputs. Join us as we address key questions of interest. What are good outcomes for a testing organization? Are outcomes in agile development projects differ from outcomes in more traditional projects? How can outcomes be used for optimum benefit? What, how, and why should you define outcomes? Are outcomes related to service level agreements? Whether you are an agile team member, an outsourced testing team, or manager of a testing organization, this tutorial can provide practical and valuable information and examples for viable testing service outcomes and their use in today’s world.

Learning Objectives:• Be able to define viable testing outcomes for projects, products, testing relationships, and processes• Be able to utilize testing related outcomes for a variety of situations such as service levels, reporting and outsourcing• Utilize a methodology for drafting outcomes-based requirement documents

15

R



Tuesday, May 22, 1:00 PM - 4:30 PM

PLAN/DESIGN Methodology for Outcomes-Based Testing Requirements

Jennifer Bonine, tap|QA With all the open source tools available on the market it can be overwhelming as to which ones might meet your needs and which ones will work best in your environment to create a high performing team. Join Jennifer as she explains the relationship of the DevOps cycle, your environment, and how a hub and spoke model can link all your different data sets and tools together. She identifies opportunities for applying test data analytics across the engineering and test landscape, ranging from high-value test cases to dynamically generated regression test suites. She will review ways to collaborate and show results in a way that clearly shows progress and how to present a visual dashboard to your leadership and stakeholders in the organization. Most importantly, Jennifer provides tips to improve your skillset—and your mindset—so you will eagerly embrace the application of test data analytics in your test engineering practices for your organizations.

Learning Objectives:• Understand tool optimization using open source options• Learn how to evaluate tools for your environment• Explore dashboard samples to integrate data sources

OPEN SOURCE Connecting your Open Source Tools and Creating an Integrated Results Dashboard

Special Interests Roundtables Wednesday & Thursday during LunchConference attendees have a wealth of knowledge and experience to share. That is why we are turning some of our circular tables at lunch into special interest group roundtable discussions. Look for the topic signs at these special designated tables and join in the group discussion over lunch. This is also an excellent opportunity to connect with others who share your topic of interest and add them to your network of professional contacts. All you need to bring to the table are your questions and your experience.

No prior sign-up is required, but seating will be based on a first come – first serve basis.

Coaching Sessions Wednesday, Thursday and Friday based on availabilityHave you ever heard an interesting idea or solution in a conference presentation and would have liked to discuss it further with the speaker? But, when you tried to talk to the speaker immediately at the end of the presentation, you found that the conference schedule just didn’t allow enough time?

Included with the QUEST conference experience is the opportunity for you to meet one-on-one with conference speakers or the professional QAI instructors in an informal setting to discuss how to turn ideas into solutions that address your specific needs.

Speakers will be available for free coaching sessions on the day of their conference presentation. Sign-up sheets with available speakers and times will be posted at the conference on Wednesday, Thursday & Friday based on availability. Sign-up at the conference is required to reserve your coaching session.

ROUNDTABLES & COACHING

16

R



KEYNOTES

Software Intelligence: Structural Quality Analysis and Machine Learning

Dr. Bill Curtis, Executive Director of the Consortium for IT Software Quality (CISQ)

The C-suite is fed up with software disasters putting the quarterly statement at risk as they digitize the business. They will demand more accountability and force improvements in software processes that may clash with agile culture. Business critical applications have become so complex and demand for functionality so immediate that human-based quality practices are no longer sufficient. Developer capabilities must be enhanced by improved software quality technology integrated into DevOps toolchains. Providing deeper intelligence about structural weaknesses and operational risks is enabled by new structural quality measurement standards supplemented by machine learning. Recent results from machine learning research in software quality will be discussed along with some caveats about what to expect. International standards for measuring the structural quality of software developed by the Consortium for IT Software Quality (CISQ) will be reviewed along with results of empirical research on how some of the most severe flaws are distributed in business applications. The talk will conclude with organizational requirements for successfully adopting these advances.

Learning Objectives:• How will 9-digit defects affect software development in the future?• What standards are available for measuring the structural quality of source code?• What has machine learning contributed to software quality and what can we expect?

Dr. Bill Curtis is Executive Director of the Consortium for IT Software Quality (CISQ), chartered to produce international standards for automating the measurement of structural quality from source code. He co-edits several ISO 25000 series software quality standards. He is also SVP and Chief Scientist at CAST, where he heads CAST Research Labs in applying visualization and machine learning to structural quality analysis. He is best known for leading development of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) and People CMM at the Software Engineering Institute. He has 40 years’ experience in software and is a Fellow of the IEEE for his contributions to software process improvement and measurement.

W E D N E S D A Y

8:30 AM – 9:30 AM

Leading in a Self-Organizing WorldJeff Dalton, Chief Evangelist, AgileCxOThe most popular question in technology today is “how do you scale agile?”, but that’s the wrong question. The right one is: “how do you scale self-organization?” Whether it be software development, testing, education, government, or business, people are looking for new ways to ditch the hierarchy and take control of their own environment. In “Leading in a Self-Organizing World,” Jeff will speak about cross-industry trends in self-organization, as well as the latest management tools for transforming leaders from command-and-control task masters into inspiring stewards of Agile values.

Learning Objectives:

• Self-organization is a global trend with Agile development and testing being the leading indicators• A framework for teaching leaders how to transform away from traditional command-and control• Stories, examples, and case studies of successful self-organization at scale

Jeff Dalton is an author and leadership coach that is Chief Evangelist at AgileCxO.org, a Research and Development organization that studies agile leadership at self-organizing companies. He is author of “The Guide to Scrum and CMMI: Improving Agile Performance with CMMI,” where he advocates a disciplined and robust model for succeeding with scalable agility. He is also author of the Agile Performance Holarchy, a model for scaling self-organization across the enterprise. In his spare time, he builds experimental aircraft and plays bass in a jazz band.

T H U R S D A Y

8:30 AM – 9:30 AM

KEYNOTES 17

3 Keys to Elevate Peak PerformanceJoe Courtney, Professional Speaker, Best Selling Author, and Retired NBA Champion

In this world of evolving technology and the demand for seamless, simple and a more efficient experience by the consumer, teams behind the scenes must create the software platforms and systems for a tested proven product that creates a perfect and predictable customer experience every time. With reviews traveling with the click of a button, it’s critical that a company knows its “Success DNA” and the tested proven systems to reach optimal results. In this keynote, Joe will share the three keys to elevate peak performance- Change, Teamwork and Results. These keys helped the Chicago Bulls basketball team that he played on win 6 world championships, propelled his own business to 40 million+, and has given many businesses massive results and raving customers.

Learning Objectives: • Change: Embracing the concept and action of change especially from the team leader• Teamwork: Doing specific tasks that when combined are in sync with everyone winning• Results: Knowing exactly what the results look like and re test the system to continue providing the optimal results

Joe Courtney is a business and personal transformation expert as well as a best selling author. Joe played professional basketball for 10 years most notably the NBA Champion Chicago Bulls and Phoenix Suns. After retiring Joe took what he learned and his work ethic to build a 40 + million-dollar business. After having success in 2 different industries Joe chose to share his system of success with the world by speaking and training some of the top companies in the US and has spoken to audiences of over 20,000. After the amazing feedback and results, Joe released his Best Selling book Life Above and Beyond the Rim. Joe loves to impact the world with his cutting edge information!

F R I

D A Y

8:30 AM – 9:30 AM

our booth

www.mobilelabsinc.com

R



Trusted by 17,000 Jira, QA and DEV teams in 100 countries, processing more than 40 million tests a day.

Software testing as agile as you need it to be

From Agile to Automation, Devops to Analytics, continuous testing agility is yours with zephyr.

AGILE AUTOMATION DEVOPS ANALYTICS

Find your right solution, right now at GetZephyr.com

What can we learn about Process Architecture from Justin Bieber? By Jeff Dalton

Justin Bieber’s “Baby” sounds pretty darn good on my iPhone.

What? Did I just say that?

Yes I did. And as a matter of fact, he sounds GREAT on my iPhone! Don’t get me wrong, he’s not my style, and if it weren’t for the fact that my twelve-year-old niece gifted me a copy of it on iTunes (I must have done something very mean to her), I wouldn’t have it at all. But here it is - and it sounds GREAT!

It sounds great because the engineer turned all of the “knobs” to the right place. They’re not all turned up to eleven. In fact, some are turned most of the way down (and should be). The mix is tailored just for you (or my young niece and her sixth grade friends, to be more precise).

On the other hand, I have an old recording of Pink Floyd from the seventies that I taped on a handheld cassette recorder (remember them?) at a live show in New York’s Madison Square Garden, and it sounds AWFUL. Now, I freely admit I don’t remember much about that night, but I do know one thing: those knobs were definitely in all the wrong places!

The testing processes we define are a little like the knobs on a sound engineer’s mixing board. Except our mixing board is a lot bigger, with hundreds of knobs or more if we use an industry model like the CMMI or TMM as our standard, with each one of them affecting the outcome – and each other.

We can’t possibly have all of our process knobs turned up to eleven, and we can’t have them all set at the same level for each team, project, or company. Each instantiation deserves its own unique mix. That leads us to an undisputable truth that some processes are more (or less) important than others - but only as it pertains to your project, your team, and your objectives.

What? Some processes aren’t as important as others?

That’s right. That’s why “fixing” a weak process by cranking up its intensity and documentation doesn’t always yield the result you were hoping for. Sometimes that weakness is caused by the way we have all of the other knobs set. I call that approach to address performance “whack-a-mole.” Who knows what carnage you’ll introduce to the system when you “fix” one of these? You’ll end up hurting yourself if you’re not careful!

Some consultants are fond of saying that defined process is about “everyone doing everything the same way, every time.” I’ve heard others say “more than 95% of the work instructions must be implemented for us to pass a project audit. Others say that every procedure must be given equal attention.

I disagree on all counts.

That’s because industry standard process models like CMMI and TMM tell us that “’DEFINED PROCESS’ DOESN’T MEAN ‘A SINGLE PROCESS THAT IS WRITTEN DOWN!’” It means “you define it.” It’s more akin to select, customize, or modify. But for some reason, people still don’t get it.

And for the record, it means “multiple,” not one.

Or to paraphrase one of my little niece’s favorite movies: “Defined. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

When you throw in informative material from the Capability Maturity Model Integration, it becomes obvious that a flexible architecture that supports multiple processes with controlled variability is what is called for - and what makes your testing efforts more successful.

Contrary to these consultants’ claims that “sameness” is a requirement, in all but the most cookie-cutter applications adoption and enforcement of a single process, and by definition the absence of “a defined process,” will likely lead to unsuccessful results. Why? Because forcing everyone down the same process path with all procedures equally turned up to eleven implies little or no tailoring, or that no analysis was used in composing a defined process – or as I like to call it “the way we want to do our work.”

Creating a successful Defined Process is all about where we choose to place the knobs. Should we use Fagan Inspections or bench reviews? Should we use a daily standup or an all-hands status meeting? All of these tools can, and should, be in your toolbox – and pulled out at the right moment. It’s a question of where, when, and how they are applied. Placement of the knobs will determine the outcome, so choose carefully, it’s the difference between a good project and a great one!

For a fun example of how sound engineers turn their knobs to make people like Justin sound so good, check out this video on YouTube: http://bit.ly/1ctPuuf.

CALL 866.724.6013 OR 407.363.1111 EXT 301 TO REGISTER OR WWW.QAIQUEST.ORG/2018R


FEATURED ARTICLE 19

20



The Certified Software Test Engineer Prep Course is designed specifically to prepare the quality testing professional for the CSTE examination. This is a 2-day course taught by a certified QAI instructor. The course aids the quality testing professional in focusing in on the topics that are important for understanding, thus helping toward the successful completion of the exam. This course is not intended to supplant the need for proper examination preparation. However, it will serve as an excellent review of the Software Testing Body of Knowledge for CSTE (STBOK) which consists of the ten skill categories listed below. Sample exam questions are provided throughout the course.

1. Software Testing Principles and Concepts2. Building the Software Testing Ecosystem3. Managing the Test Project4. Risk in the Software Development Life Cycle5. Test Planning

6. Walkthroughs, Checkpoint Reviews, and Inspections7. Designing Test Cases8. Executing the Test Process9. Measurement, Test Status, and Reporting10. Testing Specialized Technologies

�

�

The Certified Software Quality Analyst Prep Course is designed specifically to prepare the quality assurance professional for the CSQA examination. This is a 2-day course taught by a certified QAI instructor. The course assists the quality assurance professional in focusing on the topics that are important for understanding, thus helping toward the successful completion of the exam. This course is not intended to supplant the need for proper examination preparation. However, it will serve as an excellent review of the CSQA Common Body of Knowledge (CBOK) which consists of the ten skill categories listed below. Sample exam questions are provided throughout the course.

1. Quality Principles and Concepts 2. Quality Leadership 3. Quality Baselines (Assessments and Models) 4. Quality Assurance 5. Quality Planning

6. Define, Build, Implement, and Improve Work Processes 7. Quality Control Practices 8. Metrics and Measurement 9. Internal Control and Security 10. Outsourcing, COTS, and Contracting Quality

Certified Software Tester (CSTE) Prep Course Monday & Tuesday, May 21 & 22

Certified Software Quality Analyst (CSQA) Prep Course Monday & Tuesday, May 21 & 22

CSTE and CSQA Practice Examinations Friday, May 25

Have you thought about becoming certified but wondered how your current knowledge and skills compare to the Common Bodies of Knowledge for CSTE and CSQA?

With your registration to the 3-day conference, you can take a complimentary full practice examination for the Certified Software Test Engineer (CSTE) or the Certified Software Quality Analyst (CSQA). The practice examinations will be held on Friday and will begin immediately after the Keynote Speaker presentation. The multiple choice section of the examinations will be graded on-site when you turn in your completed exam, so that you will receive an immediate assessment of your skills. The essay section will be evaluated after the conference by Software Certifications and feedback will be provided to you.

CSTE Certified Software Tester

CERTIFICATION PREPARATION

In many large software deployments, especially in waterfall SDLC environments, the key business users perform traditional User Acceptance Test (UAT) cycles with every release. The process usually mandates that the software is tested by those who best understand what the application needs to do, and their pass/fail approval is a necessary part of the ‘go live’ release process. This is not always the case, nor should it be. The more often software is released to production, the more often these business users step away from their primary job. In a mature Agile process with 1- or 2-week Sprints, they’re doing UAT all the time. Not only is it an overload of work…but it’s also unnecessary.

Product Owner is the First Line of Acceptance On Agile teams, a Product Owner represents the business in the project, even if they are not from the business organization and may be part of the IT organization. At the end of every sprint, the Product Owner is the key approver of the demonstrated software. The Product Owner asks questions, evaluates the software against the acceptance criteria, and provides their pass/fail approval. With the Product Owner’s blessing, the software can, per the Agile process, go to production and be available to the end user. So where does that leave the role of the “key business user” community within a project? Or another common possibility, where do other groups (tech support, training, etc.) take part in “accepting the software” before it goes live? What does User Acceptance Test really mean when everything has been accepted by the product owner, and the software has already been tested by the QA testers within the sprints?

UAT is a Readiness Check, Not a Bug HuntThe fundamental philosophy behind UAT as a “final check for critical defects” is a flawed thought process. The testing industry is “shifting left” to keep up with the ever-increasing pace of software development and continuous integration & deployment. Automation tests more application code, more frequently, than ever before, thanks to Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment build cycles. Manual testing focus is adjusting to be about negative conditions, ad hoc response and data coverage; concepts which used to be the domain of UAT. User Acceptance Testing should no longer be thought of as the last chance to see if a critical defect exists. If all previous testing efforts missed something at this late stage of a project, then there has been a serious breakdown in the software’s quality assurance process.

By thinking of the UAT cycle as a readiness evaluation rather than test coverage, new possibilities emerge. The users have new freedom to try to use the software as they see fit in their day-to-day activities, rather than thinking they need to hunt for defects

and try to “break it”. The pressure of thinking they must be the gatekeepers to product quality is lifted from their responsibility, and instead quality is rightfully distributed across the entire team. Rigor and Structure to User Readiness Evaluation (URE)The output from a UAT cycle (which I prefer calling a User Readiness Evaluation cycle) should be a deep understanding and thorough evaluation of how the new or enhanced software operates when performing business activities, with the possibility of defects discovered during that time. The business user community doing this evaluation will have the acumen and understanding of the software to identify what aspects of the application will not fit the user needs and business workflow. Their feedback should be treated the same way as any other change request from a business user would be, with the same priority, tracking workflow, and consideration of value toward the project.

Readiness criteria, execution procedures, and a rigorous process must still be brought to URE. This isn’t play time. Companies pay people to spend time in this exercise and should expect a return of valuable information on that investment. The format and level of detail may vary widely by organization, but some amount of scripting and feedback is necessary to make sure that the evaluation exercise generates what the team needs prior to a production release. This process may include: • Definition of the screens/pages to be evaluated, and in what order

• User roles and permission settings, matching the day-to-day responsibility of each person participating in the evaluation

• A clear feedback form to be filled out with each step in the process

• A precise, maintained execution timeline for each evaluation session

URE determines if the end user can use the new software’s features. If the evaluation group cannot easily figure out a feature of the software, the odds are very good the end-users will not either. In this regard, a URE cycle can highlight functions which require additional focus on training or documentation. If there is poor testing prior to this point, then this readiness evaluation can detect poor quality issues and delay the launch. Involving the users, and/or their business representatives, is a key component in releasing software which not only works and is relatively free from bugs, but a product that that can easily be absorbed in daily work streams with minimal disruption to business activities. Those two concepts have been known in the testing profession as “verification” and “validation” and are the ever-present goals of any successful testing team. If you’re doing too much of one, and not enough of the other, the balance needed for a successful software product which is built to last, may be missing.

When It’s Not User Acceptance Test, But User Readiness Evaluation By Paul Herzog

21FEATURED ARTICLE

R



7:30 AM – 8:30 AM Registration [Los Rios Foyer] & Breakfast [Hill Country Foyer]

8:30 AM – 4:30 PM Two-Day Workshop and Classes Full Day Classes

Break 10:00 AM

Lunch [Garden Terrace]

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM

Break 2:30 PM

MANAGERS SOLUTIONS

Chula Vista

Manager's Solutions Workshop Workshop breakfast served in Chula Vista

LEADERSHIP Live Oak

Becoming an Influential Test Team Leader Randall Rice, Rice Consulting Services

CERTIFICATION Guadalupe CSTE Certification Prep

AGILE Blanco

Essential Patterns of Mature Agile Testers Jason Schreuder, Zenergy Technologies

CERTIFICATION Mesquite CSQA Certification Prep

AUTOMATION Llano

Making Test Automation Live Up to Its Promises Bob Crews, Checkpoint Technologies

MEASUREMENT Pecan

Test Metrics & Measurement: What’s Working, What’s Not and Why Lynn McKee, Quality Perspectives

MOBILE Frio

De-Mystifying Mobile Application Testing Raj Subramanian, ChaiLatte Consulting

5:45 PM – 8:30 PM [The Little Rhein Steak House] Manager’s Connection Dinner - Hosted by Tom Ticknor and Nancy Kastl, QUEST Conferences

7:30 AM – 8:30 AM Registration [Los Rios Foyer] & Breakfast [Hill Country Foyer]

8:30 AM – 4:30 PM Two-Day Workshop and Certification Prep Classes – Continued from Monday

Half Day Tutorials: 8:30 AM – 12:00 PM Half Day Tutorials: 1:00 PM – 4:30 PM

Break 10:00 AM

Lunch [Garden Terrace]

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM

Break 2:30 PM

LEADERSHIP Live Oak

Improving your Leadership Skills with Open Space Concepts Mike Kaufman, Kaufman Agile Consulting, & Joanne Stone, Stonejo Coaching & Consulting

LEADERSHIP Live Oak

Leading High Performance Teams Diane Brescher, Ed.D., GEM Leaders | DB Consulting Partners

AGILE Pecan

Agile Testing: How Lean Can You Get? Clyneice Chaney, Quality Squared

AGILE Pecan

Quality at Speed: Maximizing Efficiency with an Agile Testing Methodology Jeff Van Fleet & Julie Hagan, Lighthouse Technologies

AUTOMATION Llano

Mastering BDD Test Automation Eran Kinsbruner, Perfecto

AUTOMATION Llano

Test Automation Foundations and Principles Jim Trentadue, VGT

TEST DATA Blanco

From Ancient Greeks to Modern Geeks: Focusing on Data Privacy Craig Laufer, Erie Insurance Group

PLAN/DESIGN Blanco

Methodology for Outcomes-Based Testing Requirements Clareice Chaney, MITRE Corporation and Clyneice Chaney, Quality Squared

MOBILE/IOT Frio

Tackling Mobile/IoT Testing Workshop Costa Avradopoulos, Avracom

OPEN SOURCE Frio

Connecting your Open Source Tools and Creating an Integrated Results Dashboard Jennifer Bonine, tap|QA

4:30 PM – 6:00 PM [Garden Terrace] Welcome Reception - Sponsored by QAI Global Institute

23CONFERENCE AT A GLANCE

MONDAY, MAY 21: Pre-Conference Classes & Workshop

TUESDAY, MAY 22: Pre-Conference Tutorials, Classes & Workshop

R



24

R


CONFERENCE AT A GLANCE


WEDNESDAY, MAY 23: Conference & EXPO7:30 AM – 8:15 AM Registration [Los Rios Foyer] & Breakfast [Regency Foyer]

8:15 AM – 8:30 AM [Regency West] Opening Remarks & Announcements - Nancy Kastl, QUEST Conference Chairperson

8:30 AM – 9:30 AM [Regency West] Keynote Presentation: Software Intelligence: Structural Quality Analysis and Machine Learning Dr. Bill Curtis, Executive Director of the Consortium for IT Software Quality (CISQ)

9:30 AM – 10:00 AM [Regency Foyer] Morning Refreshment Break

9:30 AM – 5:00 PM [Regency East] Exhibitor EXPO - Browse and learn from the industry’s leading service and technology providers!

[Live Oak] [Pecan] [Llano] [Blanco] [Frio]

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM LEADERSHIP AGILE AUTOMATION SECURITY MOBILE

Presentations

Planning for the End Game Lynn McKee, Quality Perspectives

Agile Transformation: Knowledge Does Not Equal Understanding Frank Rios, HERE Technologies

Let’s Get Real About Test Automation! Lee Barnes, Utopia Solutions

Software Integrity: Integrated Focus for Software Quality and Security Joe Jarzombek, Synopsys

How to Break Mobile Applications Raj Subramanian, ChaiLatte Consulting

11:15 AM – 12:15 PM LEADERSHIP AGILE AUTOMATION SECURITY MOBILE

Presentations

I Hate Selling: Engaging Your Management for Your Quality Initiatives Rebecca Staton-Reinstein, Advantage Leadership

The Three Amigo’s Role in Agile Tom Cagley, Tom Cagley & Associates

Optimize Your Test Automation Across the Pipeline Eran Kinsbruner, Perfecto

Adding Penetration Testing to your QA Automation Stack with OWASP ZAP Nikkolas Shramek, Principal Financial Group

Using Analytics to Optimize Your Mobile Testing David Dang, Zenergy Technologies

12:15 PM – 1:15 PM [Regency West] Special Interests Roundtables & Lunch - Sponsored by Applitools

1:15 PM – 1:45 PM EXPO TALK EXPO TALK EXPO TALK EXPO TALK EXPO TALK

Expo Talks

Quality is a Team Sport Marc Ray, Zephyr

Fake Data? Using Data and Results to Drive Decisions Richard Faulise, tap|QA

Performing an Automation Assessment with Risk Based Analysis Bob Crews, Checkpoint Technologies

Continuous Testing Made Awesome Ken Drachnik, Sauce Labs

All About Appium: What You Need to Know Jamie Moore, Mobile Labs

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM LEADERSHIP AGILE AUTOMATION DEVOPS MEASUREMENT

Presentations

Dynamics of Team Formation: Kicking Off and Setting Up Successful Teams Mike Kaufman, Kaufman Agile Consulting, and Joanne Stone, Stonejo Coaching and Consulting

How to Ensure Your “Definition of Done” is Well-Done Not Half-Baked Susan Schanta, Cognizant

Advanced Test Automation Techniques for Responsive Apps and Sites Moshe Milman, Applitools

Automated Testing in the DevOps Pipeline Michael “Fritz” Fritzius, Arch DevOps

Identifying, Measuring, and Paying Off Testing Debt Peter Varhol, Kanda Software

3:00 PM – 3:30 PM [Regency East] Afternoon Refreshment Break - Sponsored by Accenture

3:30 PM – 5:00 PM LEADERSHIP AGILE AUTOMATION DEVOPS MEASUREMENT

Workshops

Fostering Sustainable Change Efforts Diane Brescher, GEM Leaders | DB Consulting Partners

Essential Patterns of Mature Agile Testers Shaun Bradshaw, Zenegy Technologies

Define the Best Level for Your Automation Jim Trentadue, VGT

Creating a Killer Test Automation Framework in DevOps Bob Crews, Checkpoint Technologies

Metrics That Matter: Keeping Your Project On Track Jeff Van Fleet and Julie Hagan, Lighthouse Technologies

5:30 PM – 9:00 PM Dinner and Entertainment at Sunrise Station in San Antonio, sponsored by Sauce Labs

THURSDAY, MAY 24: Conference & EXPO7:30 AM – 8:15 AM Registration [Los Rios Foyer] & Breakfast [Regency Foyer]

7:30 AM – 8:15 AM [Live Oak] Early Bird Session: STEMpathy: Why Quality Professionals are More Important Now Than Ever! - Anne Hungate, Daring Systems

8:15 AM – 8:30 AM [Regency West] Announcements - Nancy Kastl, QUEST Conference Chairperson

8:30 AM – 9:30 AM [Regency West] Keynote Presentation: Leading in a Self-Organizing World Jeff Dalton, Chief Evangelist, AgileCxO

9:30 AM – 10:00 AM [Regency Foyer] Morning Refreshment Break - Sponsored by Delphix

9:30 AM – 6:30 PM [Regency East] Exhibitor EXPO - Browse and learn from the industry’s leading service and technology providers!

[Live Oak] [Pecan] [Llano] [Blanco] [Frio]

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM LEADERSHIP PLAN/DESIGN OPEN SOURCE IoT API

Presentations

Building Your Credibility as a Test Leader Randall Rice, Rice Consulting Services

Making the Move to Behavior-Driven Development Ryan Yackel, QASymphony

Automation Best Practices with Open Source Leo Laskin, Sauce Labs

Testing the Next Generation of Technologies: IoT, Mobile, and Cloud Costa Avradopoulos, Avracom

The Future of API Testing: Trends and How to Propel Your Testing Rajeev Rai, QASource

25

R



CONFERENCE AT A GLANCE

THURSDAY, MAY 24 CONTINUED: Conference & EXPO[Live Oak] [Pecan] [Llano] [Blanco] [Frio]

11:15 AM – 12:15 PM LEADERSHIP PLAN/DESIGN OPEN SOURCE IoT RISK

Presentations

Where Are We Going: Developing and Designing a Comprehensive QA Roadmap Elizabeth Wisdom, Ulta Beauty

Jumpstart Testing with Acceptance Test Drive Development Susan Brockley, ExxonMobil

Introduction to Robot Framework Brian Mathews, Conde Nast Co/Lab

Successful Test Practices in the Era of IOT Amir Rozenberg, Perfecto

Leverage Software Intelligence to Improve Risk-Based Testing Bill Dickenson, CAST and Jeff Van Fleet, Lighthouse Technologies

12:15 PM – 1:15 PM [Regency West] Special Interests Roundtables & Lunch

1:15 PM – 1:45 PM EXPO TALK EXPO TALK EXPO TALK EXPO TALK EXPO TALK

Expo Talks

X-Ray Vision into your Software Bill Dickenson, CAST

Accessing On Demand Test Data to Unlock Testing Productivity Brian Bent, Delphix

Your Path to Promotion with Visual AI James Lamberti, Applitools

Performance Test from your Browser Guillaume Betaillouloux, OctoPerf

Unlock Hidden Potential from Manual Tests by Adding Artificial Intelligence to API Testing Chris Colosimo, Parasoft

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM LEADERSHIP PLAN/DESIGN OPEN SOURCE PERFORMANCE UAT

Presentations

The Lost Art of Live Communication Jennifer Bonine, tap|QA

Techniques and Attitude for Team Ownership of Quality Gary Pedretti, Sodoto Solutions

Modern Web Testing: Protractor and Selenium WebDriver Dmitry Vinnik, Salesforce

Hybrid Performance Testing: Does Render Time Matter? Lawrence Nuanez, Total Performance Consulting

Bridging the UAT Gap Paul Herzog, SPR Consulting

3:00 PM – 3:30 PM [Regency East] Afternoon Refreshment Break - Sponsored by Octoperf

3:30 PM – 5:00 PM LEADERSHIP PLAN/DESIGN AUTOMATION PERFORMANCE SAAS

Workshops

Trimming Down your QA Effort While Maintaining Quality Clyneice Chaney, Quality Squared

Writing TDD Test Cases to Support Manual and Automation Execution Jeremy Berriault, Pulse Systems

STAX – Robust Selenium Test Automation Framework Ramapriya Raju and Rohit Khare, IBM

Performance Testing with JMETER: The Obvious and the Obscure Chris Burgoyne and Justin Harrison, Vision Point Systems

Testing the Brave New World of SaaS Applications Gerie Owen, Qualitest and Peter Varhol, Technology Strategy Research

5:00 PM – 6:30 PM [Regency East] EXPO Reception

FRIDAY, MAY 25: Conference7:30 AM – 8:15 AM Registration [Los Rios Foyer] & Breakfast [Regency Foyer]

7:30 AM – 8:15 AM [Live Oak] Early Bird Session: Synesthesia, High Performing Teams, World Rhythms, and You John Ryskowski, JFR Consulting and Drum-Talks

8:15 AM – 8:30 AM [Regency West] Announcements - Nancy Kastl, QUEST Conference Chairperson

8:30 AM – 9:30 AM [Regency West] Keynote Presentation: 3 Keys to Elevate Peak Performance Joe Courtney, Professional Speaker, Best Selling Author, and Retired NBA Champion

9:30 AM – 10:00 AM [Regency Foyer] Morning Refreshment Break

[Live Oak] [Pecan] [Llano] [Frio] [Blanco]

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM LEADERSHIP PROCESS TEST DATA AI CERTIFICATION

Presentations

The Future of Software Testing: Team Readiness vs. Industry Push Sunil Sehgal, TechArcis Solutions

Test Process Improvement Journey: Define Your Team’s Destination Karmen Knezevic, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission

Key Insights on DataOps: Deflating Test Cost, Risk, and Time Woody Evans, Delphix

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and its Application in Software Quality Richard Bechtold Ph.D., Abridge Technology

CSTE/CSQA Practice Certification Exam - Multiple Choice

11:15 AM – 12:15 PM LEADERSHIP PROCESS TEST DATA REGULATORY CERTIFICATION

Presentations

Rapid Change: Preparing Your Testing Workforce for the Future Billy Flannery, Nationwide

The New CMMI: More Effective Testing Richard Waina, Multi-Dimensional Maturity

Test Data Privacy: Help Your Company Avoid Bad Headlines Craig Laufer, Erie Insurance Group

Challenges of Software Testing in a Regulated Environment Deepak Arora and James Boritz, IBM Watson Health Imaging

CSQA/CSTE Practice Certification Exam – Constructive Response (Essay)

12:15 PM – 1:15 PM [Regency West] Lunch & QAI Grand Prize Drawing

[Live Oak] [Live Oak] [Live Oak] [Live Oak]

1:30 PM – 2:30 PM TRANSFORMATION ARCHITECTURE GOVERNANCE COE

Panel Perspectives

QA Manager as Transformation Leader Billy Flannery, Nationwide

QA Manager as the Test Architect Paul Herzog, SPR Consulting

QA Manager Role in Governance Misty Pearson, Elavon

QA Manager Replaced by ICE Bhavin Soni, Insurance Auto Auctions

2:30 PM – 3:00 PM [Live Oak] Panel Discussion: Reimagining the Role of the QA Manager

26 EXPO TALKS

R



Marc Ray, Zephyr

As teams “shift left,” organizations increasingly resemble software development shops with team members assuming some degree of responsibility for software development. Employees across departments have a role in ensuring the quality of products developed. The role of QA teams is evolving beyond testing. Quality is now a strategic activity requiring dedicated tools and analytics. “User experience” is no longer a luxury, but one with dire implications for financial outcomes. Without a blueprint, leadership and workforces alike struggle to harness this new “normal”. Zephyr takes an informed look at this modern reality, outlining the new best practices, and offering game-changing suggestions for making quality a team sport.

Wednesday, 1:15 PM – 1:45 PM

Quality is a Team Sport

Richard Faulise, tap|QA

With all the open source tools available on the market it can be overwhelming as to which ones might meet your needs and which ones will work best in your environment. Join Rick as he explains the relationship of the DevOps cycle, your environment, and how a hub and spoke model can link your different data sets and tools together. He identifies opportunities for applying test data analytics, ranging from high-value test cases to dynamically generated regression test suites. Rick provides tips to improve your skillset—and your mindset—so you will eagerly embrace the application of test data analytics in your test engineering practices for your organizations.


Fake Data? Using Data and Results to Drive Decisions

Bob Crews, Checkpoint Technologies

The complexities of software testing are increasing significantly as new technologies emerge, applications evolve, and users become more astute! The quantity of test conditions and test cases can make the process of testing overwhelming. Including test automation as part of your strategy can improve your testing process but you’re then faced with what, and when, to automate. Utilizing a strategic assessment combined with risk analysis will address these questions and assist in focusing your automation efforts. Join Checkpoint Technologies’ Bob Crews, test automation expert with 29 years QA and testing experience, to gain insight to enable your organization to perform its own automation assessment with risk analysis!


Performing an Automation Assessment with Risk Based Analysis

Ken Drachnik, Sauce Labs

Join Ken Drachnik, Director of Product Marketing at Sauce Labs, as he shows how the Sauce Labs platform can help you continuously test your web and mobile applications, ensuring no-fail releases to keep your customers happy and freeing up your teams for more innovative development, all the while decreasing the time and money you spend on infrastructure. Ken will discuss how Continuous Testing can help your team truly achieve modern development workflows, give a complete demo of the Sauce Labs Continuous Testing Cloud, and answer all your questions about the future of this exciting space!


Continuous Testing Made Awesome

Jamie Moore, Mobile Labs

Lately it seems that enterprise mobility teams cannot get enough of Appium. No matter where mobile testing and QA professionals are in their journey using Appium, it is evident that there is something that has captured the attention of the industry. Whether you already test with Appium, or are considering getting started, there are a few things enterprise mobility teams should be aware of when leveraging Appium for testing. Join Mobile Labs’ Jamie Moore for a presentation and discover how Appium compares to other testing tools, strategies to overcome some of the most common Appium challenges, and ways to get the most out of Appium by leveraging a mobile device cloud.


All About Appium: What You Need to Know

27EXPO TALKS

R



Bill Dickenson, CAST Technologies

Take a leap into the fantastic voyage towards software health! Find out what’s lurking inside the code that runs your business. Bill Dickenson will show how software intelligence into your applications can prevent critical business disruptions. Specifically, Bill will describe how using software intelligence, like x-ray vision, can help you find the hidden problems and defects that cause your business serious issues, from security to velocity. With a few simple changes, learn how you can improve your application’s vitality and longevity without breaking your budget.

Thursday, 1:15 PM – 1:45 PM

X-Ray Vision into your Software

Brian Bent, Delphix

Applications are the new competitive battleground, placing pressure on IT to deliver new releases to the business faster. While firms attempt to transform themselves through cloud, mobile and IoT, many fail to address the largest constraint which is data. To improve business agility, companies are looking for ways to quickly and efficiently secure and deliver data to application teams. Join Brian Bent to learn why data represents the most significant bottleneck in the SDLC. You’ll gain insight on how to use secured on demand data to boost testing productivity and how Stubhub, Vertex, and Fannie Mae use on demand data to shift left test.


Accessing On Demand Test Data to Unlock Testing Productivity

James Lamberti, Applitools

We know – you’re sick of hearing about AI – but what if you could harness it to plot a new course for your career? Get yourself a raise and promotion? Have recruiters calling you with attractive new job opportunities? AI is here. It’s not a vision for the future. It’s not science fiction. But AI needs people. AI is a technology allowing an evolution of the manual testing role to a new career path. It’s time for manual testers to step out from the back room and into the limelight. In this talk you will learn how to prove your ROI, leverage technology to your advantage, and learn best practices to getting started with Visual AI.

Guillaume Betaillouloux, OctoPerf

Discover how you can test any web application directly from your browser with the same level of features you are used to having in legacy tools. From correlations to SLAs, OctoPerf provides a shorter path to realistic results. Import from JMeter or start over using your browser to capture. Combine this with a free monitoring engine and automatic startup of cloud instances to match your load policy and you will have a lot more time to spend analyzing reports. Speaking of which, live reports are entirely configurable and can be stored and compared between builds.



Your Path to Promotion with Visual AI

Performance Test from your Browser

Chris Colosimo, Parasoft

API testing is hard, so testers have historically focused on UI testing, even though API testing more precisely pinpoints defects, is easier to automate, and is more resistant to application change. To lower the technical skills required for API testing, Parasoft has introduced artificial intelligence into its API testing solution, Parasoft SOAtest, which magically converts UI tests into automated, scalable API tests for a comprehensive testing strategy. Join Chris and learn how to automatically create API tests without UI or API knowledge, convert manual tests into API test cases with assertions and validations, and leverage SOAtest to build intelligent scenario tests for more application logic coverage.


Unlock Hidden Potential from Manual Tests by Adding Artificial Intelligence to API Testing

The age of the Internet of Things (IoT) has come. IoT devices enable a new realm of applications like medical devices, fitness, fashion, appliances, and industrial. The market is expected to exceed $1.7 trillion by 2020 with over 200 billion connected devices. IoT, an expansion of already complex application architecture, is another factor in addressing the trends of agility and ensuring high quality apps.

IoT adds an edge to Agile software development IoT devices are proliferating at a stunning pace to solve real world problems. Bee keepers distribute colonies to remote locations, optimizing pollination and honey creation. IoT sensors save significant time and investment, reporting the maturity of the hive for honey harvesting, as example. The value is proven as IoT spans many areas of our lives. At the same time, market pressure is driving brands to accelerate features to market. For example, features and services associated with fitness accessories are introducing new features frequently. Development teams must adapt to growing scope of dev and test coverage in a shrinking timeframe.

Compliance plays a big part Considering passive devices (such as fitness trackers), or proactive ones (Insulin Pumps), one needs to consider standard compliance into their test plan. Devices certainly communicate data to backend systems, such as the medical ‘backbone’, connecting patients with healthcare professionals and insurance vendors. HIPPAA specifies the security of data transmissions and sharing. FDA regulations are applicable to Class-C proactive devices such as insulin pumps. One must account for these regulatory requirements in the test plan, consider submission and approval schedules etc.

Divide and conquer The task of assuring inclusive quality of an IoT application seems beyond reach. However, breaking it down may lead to interesting conclusions by observing the application architecture, the IoT device at the front, a mobile device, and the backend. IoT device manufacturing typically follows embedded software development lifecycle. The hardware is tested on its own; the firmware is tested using a home-grown desktop simulator; and lastly the entire unit is tested. Hence, release cycles for the IoT unit are long, with limited realistic ability to shorten especially in the medical space, since compliance rules and predictability is challenging.

Next is the mobile device/application. The device offers two functions: connect the IoT unit to the web and inform the user with useful (sometime critical) information. While mobile devices do not change often, operating systems and applications do. Testing the application in presence of different data sets from the IoT unit is key. Test automation and virtualization are key to achieve quality and velocity in the mobile app/device. Last is the web-based infrastructure, storing, processing and sharing data from the IoT unit and the mobile app accordingly. These environments have to be tested for compliance, resiliency, etc.

Virtualize In a complex environment, the key to predictable success is to insulate teams and deliverables. Independent teams accelerate and progress faster, at their pace. Thus, two ingredients are required: virtualization and frequent integrations. Virtualization will allow mobile app development independent of the IoT unit development cycle. Proper means to simulate various transmissions and data sets between the IoT unit and the mobile device/app. The app team would then be able to test the app against many versions of firmware and hardware of the IoT unit using automation. Many IoT units are making use of BLE technology to communicate with mobile devices. A proper end to end automation lab setup could use open source BLENO server and BLE dongles to facilitate such transmissions and testing.

Integrate frequently With teams accelerating and operating independently, comes the need to control the integration effort. Extended periods of independent development create large integration events, cynically referred to as “big bangs”. Those rarely go smoothly; defects are found, sending the teams back in time to discover the cause, undo and redo code. An alternative approach is for each team to manage smaller and more frequent integrations from the main branch and eventually merge back into the main branch. Integration and test automation tools allow more frequent events and avoidance of the “big bang”.

Managing test data Naturally with the growth of IoT devices, there is more test data to manage. Already a challenging task, going through test data to weed high volume false failures and then prioritize defects, has now become even more challenging. What is needed is a modern big data reporting solution, which enables:

- Tagging and classification of test data - Reports that facilitate fast identification of defects, leading to root cause - Drive real time go/no-go and staff investment decisions through application, team and feature-level health status dashboards - Enable executive level transparency and alignment

Achieving success with IoT applications The complexity of creating successful applications including IoT devices is high, certainly in accelerating software development and demanding end user expectations. Traditional dev teams need to expand and optimize their test practices to include IoT device coverage. Luckily, whether in fashion, utility, fitness or medical space, there are good examples of success and knowledge to be shared.

Successful Test Practices in the Era of IoT By Amir Rozenberg

28

R



FEATURED ARTICLE

29

R



INTERNATIONAL SOFTWARE CERTIFICATIONS BOARD

CCCCCCCCEEEEEEEEEE FFFFIIIIIIIIICCCCCCERTIFICATIONSSSSS eeeeeeeeSoftwareCertification Programs

www.softwarecertifications.org

Software Testing

On Demand Training Courses

Aligned to the Software Testing Body of Knowledge, these certifications evaluate awareness of the testing principles, knowledge of the testing function, the different types of testing and the techniques and tools which can be used to carry out and manage the Testing process.

Certified Associate in Software Testing (CAST)A Foundation Level Certification for Software Testers, Software Developers, System Analysts and recent engineering graduates.

• Demonstrates an understanding of testing principles and practices.• Suitable for entry-level individuals who are interested in making a career

in testing.

Certified Software Tester (CSTE)A Practitioner Level Certification for Test Engineers, Test Architects, Design Analysts and Test Leads.

• Demonstrates a professional competency for practice of quality control and testing.

Certified Manager of Software Testing (CMST)A Managerial Level Certification for Test Managers, Test Leads, Test Architects and Project Managers.

• Demonstrates capabilities to practice and manage the software testing function.

• Suitable for existing and to-be managers in the software testing function.

Software Quality AssuranceAligned to the Software Quality Assurance Body of Knowledge, these certi-fications check the proficiency in the principles and practices of the quality assurance function.

Certified Associate in Software Quality (CASQ)A Foundation Level Certification for Software Engineers and recent graduates.

• Demonstrates foundation level understanding of quality assurance prin-ciples and practices.

• Demonstrates the understanding of quality principles, concepts, and practices.

Certified Software Quality Analyst (CSQA)A Practitioner Level Certification for experienced Quality Analyst, SQA Team Leaders and Members.

• Demonstrates professional competence in the practices of QA in the IT profession.

• Provides a complete overview of the quality function.

Certified Manager of Software Quality (CMSQ)A Managerial Level Certification for SQA Managers, Architects and Project Managers.

• Demonstrates capabilities to practice and manage the software quality function.

• Suitable for existing and to-be managers in the software quality function.• Provides a tool to predict the likelihood of success of individuals consider-

ing managerial roles.

On Demand Virtual Courses provide 24/7 access to the best exam prep courseware available. The courses include a downloadable copy of the Body of Knowledge book, course workbook, recordings of each session, and the course specific items listed below.

Certified Associate in Software Testing (CAST)• Overview of the Software Testing Body of Knowledge for CAST with expert instructors (totaling over 40 lessons).• Over 200 multiple choice questions that simulate the types of objective questions that will be experienced on the CAST exam.• 70 essay questions with sample answers to reinforce the material. • A final sample exam to test your exam readiness is provided.

Certified Software Tester (CSTE)• Overview of Software Testing Body of Knowledge for CSTE with expert instructors (totaling over 50 lessons).• Over 250 multiple choice questions that simulate the types of objective questions that will be experienced on the CSTE exam.• 90 essay questions with sample answers which simulate constructive response questions that will be experienced on the CSTE exam. • A final sample exam to test your exam readiness is provided.

Certified Software Quality Analyst (CSQA)• Overview of CSQA Common Body of Knowledge with expert instructors (totaling over 40 lessons).• Over 200 multiple choice questions that simulate the types of objective questions that will be experienced on the CSQA exam.• 40 essay questions with sample answers which simulate constructive response questions that will be experienced on the CSQA exam.• A final sample exam to test your exam readiness is provided.

Business AnalysisThe need for improved and more reliable information transfer requires Software Business Analyst professionals who can effectively bridge the knowledge and language gap between the business and IT communities.

Certified Associate Business Analyst (CABA)A Foundation Level Certification for Software Business Analysts, System Ana-lysts, and recent college graduates.

• Demonstrates an understanding of software business analysis principles and practices.

• Suitable for entry-level software engineers interested in making a career in software business analysis. Certified Software Business Analyst (CSBA)

A Practitioner Level Certification for Business Analysts, Project Leads and Architects.

• Demonstrates proficiency to manage the link between the business and information technology communities.

Certified Manager of Software Testing (CMST), Certified Software Business Analyst (CSBA) and Certified Associate in Software Quality (CASQ) On Demand Courses are also available.

30

Anne Hungate, Daring Systems“STEMpathy,” a term coined by academics and made popular by writers is the call to action for today’s educators to bring liberal arts into STEM curriculum – but we can’t wait for students to graduate! Brand and customer interaction are digital before they are personal. How can we make digital experiences kind, intuitive, and welcoming? Quality professionals are the first and best candidates to bring empathy to today’s software development practices. We put the customer before the technology. We put the accuracy before the tools. We care ferociously about the people who use the system and want to find problems before customers do. Come to this session to learn more about STEMpathy and how you can bring a few targeted practices to your team and drive up the user experience immediately! Leave with a stronger appreciation of why empathy is a new differentiator and can increase your career resilience.

Synesthesia, High Performing Teams, World Rhythms, and YouJohn Ryskowski, JFR Consulting and Drum-Talks

Why is it that some teams always get things done and appear resilient to disruption? Their members are highly focused but at the same time have space to breath. You have a certain feeling when you are around them but can’t quite put your finger on it. World rhythms vary from simple to sophisticated, as do a team’s capability. Sophisticated does not mean complicated, it means each contributor expends the right amount of energy at the right time to achieve desired results. Think of the right hand as the programmers, the left hand as the scrum master, the right foot as the product owner, and the left foot as the tester. These four elements play off of each other to create situations from chaotic to optimal. With drum set performance, lecture, and your participation you will expand your sensory recognition of high performing teams to include rhythmic feel and visual structure.

Learning Objectives:• Expand your sensory recognition of high performing teams to include rhythmic feel and rhythmic visual structure• Appreciate and understand the concept of giving your team space to breath• A permanently changed perspective of high performing teams

E A R L Y B I R D

Reimagining the Role of the QA ManagerModerator: Nancy Kastl, SPR Consulting

With the current trends in software development and testing..…Agile, shift-left, decentralized testing, developers and testers interchangeable, etc…..QA Leaders are faced with the question, “Will I have a role in my company, and if so, what is my role?” Although the traditional role of a QA Manager, directing the activities of people who are direct reports, is going away, there’s the opportunity to re-imagine the role of the QA Manager to provide value in the new digital era. Join our panelists as they first share with you their individual stories of the changes they experienced in their companies and how they were able to reshape their role. Secondly the panelists will engage in a lively dialogue about their perspectives on the new role of a QA Manager, the advantages and challenges of the new role, and their vision of the future of QA.

Panelists include:Billy Flannery, NationwidePaul Herzog, SPR ConsultingMisty Pearson, ElavonBhavin Soni, Insurance Auto Auctions

P A N E L

D I S C U S S I

O N

Thursday, 7:30 AM – 8:15 AM

STEMpathy: Why Quality Professionals are More Important Now Than Ever!

E A R L Y B I R D

Friday, 7:30 AM – 8:15 AM

Friday, 2:30 PM - 3:00 PM

EARLY BIRD SESSIONS & PANEL DISCUSSION

R



Why Your Teams Keep Failing By Mike Kaufman

You bring a team together, give them some work, and yet they don’t meet the organization’s or manager’s expectations. They fail to deliver, fail to jell, and fail to perform. Why? Before a team can be high-performing, they must first come together as a team. Far too many “teams” are just groups of individuals, each working, and sometimes competing, in their own space or silo, without a common goal or objective. So, how do we take a group of individuals, and support them to become a team? First, we need to define what is a team.

“A group of people with a full set of complementary skills required to complete a task, job, or project. Team members (1) operate with a high degree of interdependence, (2) share authority and responsibility for self-management, (3) are accountable for the collective performance, and (4) work toward a common goal and shared reward(s). A team becomes more than just a collection of people when a strong sense of mutual commitment creates synergy, thus generating performance greater than the sum of the performance of its individual members.”

-- Businessdictionary.com/definition/team.html That sounds like what we’re looking for. We’re more than a group of individuals, just vying for our own individual needs or accountabilities. We’re a collection of multi-skilled individuals, interdependent on each other, all working towards a shared goal. We share in the collective accountability (or delivery) and in any reward or loss. There are two activities that can help to build the necessary foundations for team work to emerge.

Team ValuesTo create a sense of commonality amongst the individuals in the team, it helps to identify the underlying values of those individuals. Most organizations have a professed set of “company values”. However, we DON’T want to blindly adopt them. They would be external and imposed. Instead, we want to draw out the team members’ own values and see where they align. In practice, it looks like this:

1) Give each person a pad of stickies and a marker.2) Ask the team to think of the best team they have been on–

work, sports, local non-profit organization, etc. It’s the team they recall with fondness and good memories.

3) Have each team member write down, one item per stickie, the qualities or aspects of that team experience that made it the best for them. Allow a few minutes of silent time to reflect and write.

4) Have each person come up, one by one, and briefly explain what they wrote. Even if someone has something similar, have them bring it up anyway.

5) As stickies start filling the board or wall, group them by association. When done, you will have clumps of stickies, where the items within the groups are associated to each other. Encourage the team members to assist in developing the groupings.

6) Encourage the team members to name the groups; try not to do it yourself. This is the first act of the team being self-directing. Once completed, all the groups are named and these become the team values.

This is especially powerful because the individual values coalesce into a set of collective team values and are not externally imposed. They realize they have a lot in common already and start from a position of a shared goal – meet, enhance, and support these values that they all believe in anyway.

Team AgreementsLike any group of people, conflict is bound to occur. Tuckman’s, Virginia Satir’s, and countless other models all show that team performance drops when there is conflict or change. You cannot avoid this. But you can setup the environment to allow the team to work through it more effectively. Having a set of Team Working Agreements is a great first step.

Initially, the Working Agreements will be practical, tactical things like: office hours, time of daily standup or huddle, work-from-home agreements, tool selection, and the like. That’s an OK start to get the team moving in a direction of common agreement. However, these tactical things don’t address the interpersonal dynamics in play within the models described above. I ask the team to answer the following questions/statements:

1) What is my superpower?2) What do I need help with?3) When I am stressed, I do <blank>, and I need <blank>.4) When we disagree, we will <blank>.5) What will we do if a team member is letting us down?

I scribe on a flipchart their answers using one flipchart per question/statement. For the ‘stressed’ statement, I only scribe the “what I need” part. Making these explicit helps inform the rest of the team about potential behaviors, but also gives explicit direction on how to help their fellow team members. When conflict or change occurs, having these agreements gives everyone a baseline of appropriate behavior, rather than the usual triggered reactions occurring. Then, the issue can be dealt with more effectively, and the team bonds as they work together through a tough situation, creating a greater sense of unity.

Make It VisibleHang the Team Values and Team Agreements in the team space. Or, if the team is distributed, make electronic copies and send to the remote team members. Make sure the remote team members actually print out the digital copy and hang it somewhere in their own space. The point is to keep these visible at all times, so the team is constantly reminded of their collective unity and shared goals.

With these bedrock steps, the group of individuals will start to feel more like a cohesive, collective unit. The sense of shared accountability goes up, and they start acting like a team. Give the team some work, and then stand back and see how well they perform.

31FEATURED ARTICLE

R



32

R



WEDNESDAY, MAY 23 - PRESENTATIONS

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

L E A D E R S H I P

Planning for the End GameLynn McKee, Quality Perspectives Do you ever get to the end of your project and panic sets in – we aren’t ready! Ready means different things in different contexts, but many testing teams finds their stress levels at the highest right before go-live. While there is no silver bullet for a smooth cutover, there are ways to mitigate the pressures. Join Lynn as she shares her approach to planning for the end game whether the methodology is agile or waterfall, and for small scale projects to large multi-million dollar programs. From the project onset, the focus is on the people side of the equation including stakeholder relationships, defining accountabilities, understanding perceptions and adjusting expectations. As the testing effort unfolds, the focus shifts to the solution including early and often communication, test transparency, “good enough” measuring sticks, risk avoidance and acceptance. Let’s help our teams weather the storm as the project crosses the finish line under stakeholder stress and the pursuit of perfect software.

A UTOMATION

Let’s Get Real About Test Automation!

Lee Barnes, Utopia Solutions Everyone is doing automation, but very few can truly claim they’ve realized the desired or promised benefits. New tools, approaches and frameworks are popping up with claims of finally achieving test automation nirvana. Unfortunately, approaching automation from a specific tool perspective often furthers unrealistic expectations that prevent success. Similarly, your SDLC processes (agile, waterfall) and role (developer, CI/CD engineer, test engineer, etc.) often skew your view of test automation. The first step towards successful test automation is getting REAL about it. Lee discusses how to think about automation more generally and then apply automation principles where and how they can bring the most benefit. Specific topics include common automation myths and assumptions, why viewing test automation from a specific tool or role perspective is limiting your success, and how to identify potential automation opportunities unique to your situation. Take back techniques and examples for developing realistic expectations, applying a context-driven approach, and ultimately succeeding with test automation!

MOBIL E

How to Break Mobile ApplicationsRaj Subramanian, ChaiLatte Consulting Mobile testers are frequently in a time crunch. Testing requests may come two hours before a production push of a new mobile application version and you have no idea where to start and what to test. Or your team has three days for testing and you are not sure what kind of vulnerabilities should be your testing priority. Raj has been in these situations. Based on his experience testing various mobile web, hybrid and native applications for several years, he started categorizing various defects and discovered some common testing approaches to quickly find vulnerabilities in mobile applications. These approaches can be used for smoke testing, acceptance testing or even production testing after the mobile application is live on the different App stores. This session will give attendees knowledge on various strategies to break mobile applications. It also covers how to make mobile apps smarter and cool things happening in mobile.

AG ILE

Agile Transformation: Knowledge Does Not Equal Understanding

Frank Rios, HERE Technologies What is an “Agile organization”? *sigh* That’s such a frustrating question, even though it should be a simple one. Ask 10 different people what it means, and you’ll get 10 different answers. Argh!!! Seriously, why is it so hard to answer!? The point is, knowing the answer is simple, understanding the answer is not. Learn why HERE failed with our initial Agile transformation and how to succeed with yours. We knew Agile, but we didn’t understand Agile. We hired experts and showed initial improvement, but still reverted to our old ways. We chose to “adopt” agile instead of “become” agile. Agile is not something you can simply adopt. That’s like trying to get healthy by “adopting” health. Understanding Agile is very different than simply knowing Agile. Years after our initial transformation, we finally understand Agile and have started to succeed in our renewed Agile transformation. We gained the Agile mindset and learned the importance of company culture in an Agile transformation.

SECURITY

Software Integrity: Integrated Focus for Software Quality and Security

Joe Jarzombek, Synopsys Evolving roles for QA/Testing must focus on product integrity to reduce enterprise risks attributable to exploitable software. As the cyber threat landscape evolves and software dependencies grow more complex, understanding and managing risk throughout the software supply chain is more critical than ever and must focus on the entire lifecycle that includes development, acquisition, and testing. During his presentation, Joe will provide details on the types of test tools and services used to determine resilience of products and residual risk exposures attributable to software and the value proposition for software integrity as an integrating focus for software quality and security. He will also explain how software integrity is an enabler for IoT cybersecurity and how using standards-based automation enables the exchange of information internally and externally with vendors for IoT/ICT products. Everyone will leave understanding how addressing supply chain dependencies throughout the lifecycle enables enterprises to harden their attack surface by comprehensively identifying their risk exposure.

QUEST Exhibitor EXPO & EXPO TalksOpening on Wednesday morning, the Exhibitor EXPO features vendor booths from leading organizations in the industry. Enter for a chance to win exhibitor prizes, and get your QUEST Passport stamped to enter in the QAI Grand Prize drawing on Friday during lunch (must be present to win).

If you are looking to learn more about specific products and services showcased by EXPO exhibitors, then the EXPO Talks are designed for you! Starting on Wednesday and ending with the EXPO Reception, these Talks are short 30-minute sessions featuring innovative product demos or service presentations. You will have the chance to talk with exhibitor representatives and have your questions answered away from the busy EXPO booths. The EXPO Talks are a convenient one-stop-shop to learn the latest about products and services.

33

R




11:15 AM - 12:15 PM

L E A D E R S H I P

I Hate Selling: Engaging Your Management for Your Quality Initiatives

Rebecca Staton-Reinstein, Advantage Leadership Most quality professionals hate trying to “sell” quality. It conjures up images of guys on late-night TV trying to sell Ginsu knives. Those guys are not what “selling” is about. The secret? Develop a relationship and educate decision makes about what you can do for them. Join Rebecca as she explains how you can adopt an “It’s-all-about-them” mindset. She will provide insights into how to ask questions to promote dialogue and explain how to match your solutions to the decision maker’s specific needs. Your goal is to help the decision maker articulate the real situation and actual requirements for success. Learn how to guide decision makers in understanding the benefits to the decision and how ROI and other business objectives can be achieved. Remember, you are not selling but rather engaging in a dialogue of exploration and demonstrating your understanding of the business needs.

A UTOMATION

Optimize Your Test Automation Across the Pipeline

Eran Kinsbruner, Perfecto Many organizations have a degree of automation coverage outside of their CI and Build processes or as part of their Agile and DevOps workflows while only 20% of tests are successfully automated and continuously executed, the remaining tests are either flaky, broken, or done manually. To be successful with DevOps, automation must be continuously monitored and optimized. Join Eran as he covers the best practices for examining a test automation suite as a continuous process. These practices focus on how to achieve automation stability and eliminate flakiness, how to keep automation suites within test time boundaries, and how to test on the right platforms base on analytics and market data. Additionally, Eran will discuss the importance of cross team collaboration using the right tools throughout the software delivery pipeline and give real life examples of the leading tools. Lastly, a live demo will be given of an advanced analytics dashboard that illustrates these best practices.

MOBILE

Using Analytics to Optimize Your Mobile Testing

David Dang, Zenergy Technologies Mobile landscapes are constantly changing with new devices, OS, and mobile features being introduced to consumers. It can be extremely costly and time consuming for you to provide full testing coverage on mobile websites and apps. At the same time, you may be afraid of missing important functionalities or features that impact the users. So, what should you do? How should you approach mobile testing more efficiently and effectively? David Dang will show you how to use analytics to minimize risks and define the different types of analytics available on web and mobile products. In addition, he will demonstrate the use of web analytics on new mobile projects and as well as explain how to utilize mobile analytics to continuously fine-tune your mobile testing efforts. Join David for a demo on how to use your analytics so you walk away with the knowledge you need to better define your functional and regression mobile testing.

AGILE

The Three Amigo’s Role in Agile

Tom Cagley, Tom Cagley & Associates The Three Amigo’s is a technique that leverages the product owner, lead tech and lead tester to groom work in Agile. The technique has gained fame by bringing the idea of Ron Jefferies 3 C’s; card, conversation, and confirmation together at the sprint level. The three amigo’s work together to break down work, groom user stories and develop acceptance criteria creating well-formed user stories that help guide the delivery of value. The technique can be used over the whole Agile. The presentation will discuss experiences of using the three amigos for sprints, releases or even program increments. The three amigos technique is more than locking three people in the closet and expecting magic but rather a disciplined approach that makes sure user stories are more than just persona, goal, and benefit. The Three Amigos is not just a mediocre 1986 comedy but a power that engages testing with coders and product owners.

SECURITY

Adding Penetration Testing to your QA Automation Stack with OWASP ZAP

Nikkolas Shramek, Principal Financial Group Hacking has grown into a 450 BILLION DOLLAR Industry and it’s estimated to become 1 TRILLION by 2019! The news is filled with stories of massive breaches of consumer information. In response, companies are starting to create a phalanx of security. Unfortunately, as reported by Forbes, over 84% of all security breaches are at the application layer bypassing a company’s network security. During his session, Nikkolas will explain how penetration testing uncovers design flaws in programming by testing the application like a hacker attempting access. He will cover how the open source penetration tool, OWASP ZAP, can be integrated into your test automation to enhance security by finding code vulnerabilities before deployment. Nikkolas will describe the OWASP “Top Ten Security Threats” of hackers and the “BIG NASTIES” of the top 10. He will also explain how ZAP works using the UI, API, and Daemon mode, passive & active scanning, interpreting reports, and continuous integration utilizing selenium automation scripts.

Lunchtime Reminders

Wednesday and Thursday of the QUEST Conference features Special Interest Roundtables during lunch, which encourages attendees to connect over specific topics of interest. As you enter the general session room for lunch, certain tables will have signage indicating that it is reserved for roundtable discussions for that particular subject. Connect over similar interests and discuss your issues with your peers.

Advanced Test Automation Techniques for Responsive Apps and Sites Automated Testing in the DevOps Pipeline

Dynamics of Team Formation: Kicking Off and Setting Up Successful Teams

34

R




2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

One-on-One Coaching SessionsHave you ever heard an interesting idea or solution in a conference presentation and would have liked to discuss it further with the speaker? But, when you tried to talk to the speaker immediately at the end of the presentation, you found that the conference schedule just didn’t allow enough time?

Included with the QUEST conference experience is the opportunity for you to meet one-on-one with conference speakers or the professional QAI instructors in an informal setting to discuss how to turn ideas into solutions that address your specific needs.

Speakers will be available for free coaching sessions on the day of their conference presentation. Time slots with available speakers can be found in the QUEST Information - Coaching page of the QUEST Mobile App. Instructions for requesting a meeting with a coach are provided in the app. Specific time and meeting location are handled directly between you and your coach.

L E A D E R S H I P

Mike Kaufman, Kaufman Agile Consulting and Joanne Stone, Stonejo Coaching and Consulting You bring a team together, give them some work to accomplish, and yet they don’t meet the organization’s or manager’s expectations. They fail to deliver, fail to jell, and fail to perform. Why? Before a team can be high-performing, they must go through some critical steps. Come join Mike and Joanne and learn what makes a real team instead of just a group of individuals. We’ll identify team supports and detractors as these relate to holding the team back. We’ll also explore team behaviors, team working agreements, and team values of collectivism vs. individualism. You’ll get real world, specific ideas on how to properly kick off a team and how to set up a team to be high performing and successful for both themselves and their organization.

AG ILE

How to Ensure Your “Definition of Done” is Well-Done Not Half-Baked

Susan Schanta, Cognizant Companies adopt Agile believing it’s the magic bullet to guarantee quality and speed to market without understanding the discipline needed to make the transition. Teams struggle with applying the new methodology, timing activities and how to deliver value Sprint over Sprint. Susan will explain how to establish a Definition of Done to help the team establish standards for measuring Sprint value. The Product Owner, developers, and testers need a shared commitment for the Definition of Done to balance speed to market with exceptional quality while managing cost restraints. In this session, you will learn how to construct a Definition of Done to establish a shared team standard for delivery standards with guidelines for the creation of acceptance criteria for user stories. By establishing cross-functional disciplines with minimal Sprint entrance gates, your team will increase estimation accuracy, establish consistent Sprint velocity and achieve a predictable delivery model to deliver working software frequently.

A UT OMATION

Moshe Milman, Applitools Responsive web design has become the preferred approach for building sites and apps that provide an optimal viewing and interaction experience on any phone, tablet, desktop or wearable device. However, automatically testing these responsive sites and apps can be challenging, due to the need to cover all supported layouts, their respective navigation, and visible content. Join Moshe to learn how to effectively design responsive page objects. Gain an understanding of how to implement generic tests that work for all layouts, control the browser’s viewport size to accurately target layout transition points, incorporate layout-specific assertions in your tests, and visually validate the correctness of your app’s layout. In this session, Moshe will demonstrate a complete Selenium-based automated test for a popular responsive website to illustrate best practices, provide helpful tips, and share lessons learnt from common mistakes in test planning and execution.

DEVOPS

Michael “Fritz” Fritzius, Arch DevOps

As DevOps practices continue to shorten software release cycles, QA is often treated like a chokepoint. Many companies sidestep thorough testing in favor of fast releases, quick turnaround and low response times to incidents. But there’s only so much our customers can take before they get tired of buggy releases and constant churn. If your QA process feels out of step with DevOps concepts, or that DevOps doesn’t apply, or that QA automation is “stapled on”, then this talk is for you. Fritz will describe common challenges with QA and how to foster the DevOps mindset and technology within a team, along with share tips on how to construct reliable test automation that doesn’t eat up time in building tests or maintaining code. Come prepared to learn cutting edge tricks to take back to your company after the conference.

MEASUREMENT

Identifying, Measuring, and Paying Off Testing Debt

Peter Varhol, Kanda Software Virtually all testing teams create and accumulate debt. Testing debt is a subset of technical debt, and represents the amount of testing work not done because stories weren’t well-defined, tests did not exist or were ambiguous, or tests were blocked from executing when they were needed. Join Peter to learn what is testing debt, when debt is created, how much debt is created, and how to re-mediate that debt. By knowing more about how teams accrue testing debt, testers can learn to recognize when and why it occurs and make plans to pay it off. This presentation examines the activities that result in debt and how to measure and track that debt. You’ll learn techniques for paying off that debt over the course of the project. You’ll gain quantitative ways to know how much testing debt can be paid off prior to deployment and how much debt remains.

35

R



WEDNESDAY, MAY 23 - WORKSHOPS

3:30 PM - 5:00 PM

L E A D E R S H I P

Fostering Sustainable Change Effort

Diane Brescher, GEM Leaders | DB Consulting Partners Often the results of major change initiatives are disappointing. Approximately 80% of change efforts fail because of unproductive leadership attitudes and behavior. To understand why these initiatives are not successful as planned, this workshop will explore the underlying forces that produce change and the impacts that organizational change has on both people and the work itself. It will review how to handle resistance to change and how to better navigate change by following a model for change. You’ll learn how education and training greatly increases the success of change management initiatives. Education builds insights into various skills that help leaders effectively deal with change. Training promotes employee engagement by helping employees understand the rationale for the change. Leaders will leave the workshop understanding the role they have in helping others navigate change and will provide them with the tools to proactively manage change at all stages from pre-change, during change, and post change.

Key Learning Points:• Recognize the impact that change has on others• Address resistance to change by diagnosing different reactions to

change• Follow a model to successfully implement strategic change

DEVOPS

Creating a Killer Test Automation Framework in DevOps

Bob Crews, Checkpoint TechnologiesAs organizations develop a DevOps discipline they face the common challenge of designing and implementing an agile test automation approach. Considering the speed that high-quality software must be delivered, it’s imperative to have a strategy allowing rapid automation script development, minimal maintenance and vast scalability. The solution is the implementation of a strategic, robust test automation framework! During this workshop the detailed front-end, back-end and data components of the framework will be covered in a simplified, meaningful way to enable you to develop an automation strategy that supports your organization’s DevOps (and Agile) culture. Such a framework allows those who lack programming expertise to quickly create modular automated tests. There will be a hands-on exercise reinforcing the process of designing and creating a framework front-end. This workshop is completely tool agnostic. Whether your team is utilizing UFT, Selenium, Ranorex, or any other automation solution, you’ll benefit from this workshop!

Key Learning Points:• Gain insight to Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery and

Continuous Deployment• Learn the key components of a robust, agile test automation

framework• Understand a strategic approach to design and create your

framework to support your DevOps initiative

A UTOMATION

Define the Best Level for Your Automation

Jim Trentadue, VGTTest automation scripts are typically run against stable functionality with repeatable results. Automation does not have to be restricted to running reliable tests against a fixed code base to make them effective. In this workshop, you will learn how to determine the right level of automation you need to meet a project’s needs. Three levels of test automation will be discussed. Level 1 tests exercise the simplest aspect of functionality in a module. Level 2 tests explore all module aspects except interfaces to other components. Level 3 tests examine the deepest level of functionality in a module, including those that interface to other components. Jim will discuss the concepts of each of these levels and share practical examples. By attending this workshop, QA & test professionals will be able to improve the logic in their automation scripts and increase the chances of detecting more defects by defining their appropriate levels of test automation.

Key Learning Points:• Review of automation maturation to introduce levels• Differentiate factors between each automation level• Discuss a strategy for building tests at each automation level

MEASUREMENT

Metrics That Matter: Keeping Your Project On Track

Jeff Van Fleet and Julie Hagan, Lighthouse TechnologiesIt doesn’t matter if you’re developing a multi-million dollar software project or leading an entire IT department, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. And when it comes to the quality of your software testing/QA team, if you’re not tracking the right metrics you’re leaving yourself vulnerable to missed deadlines, poor-quality releases, and budget overruns. So, if the only thing that’s consistent about your projects is their deviation from the project plan, then this 90-minute workshop is for you. In this session, we’ll show you how to capture the leading indicators of your test team’s progress, quality, efficiency, and effectiveness—and how to use that data to make informed decisions and course corrections on your testing plan.

Key Learning Points:• Tracking software testing metrics in Agile and Waterfall• Utilizing metrics to build a quantifiable test plan• Analyzing the data to improve efficiency, consistency, and results

AGILE

Essential Patterns of Mature Agile Testers

Shaun Bradshaw, Zenegy Technologies

Testing in agile teams is still one of the great mysteries of the agile world. In some organizations, testers are marginalized or non-existent. In others, testers are active, but rarely understand or reach the full breadth and depth of their role. In this workshop, we’re explore the practices and mindset of “fully empowered” agile testers on high-performance agile teams. Shaun has seen it all – dysfunction to underperformance to high-performance teams – and will share real world tactics that will help you guide your team towards higher performance. Join Shaun to explore defect management, test planning, documentation, test development and execution in agile contexts. Look at different testing strategies covering risk-based, automated, exploratory, and other manual testing practices. But beyond that, Shaun will leave you armed with an agile testing mindset that focuses on whole team collaboration, respect, and results.

Key Learning Points:• Review how testing is different in agile contexts vs. traditional

testing• Explore the characteristics of strong agile testers• Discuss patterns of effective agile testers and test teams that can

be modeled in other organizations• Review cautionary tells of anti-patterns that slip in from traditional

testing

Evening Event & Bonus SessionWednesday evening’s event will be at San Antonio’s Historic Sunset Station, a landmark rich in history and charm that has been pristinely renovated to honor the architectural legacy of the historic Southern Pacific Railroad depot terminal. Enjoy a Texan barbecue dinner, drinks, the San Antonio Mentalist show and a great opportunity to network with fellow attendees in a casual and lively setting!

REMINDER: Thursday morning begins with an Early Bird Session from 7:30 AM – 8:15 AM - STEMpathy: Why Quality Professionals are More Important Now Than Ever!, presented by Anne Hungate, Daring Systems (see page 30).

36

R



THURSDAY, MAY 24 - PRESENTATIONS

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

EXHIBITOR EXPO

Thursday is your last chance to visit the Exhibitor EXPO and EXPO Talks. Be sure to attend the EXPO Reception at the conclusion of Thursday’s program for light snacks, drinks, networking, and great prize drawings!

L E A D E R S H I P

Building Your Credibility as a Test Leader

Randall Rice, Rice Consulting Services Software test leaders and managers are often the people who report test findings to others in an organization. Inaccurate or exaggerated information can cause an erosion of credibility that sometimes extends to the entire test team. The bottom line is that if people don’t find you to be credible as a test leader, they will have little or no trust in the information you provide. In this session, Randall will explore the nature of credibility and how it is built over time. He will discuss the situation where you may need “instant” credibility, in addition to restoring lost credibility and trust. You will learn how to assess your team’s credibility level and how to add value to the information you provide by being seen as a trusted, credible source. You will also learn how credibility can be lost, so you can avoid those situations.

PLAN/DESIGN

Making the Move to Behavior-Driven Development

Ryan Yackel, QASymphony Properly implemented Behavior Driven Development (BDD) helps to drive increased automation, achieve quicker development cycles, facilitate better collaboration between departments, and reduce siloed communication. Additionally, BDD is an ideal counterpart to continuous integration/delivery by solving testing bottlenecks. Despite the benefit, BDD is under-adopted. Studies find that between 10% and 25% of development organizations have implemented or are experimenting with a BDD process. Ryan will discuss how BDD moves testing up front to avoid rushed end-of-cycle testing and how automation is included from the start to achieve automation coverage. BDD has developers think about testability, build more testable software, and push software to customers just-in-time as it is developed. Ryan will also share a successful framework for evaluating your readiness for BDD, considering any potential roadblocks, and making a seamless transition. There will be plenty of takeaways for teams just learning about BDD, all the way through teams who have undergone a stable transition.

OPEN

SOURCE

Automation Best Practices with Open Source

Leo Laskin, Sauce Labs With the development pipeline accelerating with CI/CD to get new functionality to users quicker, automated testing is mission critical. However, when making the move to automation, there are an endless number of frameworks to choose from, which can overwhelm teams who do not fully understanding the benefits of one framework over another. Once teams select an automation framework and strategy, they often run into implementation, adoption and scale hurdles. Join Leo Laskin, Automation Specialist at Sauce Labs’ and Selenium project contributor, as he discusses the value of open source in testing. Leo will explain how projects like Selenium have become the industry standard in test automation. He will share his personal experience in moving from manual to automated testing and some lessons he learned, such as the good, bad and ugly when writing and testing code through automation and navigating around XPath and development practices. Leo will share the steps he took to build a powerful, international test coding army using open source tools.

IoT

Testing the Next Generation of Technologies: IoT, Mobile, and Cloud

Costa Avradopoulos, Avracom Gartner states in a recent report, “companies that use traditional testing methods for emerging technologies like mobile/IoT, will fail 90% of the time”. This session covers recent trends/challenges in testing IoT, Mobile, and Cloud applications. Next, we will discuss the components that go into a proper multi-technology test strategy and test environment, such as building a test lab, test coverage, test data, test management, tools, and automation. We’ll explore sample frameworks and methodologies for multi-technology environments. Lastly, Costa will walk participants through a recent case study of a large project with a high profile Fortune 500 company. This project entailed a mobile enterprise app, an IoT solution for embedded devices, and a Cloud solution for dashboards and analytics. We will cover real project challenges and how best practices were applied to overcome these.

A PI

The Future of API Testing: Trends and How to Propel Your Testing

Rajeev Rai, QASource If APIs are the new business logic for organizations, then API testing is the future of QA. API testing is poised to overtake other forms of testing within the next five years. Technology is increasingly complex with IoT, security, cloud, web devices, and the need for integration. Most testing organizations with a heavy investment in functional automation and manual testing are not prepared for this shift. In this presentation, Rajeev will offer real-world, usable information on API testing to propel your growth in API testing capabilities. You’ll learn why API testing is a more cost-effective way of achieving comprehensive test coverage in less time. By adding API testing to your QA processes, you can improve the quality, security, performance and stability of software and increase the speed to market within Agile/CD/DevOps. Rajeev will explain how to identify ideal scenarios for API testing to achieve the best ROI and test coverage. QA is changing and this is your call to action.

37

R




11:15 AM - 12:15 PM

Lunchtime Reminders

Thursday lunch is another opportunity to participate in the Special Interest Roundtables. Join fellow attendees for a discussion on hot topics relevant to the everyday practitioner.

Remember to visit the Exhibitor EXPO to have your EXPO Passport stamped by all the vendors before the conclusion of Thursday’s program. Turn in your completed EXPO Passport to the QAI Registration desk to receive a raffle ticket for QAI’s Grand Prize Drawing during Friday lunch (must be present to win).

L E A D E R S H I P

Where Are We Going: Developing and Designing a Comprehensive QA Roadmap

Elizabeth Wisdom, Ulta Beauty Your senior leadership just asked you to develop and implement a multi-year QA Roadmap to align more with agile processes, reduce cost, and increase overall capability maturity in terms of people, process, tools. Where do you start? Who should participate? Join Beth as she describes the journey in building Ulta Beauty’s QA Roadmap. First, she’ll explain the difference between a QA strategy and QA roadmap. You’ll learn the components of a roadmap including senior level vision, commitment, capabilities, structure, priority setting, timelines, financial cost, action plans and KPIs. Beth will share how she applied these components to build a roadmap to transform her QA organization in five concentration areas – test automation, environment management, tools and metrics, code quality, and team structure. Having a QA roadmap in place, enabled Ulta Beauty to implement changes to improve efficiency, achieve standardization, and provide transparency.

PLAN/DESIGN

Jumpstart Testing with Acceptance Test Drive Development

Susan Brockley, ExxonMobil Team can struggle to find the right level of detail prior to beginning development due to “chunky” user stories that are too large or insufficiently defined. Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) is a solution that can quickly slice those “chunky” user stories down to testable size. ATDD is not a new concept, but a time-honored way to elicit requirements. Join Susan as she discusses the difference between user stories and traditional requirements, and why both are necessary for success. Learn how to use traditional requirements techniques to write requirements in terms of acceptance criteria / acceptance tests for sufficiently small stories with details when needed. Using a real-world example, Susan will apply the ATDD process to quickly define acceptance criteria that can be coded and tested without the heavy documentation associated with traditional requirements. Finally, Susan provides valuable tips on incorporate ATDD into your company by tapping the talents of your business analysts, customer advocates, or test leads/coordinators.

OPEN

SOURCE

Introduction to Robot Framework

Brian Mathews, Conde Nast Co/Lab Test automation increases overall software efficiency and companies are striving to implement it or expand their existing test cases. Many companies ideally would like to utilize their current team members to increase coverage. Yet learning to write automated test cases can be daunting if you don’t have a programming background. Team members might have to learn a programming language before they can contribute to the company’s automated tests. It also can be difficult if you are experienced automator and want to teach team members to contribute automated tests. There is way to accomplish this without extensive training. Brian will explain the keyword-driven approach for acceptance testing using open source Robot Framework. In this introduction to Robot Framework you’ll explore what you need to get started, basic formats, test execution, implementing extended Libraries, reporting and more. Robot is an intuitive testing framework that can help every QA member contribute to building a more robust testing suite.

IoT

Successful Test Practices in the Era of IOT

Amir Rozenberg, Perfecto The age of the Internet of Things (IoT) has come. IoT devices enable a new realm of applications like medical devices, fitness, fashion, appliances, and industrial. The market is expected to exceed $1.7 trillion by 2020 with over 200 billion connected devices. Join Amir as he describes using concrete use cases for a working approach to ensure quality IoT applications. He provides details on how to build the IoT-enabled test lab, enhance test cases with real user conditions, tool considerations, IoT methodologies, and how to reach the right level of test coverage in IoT. He shares how to manage the growing set of tests that need to be executed from a planning, execution, and reporting perspective, including test compliance evidence. Demonstrating these concepts, Amir shares real examples working with medical, automotive and ‘connected home’ type applications. You’ll understand the unique challenges in expanding testing practices to include IoT devices, pitfalls, and mistakes to avoid.

RISK

Leverage Software Intelligence to Improve Risk-Based Testing

Bill Dickenson, CAST and Jeff Van Fleet, Lighthouse Technologies Risk-based testing models are founded on prioritization of functional tests based on their likelihood of failure, the importance of the functionality and the weighted impact to the business if a failure were to occur. While the merit of this model is proven, it overlooks two vital factors – the structural quality of the system under test and the degree to which complex system objects and transactions have been changed in the development cycle. Join Bill, Jeff and your peers to look look at these two aspects in more detail including the impact they both have on test effectiveness and production stability. Learn how to identify the root-cause of severe defects that result in system failures and understand the importance of quantifying transaction and object risk in addition to risk-based testing. Don’t miss the opportunity to learn how to optimize your test efficiency while expanding your coverage by leveraging software intelligence.

Modern Web Testing: Protractor and Selenium WebDriver

38

R




2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

L E A D E R S H I P

The Lost Art of Live Communication

Jennifer Bonine, tap|QA Have you read a #slack message or an email and been frustrated at not understanding what the other person meant or was trying to communicate? Have you been in a performance review where the majority of time was spent discussing your need to improve as a leader or contributor rather than who you are or how you perform? Join Jennifer Bonine as she shares a toolkit to help you identify your core communication competencies and how to build on and improve them. This toolkit includes a personal assessment of your communication competencies, explores a set of eight dimensions of successful communicator and provides suggestions on how you can improve competencies that are not in your core set of strengths, and describes techniques for leveraging and building on your strengths. These tools can help you become a more effective and valued testing leader in your organization.

PERFORMANCE

Hybrid Performance Testing: Does Render Time Matter?

Lawrence Nuanez, Total Performance Consulting Traditional load testing typically means testing the back-end application by simulating a request and measuring how long it takes to get the first byte and the last byte. Browser render time is not measured, because it is impacted by the speed of the user’s computer or device is and how many tabs are opened. However, users care about their experience and not how the back-end application perform. Join Lawrence to learn why both back-end and front-end browser testing are required to fully understand an application’s performance. Learn how to setup and configure a holistic performance test and what you will discover about your application’s performance when you do both front-end and back-end testing. With the advent of Single Page Applications, render time is even more critical. By incorporating hybrid testing, combining both traditional protocol based performance testing with real browsers, you’ll measure user experience to gain a real-world view of user experience.

OPEN

SOURCE

Dmitry Vinnik, Salesforce As the marketplace was learning to accept the web as a major delivery platform, Selenium WebDriver became a number one testing tool for many software engineers across the globe. The very success of Agile as a methodology for delivering working software quickly hinges on the use of tools like Selenium WebDriver and other flavors of Selenium like Protractor. Join Dmitry as he clears away many of the misconceptions and clarifies the differences between Selenium WebDriver and Protractor. During his session he will demonstrate the use of both tools. For example, Dmitry will show how Protractor and Selenium solve the same problem of testing Single Page Application. The goal of Dmitry’s presentation is for those attending to walk away with a clear understanding of when Selenium or Protractor is the right tool to solve the right problems. Understanding the pros and cons of both Selenium and Protractor allows you to make an educated decision on which tool to use when.

PLAN/DESIGN

Techniques and Attitude for Team Ownership of Quality

Gary Pedretti, Sodoto Solutions The idea that “everyone owns quality” is often an empty sentiment, but an effective, cross-functional Scrum team will deliver on that promise. Using a few simple techniques in Scrum – a shared and single definition of “done,” taking thin slices through the application architecture, delivery of truly shippable features, and immediate elimination of bugs, ensure that quality cannot fall out of scope and testing time cannot get pinched at the end of a development cycle. Agile techniques complementary to Scrum – Test-Driven Development, continuous integration, refactoring, and sustainable pace – also contribute to quality. Gary will talk about how these work in the real world and how they add up to more than the sum of their parts through the secret ingredient – an attitude of ownership. I will also cover how this attitude aligns perfectly with what we know about the innate drives of Knowledge Workers.

UA T

Bridging the UAT Gap

Paul Herzog, SPR Consulting Software development process improvements have focused on making teams more efficient and self-reliant. The product owner is the single voice of the business, testers shift their activities left, and developers continuously deploy code. With these process changes, the traditional purpose and timing of user acceptance testing (UAT) is misaligned. UAT is still performed at the end, disconnects from user stories/requirements, repeats QA testing, and is disorganized. In this session, Paul will re-align UAT within today’s development processes. First, he will remove ‘testing’ out of UAT to focus limited business resources on evaluating ‘readiness’ to accept the software into internal business or external customer activities. Next, he will close the disconnect between user stories/requirements and business artifacts which are critical for business acceptance. Lastly, Paul will explain how user acceptance activities can also shift left, be better organized, and avoid redundancy through collaboration with QA processes and tools. You’ll bring a new re-imagined UAT back to your organization.

Click is the QUEST Mobile App photo scavenger hunt game that encourages you to take photos at QUEST. We have created over 50 Click challenges including challenges around QUEST, around San Antonio, and while meeting new friends. Check out the Click Wall to see your photos and see who’s winning on the Leaderboard.

Don't Forget to Click!

Trimming Down your QA Effort While Maintaining Quality

Testing the Brave New World of SaaS Applications

39

R



THURSDAY, MAY 24 - WORKSHOPS

3:30 PM - 5:00 PM

L E A D E R S H I P

Clyneice Chaney, Quality Squared Are you struggling meeting demands for quality in your organization? Do you feel that there has to be a better, quicker way to get things done? Are your processes fine-tuned for excellence? Do you know the value that you are bringing to your organization? If you don’t know or aren’t sure, this workshop is for you. Join Clyneice to learn Lean concepts and how to apply these principles to quality and software testing processes to eliminate waste and to focus improve activities. You’ll learn common techniques for identifying and evaluating waste within your quality and testing processes and determining the value provided. In this interactive workshop, you’ll have the opportunity to apply problem solving techniques to solve process waste problems to achieve a trimmer, leaner software testing or quality assurance team. Leaders who know their team’s effectiveness and can demonstrate value are proven to be much more successful.

Key Learning Points:• Gain an understanding of basic Lean concepts and their applicability to

testing and quality assurance• Learn potential areas of waste in quality assurance and testing• Apply techniques to implement improvements for potential waste areas

PLAN/DESIGN

Writing TDD Test Cases to Support Manual and Automation Execution

Jeremy Berriault, Pulse Systems In Test Driven Development (TDD) a test is written before writing code. TDD ensures that code is thoroughly tested and leads to modularized, flexible and extensible code. Since the focus is on tests, it is critical to write good test cases. Questions often arise such as, “Does the test case really match the requirements?” or “Does it cover all variables?” or “Can it be automated for future regression testing?” Join Jeremy as he explains how to use a version of the IEEE 829 standard in documenting test cases to make tests reusable and changeable for continuous improvement. You will learn how to clearly define what should be tested and how to ensure effective use of each work product. Jeremy will explain how stakeholders involved in testing can better understand their expectations for each work product. Even if you are not using TDD, you will be able to apply the IEEE 829 standard to improve the modularity and traceability of your QA tests.

Key Learning Points:• Gain an understanding of how TDD improves development and

execution velocity• Learn how to use the IEEE 829 in documenting modular and traceable

test cases• Help stakeholders involved in testing understand their expectations for

each work product

AUTOMATION

STAX – Robust Selenium Test Automation Framework

Ramapriya Raju and Rohit Khare, IBM Test organizations today manage multiple tools to build and maintain automation assets for a variety of application types across heterogeneous platforms. Automation expenses include infrastructure and hardware costs, expensive licensing costs of proprietary frameworks with limited scalability, and targeted resource skilling costs. For a quicker, more realistic automation ROI, join Ramapriya and Rohit to learn about an open source hybrid framework for building robust test automation scripts across multiple technologies and multi-layer/multi-platforms. Learn how you can automate WebUi, mobile and Windows for functional, regression, smoke and cross browser testing under a single scalable framework. STAX is fundamentally built as a hybrid framework model using Selenium/Java with capabilities for Reporting, Loggers, Error Handling, CI/CT integration etc. The framework provides portability across environments, scalability, efficiency in system resources utilization, ability to retest and rerun without changing scripts/data, script versioning, modular code packaging, remote execution, and parallel execution. You’ll experience why the development time for a high complexity script can be less than eight effort hours.

Key Learning Points:• Gain insight to a single open source driven automation framework

enabling multi/omni channel driven automation coverage• Experience a lean and modularized selenium/Java framework that is

easily scalable for evolving client and technology needs• Learn how to maximize automation benefits through Cloud and DevOps

Integration

P ERFORMANCE

Performance Testing with JMETER: The Obvious and the Obscure

Chris Burgoyne and Justin Harrison, Vision Point Systems Performance testing is pretty simple conceptually. You automate functional tests and run them at high volume to find the limits of the system and to build confidence that the system under development will be able to handle the expected demand. In reality, there’s a lot more to it. This workshop is for testers and developers who need guidance in establishing or improving their performance test planning and practice with particular attention paid to the pitfalls of conducting performance testing within the context of ongoing development and the demands of internal and external stakeholders. Join Justin, who has been immersed in performance testing over the last five years, as he takes you on a journey into performance testing using JMETER to demonstrate common tasks. You’ll also have the chance to apply the core concepts that you learn by putting together a performance test plan.

Key Learning Points:• Gain an understanding of the basics of performance testing using

JMETER• View scripting as a ‘project within a project’ that follows the classic

SDLC• Learn how to scope a performance test project and prepare a

performance test project plan

SAAS

Gerie Owen, Qualitest and Peter Varhol, Technology Strategy Research Testing Software as a Service, (SaaS) requires specialized skills based on its components and function. The major areas of focus for SaaS functional testing include customizations and configurations, integrations, data. Non-functional testing includes performance, security, disaster recovery, scalability, availability and interoperability. The internal network must be tested for bandwidth and secure data transfer. Finally, a post-production test strategy is needed to address application performance monitoring and vendor upgrades. Since the SaaS software is not developed specifically to meet user-defined requirements, test leads and testers need to focus on the areas where changes in the end-to-end workflow are made. This workshop will provide a framework for testing each component of SaaS applications, planning, coordinating and executing the end-to-end test. We’ll develop hands-on test scenarios for each component, plan a schedule for coordinating the end-to-end test, and develop a plan for regression testing vendor upgrades.

Key Learning Points:• An understanding of SaaS applications and cloud technology concepts

as they relate to testing and how to design specific test scenarios around SaaS components

• How to work with business processes and integration maps to design an effective test strategy for the application

• How to structure infrastructure and network testing, including innovative test ideas for non-functional testing

EXPO Reception & EvaluationsAt the conclusion of Thursday’s program, stop by the Exhibitor EXPO for the EXPO Reception, sponsored by all our exhibitors participating in the QUEST 2018 EXPO. Refreshments will be served, entertainment will be provided, and the exhibitors will raffle off their prizes to eligible winners.

Tell us how we did! Remember to fill out your Overall Conference Evaluations, and turn them in to QAI staff members before lunch on Friday to enter the QAI Grand Prize Drawing.

Key Insights on DataOps: Deflating Test Cost, Risk, and Time

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and its Application in Software Quality

40

R



FRIDAY, MAY 25 - PRESENTATIONS

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

L E A D E R S H I P

The Future of Software Testing: Team Readiness vs. Industry Push

Sunil Sehgal, TechArcis Solutions More than just an evolution, the software testing field is in a period of extreme change. Many of the changes shaping the software testing field today are driven by external factors. What exactly does this change entail? How can software testers prepare for this change, and perhaps most importantly, what change has yet to come? To answer these questions and more, join Sunil Sehgal for an in-depth talk on the future of software testing. During his presentation, Sunil will discuss the dramatic changes that have taken place in the software testing profession and will provide five tips on how testers can prepare themselves for future changes. By pulling data from across the testing landscape, Sunil will provide the industry’s top predictions for the future of our profession. In the end, it is all about re-imagining the field of software testing and your role in it with quality now everyone’s responsibility.

AI

Richard Bechtold Ph.D., Abridge Technology Artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) techniques have been around for decades. In recent years there has been a significant resurgence of interest and effort in AI/ML. Ongoing increases in technical capabilities combined with exponential increases in the collection and availability of data has led to AI/ML based algorithms becoming almost commonplace in tools we may use regularly. Dr. Bechtold’s presentation begins with an introduction to basic concepts and distinguishing characteristics of AI/ML strategies and techniques, including expert systems, genetic algorithms, and neural networks. Each approach is compared to the others in terms of relative advantages and disadvantages. Further, he will examine the ways in which AI/ML methods are being increasingly used in system quality management and testing, and how such methods may help in determining where, how much, and in what ways, system and subsystem components need to be tested. Dr. Bechtold will conclude with a discussion of the human role in this machine-intensive environment.

TES T

DATA

Woody Evans, Delphix DataOps is an exciting, emergent field that encompasses the power of Virtual Data Environments to untether data at scale making data portable enough to move about in time and space. Join Woody as he shares key insights about DataOps and virtual data environments. These insights will deeply challenge the way we think about the process, risk/controls, and dependencies under which we operate as testers. While traditionally we have not been able to do much about the “Cost of Context Switch” or the “Cost of Error” before Virtual Data Environments become possible, now that they are available the impact is significant. We don’t realize the role synchronicity plays for composite applications, but relationship between quality and synchronicity grows as the number of elements in a composite application grows. During this session, Woody will share how the correlation between speed of data provision in DataOps and Left Shift is palpable and valuable if you learn to exploit it.

P R O C E S S

Test Process Improvement Journey: Define Your Team’s Destination

Karmen Knezevic, Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission Every test process will endure somewhat regular process improvements. The regularity and level of improvements will depend on us, the process owners and process members. But before making significant investments, we need to ask ourselves, “Where do we start and how do we know when we are done?” No matter what area of testing process targeted to improve, it is important to know where we currently are, what we are trying to accomplish, and how we are measured against industry standards. Join Karman to explore different test process improvement models such as Critical Testing Process (CTP), Test Process Improvement (TPI Next), Systematic Test and Evaluation Process (STEP) and Test Maturity Model integrated (TMMi). Learn to identify what is required to assess test process maturity level and identify the gaps in current capabilities. Visualize your test process improvement roadmap and align it with your company’s priorities to achieve value for your investment.

11:15 AM - 12:15 PM

PR OC E S S

The New CMMI: More Effective Testing

Richard Waina, Multi-Dimensional Maturity Testing is a vital component of the software development process and provides strong support for the production of quality software. Issues such as planning, budget, schedule, communication, or errors often impact testing quality and effectiveness. Dick will discuss how the new Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) V2.0 can improve a testing organization’s effectiveness through development of better processes. CMMI V2.0 has a collection of best practices organized into areas such as planning, risk management, performance measurement, configuration management, etc. Each area has a set of evolutionary levels which provide a path to performance improvement. The model shows how to apply its practices to an organization using agile and lean processes, as well as one using more traditional approaches. It also furnishes direction to senior management on their role in implementing these effective processes and ensuring continued use even in times of crisis. Developing testing processes based on the CMMI V2.0 practices can significantly enhance your testing effectiveness and efficiency.

L E A D E R S H I P

Rapid Change: Preparing Your Testing Workforce for the Future

Billy Flannery, Nationwide

The changes facing the testing workforce is vast and the rate of change is ever increasing. All the while, business expectations for the highest quality has remained unchanged. Addressing the testing workforce need is imperative. Through modernizing testing processes, implementing new tools and upskilling your testing workforce you will gain efficiencies, increase the engagement of your testing talent and meet the needs of your business partners. Join Billy Flannery as he discusses how Nationwide is preparing their testing workforce for the future and building high performing teams in the process. During his session, Billy will share insights into Nationwide’s: 1) strategic direction and their process of aligning a test transformation to Enterprise outcomes, 2) modern processes and tools and their decision framework for adopting modern process and tools, and 3) readying the workforce and their approach to preparing a large workforce for a transformational change and how to build excitement in a changing environment.

41FRIDAY, MAY 25 - PRESENTATIONS

TE S T

D A T A

Test Data Privacy: Help Your Company Avoid Bad Headlines

Craig Laufer, Erie Insurance Group Test data privacy is something that most of us will agree is needed, whether because of the fear of data breaches or the need for regulatory compliance. Many organizations still use production data for testing and other non-production purposes, even as larger and more dangerous data breaches occur, such as the recent Equifax breach. Oftentimes, test data privacy gets lip service with very little formal guidance. Craig will present the journey of test data privacy from a nice-to-have to a must-have value-added service. Learn various technologies including cutting-edge approaches that can offer differing forms of protection including data masking, tokenization, blockchain, and synthetic data generation. Discover why test data privacy should be part of an overarching test data management program which contains dedicated resources. Craig will share how the concept of InfoPriv and data privacy roles within the enterprise can result in test data privacy that leads to better production data privacy.

RE G U L A T O R Y

Challenges of Software Testing in a Regulated Environment

Deepak Arora and James Boritz, IBM Watson Health Imaging Testing without proper resources and evidence in software designed for medical devices or aerospace systems can cause safety or life-threatening issues. Well-planned testing techniques are needed to provide adequate evidence of Verification and Validation activities. Clear distinction between V & V is essential to satisfying the strict requirements from FDA/FAA. Join Deepak Arora and James Boritz as they discuss testing in a regulated environment where concrete evidence must exist that the built application has gone through rigorous testing and is ready for production systems. You’ll learn evidence-based testing techniques including documentation videos as part of the testing process. The presenters will define a strong Quality Management System (QMS) that serves as a centralized hub to all documentation artifacts for audits. They will cover how lack of testing credibility can leave an organization vulnerable to litigation. Certified Testing teams are the keys to scalable and reliable software applications that can be safely deployed.

11:15 AM - 12:15 PM

R



42

R



FRIDAY, MAY 25

1:30 PM - 2:30 PM

TRA NSFORMATION

QA Manager as Transformation Leader

Billy Flannery, Nationwide

Testing is undergoing modernizing, including new testing processes, implementing new tools and upskilling the testing workforce. With these changes, a QA Manager’s focus is no longer managing the day to day testing activities, but instead performs a more strategic role in the organization. Billy will share insights into his new role as a transformation leader setting strategic direction for testing processes and tools and building excitement to drive change within the environment.

AR C H I T E C T U R E

QA Manager as the Test Architect

Paul Herzog, SPR Consulting

As software is more complex with greater speed to market, test design is key to achieve test coverage, reduce technical testing debt, and build re-usage best assets. A QA Manager with project experience, knowledge of testing methodologies and tools, insight to industry trends, and leadership capabilities should be working as a Test Architect. Paul will discuss his role as a Test Architect during the inception of a project and as the project progresses. Whether the project is Agile or Waterfall, the Test Architect designs the most effective and efficient solution to testing the application under test.

GOVER NA NCE

QA Manager Role in Governance

Misty Pearson, Elavon

In the Agile Scrum work environment, the team has a lot of input into the processes in which they work. This includes how they function as a team and how they get the actual work done. This has led to less need for involvement of the QA Manager for decision making. Misty will discuss her new role in an Agile environment as she supports the manual, automation and performance engineers to be efficient and productive through process and tool governance to keep consistency across the teams, resource management, and test strategy.

CoE

QA Manager Replaced by ICE

Bhavin Soni, Insurance Auto Auctions

With the transformation to new Agile Scrum delivery teams, the previously centralized QA team resources were re-organized into individual delivery teams. Quality Assurance processes no longer were the responsibility of a QA Manager and instead became the responsibility of the delivery teams. Bhavin explains how an initial Community of Practice (CoP) structure was implemented for quality assurance processes and then replaced by Center of Excellence teams to brainstorm, evolve and improve standards and procedures across delivery teams.

2:30 PM - 3:00 PM

LAST DAY REMINDERS!

Friday is the last day for Coaching Sessions. Check the schedule in the QUEST Mobile App (QUEST Information – Coaching page) to see what topics and speakers will be available for the day.

Remember to complete the CONFERNCE EVALUATION survey form and turn it in to a QAI staff member at the registration desk. You will receive a raffle ticket for the QAI’s Grand Prize Drawing during Friday lunch (must be present to win).

PANE L

D I S C U S S I O N

Panel Discission: Reimagining the Role of the QA Manager

Nancy Kastl, SPR Consulting Billy Flannery, NationwidePaul Herzog, SPR ConsultingMisty Pearson, Elavon Bhavin Soni, Insurance Auto Auctions

With the current trends in software development and testing..…Agile, shift-left, decentralized testing, developers and testers interchangeable, etc…..QA Leaders are faced with the question, “Will I have a role in my company, and if so, what is my role?” Although the traditional role of a QA Manager, directing the activities of people who are direct reports, is going away, there’s the opportunity to re-imagine the role of the QA Manager to provide value in the new digital era. Join our panelists as they first share with you their individual stories of the changes they experienced in their companies and how they were able to reshape their role. Secondly the panelists will engage in a lively dialogue about their perspectives on the new role of a QA Manager, the advantages and challenges of the new role, and their vision of the future of QA.



Accenture Bronze Sponsor | www.accenture.com Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 358,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Accenture offers the entire breadth and depth of testing services across a broad array of applications, digital technologies and industries delivered under flexible business arrangements to help companies shape their digital future and lead their industry while delivering an exceptional customer experience. With more than 31,000 testing professionals across more than 30 delivery centers in 17 countries, Accenture serves over 1,000 testing clients across more than 40 industries. Sponsoring a Coffee Break.

Applitools Platinum Sponsor | www.applitools.com Applitools is on a mission to help test automation, DevOps and development teams to release and monitor flawless mobile, web, and native apps in a fully automated way that enables Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI-CD). Founded in 2013, Applitools uses sophisticated AI-powered image processing technology to ensure that an application appears correctly and functions properly on all mobile devices, browsers, operating systems, and screen sizes. Applitools has more than 300 customers from a range of verticals, including Fortune-100 companies in Software, Banking, Online Retail, Insurance, Pharmaceuticals, and more. Applitools is based in San Mateo, California and Tel-Aviv, Israel. Sponsoring a Conference Lunch.

CAST Exhibitor | www.castsoftware.com CAST is the market leader in Software Intelligence, with unique technology backed by $150 million in software analysis and measurement R&D. CAST technology helps digital leaders and doers see the truth, become software geniuses and deliver super software – resilient, responsive, safe and secure software. Hundreds of companies rely on CAST to improve end-user satisfaction and time-to-market, prevent business disruption and reduce cost. Founded in 1990, CAST operates globally with offices in North America, Europe, India and China.

Checkpoint Technologies Gold Sponsor | www.checkpointech.com Checkpoint Technologies is a solutions provider that specializes in Business Technology Optimization. We are experts in all areas of quality assurance and software testing – performance, functional, and security. Checkpoint Technologies provides leading-edge software solutions, training, mentoring, senior consulting, and staff augmentation. Our services include both manual and automated testing with automated testing being an area in which we are known for our expertise. Checkpoint Technologies is an HP Business Partner and Certified Training Partner. We have assisted numerous organizations with their implementation of testing solutions with on-site consulting, staff augmentation, and training. Sponsoring Conference Lanyards.

Delphix Bronze Sponsor | www.delphix.com Delphix’s mission is to connect people to data and accelerate innovation. The Delphix Dynamic Data Platform securely delivers virtual test data copies from production to end users in a fraction of the time and space of physical test data. Delphix provides testers with data controls—including the ability to refresh, rewind, bookmark, and branch test data as a self-service—to drive massive increases in productivity and application quality. Fortune 100 companies use the Delphix Dynamic Data Platform to connect, virtualize, secure and manage data in the cloud and in on-premise environments. Sponsoring a Coffee Break.

Mobile Labs Silver Sponsor | www.mobilelabsinc.com Mobile Labs provides enterprise-grade, next generation testing tools for mobile app testing, mobile device testing and mobile website testing. With a focus on security, agility and affordability, Mobile Labs delivers solutions to help enterprises deploy quality mobile apps for Android and iOS platforms while also securely managing mobile devices and test device access via private cloud. Mobile Labs helps today’s enterprise IT and QA teams improve mobile application testing management, minimize the number of mobile devices required for test and strengthen mobile device and mobile app security. Sponsoring Conference Bags.

432018 SPONSORS, EXHIBITORS AND SUPPORTERS

44

R



2018 SPONSORS, EXHIBITORS AND SUPPORTERSOctoPerf Bronze Sponsor | www.octoperf.com OctoPerf is a SaaS and On-Premise load testing solution. It aims to improve the quality and performance of intranet, web and mobile applications. OctoPerf lets you create thousands of realistic virtual users in a few clicks. No code to write, it all happens in our intuitive GUI wrapped with enterprise features like result comparison, server monitoring, teamwork, SLAs, correlation frameworks etc. OctoPerf is based on JMeter. Either import your JMeter projects to enjoy our automated test launch and live results display. Or do everything from scratch in the GUI with a user-friendly test experience. Sponsoring a Coffee Break.

Parasoft Exhibitor | www.octoperf.com www.parasoft.com Parasoft helps organizations perfect today’s highly-connected applications by automating time-consuming testing tasks and providing management with intelligent analytics necessary to focus on what matters. Parasoft’s technologies reduce the time, effort, and cost of delivering secure, reliable, and compliant software, by integrating static and runtime analysis; unit, functional, and API testing; and service virtualization. With developer testing tools, manager reporting/analytics, and executive dashboarding, Parasoft supports software organizations with the innovative tools they need to successfully develop and deploy applications in the embedded, enterprise, and IoT markets, all while enabling today’s most strategic development initiatives — agile, continuous testing, DevOps, and security.

QAI Global Institute – USA Platinum Sponsor | www.qaiusa.com Founded in 1980 in Orlando Florida, QAI is a global workforce development and consulting organization addressing the education and ‘Operational Excellence’ needs of information technology and knowledge-intensive organizations. QAI Global Institute, the workforce development division of QAI, focuses on creating education and training products and services. The Institute caters to a wide variety of industries and provides access to a wealth of concepts and skill building reinforced through consulting, training, assessments, benchmarking, certification, conferences, and eLearning. QAI has trained over 140,000 individuals and certified over 50,000 professionals.Sponsoring the Welcome Reception.

QASymphony Exhibitor | www.qasymphony.com QASymphony is a leading agile software company that provides enterprise test case management, test analytics, exploratory testing, and test driven solutions for development and QA teams. QASymphony helps companies create better software by improving speed, efficiency, collaboration and analysis during the testing process. The company has over 400 customers across 25+ countries including Salesforce, Barclays, Adobe, Samsung, Verizon and Office Depot. QASymphony was recently selected by Gartner as a “Cool Vendor in Application Development” and by Red Herring as a North America Top 100 Winner”. The company is headquartered in Atlanta, GA.

Sauce Labs Diamond Sponsor | www.saucelabs.com Sauce Labs provides the world’s largest cloud-based platform for the continuous testing of web and mobile applications. Founded by the original creator of Selenium, Sauce Labs helps companies accelerate software development cycles, improve application quality, and deploy with confidence across hundreds of browser / OS platforms, including Windows, Linux, iOS, Android & Mac OS X. Optimized for Continuous integration (CI), Continuous delivery (CD), and DevOps, the Sauce Labs platform is built to handle the most secure data from its customers, who range from Fortune 500 companies to small businesses worldwide. To date, more than 1.5 billion tests have run on the Sauce Labs cloud. For more info or to sign up for a free trial, visit http://saucelabs.com. Sponsoring the evening at Sunset Station.

International Software Certifications Board (ISCB) Platinum Sponsor | www.softwarecertifications.org The International Software Certifications Board’s (ISCB) origins date back to 1980 when it was founded as part of the Quality Assurance Institute (QAI). QAI was established as a professional association whose charter was to represent the software quality assurance (SQA) professional. The founding directors of the institute recognized the need to insulate the professional certification program from the association and to that end the ISCB was structured as an independent board of overseers to provide guidance and governance of the certification program. The ISCB officially launched the first certification program, the Certified Quality Analyst CQA (later to be renamed the Certified Software Quality Analyst CSQA), in 1985 and the first formal examination based certification was launched in 1990. Today, the ISCB’s professional certification programs cover three domains, Software Quality Assurance, Software Testing, and Software Business Analysis. Approximately 55,000 individuals have been certified on six continents. Sponsoring the QUEST Mobile App.

CCCCCCCCEEEEEEEEEE FFFFIIIIIIIIICCCCCCERTIFICATIONSSSSS eeeeeeeeSoftware

45



R


tap|QA Bronze Sponsor | www.tapqa.com tap|QA is a consulting services firm 100% focused on quality. Our consultants’ wide range of experience includes Strategic Analysis, Business Analysis, Quality Assurance & Testing within a vast array of industries. We enable organizations to meet the growing demands of their business partners and customers. Our solutions include: tap|Strategy- Strategic Consulting to Optimize IT Capabilities, Technology & Organizational Structure; tap|Technology – Implementing Continuous Integration, Delivery and Deployment through Automation; tap|Lakeshore – Cost-Competitive with Offshore, but embedded Locally with your team, or at our site in Minneapolis; and tap|Consulting – Leveraging our Key Experts and Consultants for your IT & Business needs. Sponsoring Conference Pens.

Total Performance Consulting Exhibitor | www.totalperform.com/ Total Performance Consulting, headquartered in Atlanta, GA, is a global performance & quality engineering firm. Our sole focus is ensuring our customer’s applications deliver a world-class user experience. Our solutions include Continuous Performance Validation, Performance Monitoring, Performance Engineering, Quality Engineering, Test Automation, Mobile Testing and QA staffing. Our dedicated focus on quality allows us to meet everything from last minute testing needs to long term test strategy and outsourcing. At TPC we want our customers to focus on building, while we focus on testing. We enable our customers to launch and grow their applications with confidence.

Zenergy Technolgies Exhibitor | www.zenergytechnologies.com Zenergy Technologies is a software delivery solutions firm that helps clients develop and maintain better software. Zenergy has in-house experts in multiple software disciplines including Agile, DevOps, QA, test automation and performance. These industry recognized experts are not only in high demand as speakers and keynoters at all major software conferences in the U.S. and internationally, they also oversee all Zenergy’s solution and staffing offerings. From helping clients improve processes at the strategic level to managing Zenergy teams as they deliver Agile, DevOps, QA, and automation solutions, the experts at Zenergy will help you succeed.

Zephyr Gold Sponsor | www.getzephyr.com Zephyr is a leading provider of on-demand, real-time enterprise test management solutions, offering innovative applications, seamless integrations and unparalleled, real-time visibility into the quality and status of software projects. Zephyr products are the fastest growing agile test management products in the world, with more than 4000 global customers in 80 countries. Their feature rich products address today’s dynamic and global needs across a variety of industries including finance, healthcare, media, mobile, IT services, and enterprise software. Zephyr has offices in the United States, Europe and India.Sponsoring Conference Journals.

SUPPORTING ORGANIZATIONS

Alamo PMI Chapter PMI Chapter | www.alamopmi.org Founded in 1995, the Alamo Project Management Institute (APMI) Chapter is a non-profit, tax exempt 501(c) 6 trade association charted by the globally recognized Project Management Institute. The APMI is a volunteer-led body of fervent project management practitioners and enthusiasts who collectively endeavor to connect, educate and mentor success through leadership and innovation in life and profession. The APMI hosts monthly membership meetings that provide chapter members and the public the opportunity to network with project management professionals, earn invaluable Professional Development Units (PDUs), learn new skills from experienced speakers, find or become a mentor to help expand the field, and acquire cutting-edge techniques.

Atlanta Quality Assurance Association (AQAA) QAI Federation Chapter | www.aqaa.org The Atlanta Quality Assurance Association (AQAA) was founded in 1984 with the belief that no one company or individual can learn everything that is needed to assure a Quality Environment. AQAA is a not-for-profit organization which is organized to share state-of-the-art Quality Assurance methods, tools and techniques among its members. Our membership is comprised of professionals working primarily in the information systems industry. The AQAA is a Quality Assurance Institute (QAI) Federation Chapter.

46

R




Consortium for IT Software Quality (CISQ) Industry Supporter | http://www.it-cisq.org The Consortium for IT Software Quality™ (CISQ™) is an IT industry leadership group comprised of IT executives from the Global 2000, system integrators, outsourced service providers, and software technology vendors committed to introducing computable metrics standards for measuring software quality & size. CISQ is a neutral, open forum in which customers and suppliers of IT application software can develop an industry-wide agenda of actions for improving IT application quality to reduce cost and risk.

Chicago Quality Assurance Association (CQAA) QAI Federation Chapter | www.cqaa.org The Chicago Quality Assurance Association was established in 1984 and is the second oldest chapter of the QAI Global Institute. CQAA promotes software quality principles and practices within the Chicagoland area by providing a forum for networking and information sharing. CQAA offers monthly speaker programs, lunch & learns, webinars, and training classes a to over 1500 members for continuing education. Professional certification is supported by hosting the CSQA and CSTE certification prep classes in Chicago and facilitating local study groups. Other activities have included one-day vendor showcases and symposiums, special interest groups for information exchange, co-hosting programs with other professional organizations, and job search service.

Dallas-Fort Worth Quality Assurance Association (DFWQAA) QAI Federation Chapter | www.dfwqaa.org The DFWQAA is a non-profit 501(c)(3) education organization and local chapter of QAI. Our members are a group of Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas area Software Quality Assurance professionals and managers that come to meet others in their industry and share information. Our mission is to create an open forum in which to share Software QA/Testing best practices and jointly address issues facing the Software Quality Assurance industry. We are affiliated with QAI Global Institute, a worldwide software quality organization. In addition to providing educational and QAI certification opportunities to our members, we usually hold a meeting on the 3rd Tuesday of each month to discuss relevant topics in QA and testing.

Object Management Group (OMG) Industry Supporter | www.omg.org The Object Management Group® (OMG®) is an international, open membership, not-for-profit technology standards consortium. Founded in 1989, OMG standards are driven by vendors, end-users, academic institutions and government agencies. OMG Task Forces develop enterprise integration standards for a wide range of technologies and an even wider range of industries.

QAI Global Community QAI Federation | www.qaiusa.com/qai-global-community The QAI Global Institute was founded on the premise of having an association of IT professionals who shared knowledge and experiences in order to broaden and strengthen the recognition of the IT practitioner and IT industry. Since then, the Institute has created a worldwide network of IT professionals, developed over the past 25 years, resulting in relationships with world–class industry leaders. The QAI Global Community includes regional Chapters that focus their attention towards providing local professionals with resources to promote their continued pursuit of knowledge and skill building.

Tech Beacon Media Partner | www.techbeacon.com Tech Beacon is a digital hub for dev and tech professionals seeking guidance to real business challenges. Focusing on information that really matters for competing effectively in business without compromising on editorial integrity. Our editorial mission is simple: to connect our readers to the leading experts who understand what it takes to succeed. Staying ahead of the trends and navigating emerging technology while maintaining focus on what’s needed to be successful now is not always a straightforward path. TechBeacon shines a light on those who are doing it right and those who are solving today’s most challenging problems to shape the future of IT.

Find out how Sauce Labscan accelerate your testingto the speed of awesome.

For a demo, please visit saucelabs.com/demoEmail [email protected] or call (855) 677-0011 to learn more.

B E F O R E S A U C E L A B SDevices. Delays. Despair.

A F T E R S A U C E L A B SAutomated. Accelerated. Awesome.

A brief history of web and mobile app testing.

SL SD times ad 8.75x11.25 .125 bleed.indd 2 3/27/18 11:32 AM

san antonio - qaiquest.orgqaiquest.org/2018/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/2018_quest_magazine.pdf ·...

Documents