Track: Test
The test track will feature some of the most interesting thinkers within test from all over the world, with special focus on issues that could very well be the future of testing. These include automating higher-level testing, driving development through testing, and especially fostering the highly skilled and creative tester.
The communication and collaboration across disciplines in a project, with the tester as an information hub, is often the key to successfully releasing high quality products to a more demanding and discerning market. This is why parts of the track are related to communication as well.
It doesn't matter if you are a tester, a test leader or a developer interested in testing – the test track has something for everyone.
Friday
How to Think about Efficiency in Software Testing
Proposals for making testing more efficient typically involve heavy documentation, outsourcing, or automated test execution-- all of which are typically inefficient, in practice. They seem efficient mainly to people who don't like testing and can't tell when it's being done badly. Instead, I suggest a different approach to achieving efficient testing based on concise documentation, high collaboration, skilled testers, risk focus, testability, and "agile" use of automation.
James Bach
James Bach is the author of Lessons Learned in Software Testing, as well as the new book Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar. He is self-educated as a programmer and software tester, with years of experience in Silicon Valley at such companies as Apple Computer and Borland International. For the last ten years, James has been teaching and consulting on the subject of Rapid Software Testing-- a radical rethinking of traditional testing methods along agile lines.
Driving Features into Your System with ATDD
By now our industry has pretty much accepted the value of automated developer tests (unit tests, micro tests, module tests, and what have you) and the practice of Test-Driven Development (TDD) is slowly making its way into becoming a mainstream practice of craftsman programmers for ensuring code's correctness as well as aiding in its design. Similar benefits can be delivered with Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD), a test-driven approach to implementing whole features.
Lasse Koskela
Lasse is a coach, trainer, consultant and programmer, spending his days helping clients create successful software products and improve their performance through the application of agile methods and a culture of continuous learning. He believes that the most effective method of coaching software professionals is by working with software. One of the pioneers of the Finnish agile community and author of "Test Driven", Lasse speaks frequently at international conferences.
Executable requirements with BDD and Cucumber
Cucumber (http://cukes.info) is a fresh breathe in the young practice of Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD). While most other BDD tools tend to be geared towards developers and code, Cucumber's focus is communication between stakeholders and developers.
But don't get fooled! Cucumber is also an extremely powerful automated testing tool that works with
a variety of languages and other tools.
I will give you an intro to BDD and demonstrate both basic and more advanced features of Cucumber.
Aslak Hellesøy
Aslak Hellesøy is Chief Scientist of Bekk Consulting in Norway.
In 2003 TheServerSide.com declared him one of the world's 50 most influential Java programmers for his work on XDoclet and PicoContainer.
Aslak is the founder of Cucumber and co-founder of RSpec, two very popular BDD frameworks for the Ruby programming language.
He started with XP in 2003, Scrum in 2005 and has recently become very interested in Kanban.
Aslak has organised 3 conferences - Smidig 2007/2008 and RubyFools 2008.
Getting Developers to Write Tests
Developer testing is critical to being able to release quality products, especially if you release every 1-4 weeks as several of Google's products. However, developers are not always open to "wasting" their time writing tests, especially when under pressure to release new features. This talk will discuss how I work with developers at Google to help them understand the benefits of developer testing. I'll share some of the barriers and success stories that I have run into.
Karin Lundberg
After working as a software developer in Denmark, I got the opportunity to move to Novell's American headquater in USA, in 2005. I spent about 7 years developing tools for portal and identity management systems (for Novell and its acquired companies) before moving to California last year to work as a Software Engineer in Test for Google. My main responsibilities are to help developers write quality code and unit tests and to help them release a quality product every two weeks.
What Not To Test!
This presentation explores some practical and systematic approaches to organizing and triaging testing ideas. Testing ideas are influenced by risk and importance to your business. Information is coming at your from all angles - how can it be used to prioritize testing and focus on the test with the most value? Triage of testing ideas, assessing credibility and impact estimation can be used to help decide what to do when the going gets tough!
Robert Sabourin
Robert Sabourin has more than twenty-five years of management experience, leading teams of software development professionals. A well-respected member of the software engineering community, Robert has managed, trained, mentored, and coached hundreds of top professionals in the field. The author of I am a Bug!, the popular software testing childrens book, Robert is an adjunct professor of Software Engineering at McGill University.
