Speakers STANZ 2010

Scott is widely recognised as a thought leader in software performance testing.

He is Chief Technologist of PerfTestPlus, Executive Director of the Association for Software Testing , Co-Founder of the Workshop on Performance and Reliability and co-author of Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications .

Scott's particular specialties are testing and analysing performance for complex systems, developing customised testing methodologies for individual organisations, testing in Agile environments, teaching software testing, embedded systems testing, testing biometric identification and security systems, group facilitation and authoring instructional materials.

A trainer of software testers, Scott is an AST certified On-Line Lead Instructor who has authored over 100 educational articles on software testing. He is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), IEEE, American MENSA, the Context-Driven School of Software Testing and is a signatory to the Manifesto for Agile Software Development.

Scott will present a keynote, Quick, Easy, Cheap & Valuable Performance Testing for Every Member of the Team and the workshop, Helpful Heuristics for Performance Testing, Planning and Management in Wellington and Sydney.

KEYNOTE (1 hour) - day one 9:00-10:00 
Scott Barber, Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus (USA)
Quick, Easy, Cheap & Valuable Performance Testing for Every Member of the Team

When most people think of performance testing, they think about the hard parts - the very hard parts. But the truth is that the vast majority of software performance issues can be detected and diagnosed with information obtained from quick, easy and cheap performance tests.

Much of the information needed to achieve acceptable speed can be collected by the performance testing layperson.  In most cases, however, teams and organisations become so focused on the complicated parts of performance testing that they completely overlook the value of the “easy stuff".

This presentation explores several techniques that the performance testing layperson can put to use to speed up and simplify the collection of valuable performance-related information about their software.

WORKSHOP (Half-day - 3 hours) - day one 1:30-4:50
Scott Barber, Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus (USA)
Helpful Heuristics for Performance Testing, Planning and Management

Only rarely are sufficient time, resources and skilled individuals available to teams who are developing commercially driven software systems to effectively apply rigorous approaches to performance test that system.  In cases where applying rigorous approaches would not be effective, a risk-based, flexible approach to performance testing is needed.

Rigorous or not, any approach to performance testing needs to focus on collecting the data necessary both to assist the development team in identifying, prioritising, and tuning areas of sub-optimal performance and to assist stakeholders in making sound business decisions related to performance risks.

This unique workshop introduces a series of tool-agnostic, portable, heuristics designed to help teams and individuals simplify and organise their performance testing, planning and management.  These heuristics focus on mitigating risks to the business and satisfying end users in commercially-driven software development environments.

This workshop emphasises portable heuristics that are valuable to both experienced and novice performance testers.

Immediate past President of the International Software Testing Qualifications Board (ISTQB) and co-author of the ISTQB Foundation and Advanced Syllabus.

With a quarter of a century of software and systems engineering experience, Rex is President and Principal Consultant of RBCS, Inc., a leader in software, hardware and systems testing. Rex specialises in working with clients on engagements small, medium, and large to ensure complete satisfaction and positive ROI.

He is the most prolific author practicing in the field of software testing today. His popular book, Managing the Testing Process , has sold over 25,000 copies around the world, including Japanese, Chinese, and Indian releases. Rex has also written a number of other books on testing including;- Critical Testing Processes, Foundations of Software Testing, and Pragmatic Software Testing - which have also sold thousands of copies, including Hebrew, Indian, Japanese and Russian editions, Advanced Software Testing - Vol. 1: Guide to the ISTQB Advanced Certification as an Advanced Test Analyst andAdvanced Software Testing - Vol. 2: Guide to the ISTQB Advanced Certification as an Advanced Test Manager.  

In addition, he has written numerous articles and papers and has presented at hundreds of conferences and workshops around the world. Rex is a past President of the International Software Testing Qualifications Board and of the American Software Testing Qualifications Board.

Rex will present a half-day workshop, The Future of Test Management, and the keynote, Key Concepts in Managing Test Automation in Wellington and Sydney.

KEYNOTE (1 hour) - day two 1:20-2:20
Rex Black, President, RBCS (USA)
Key Concepts in Managing Test Automation

Everyone wants to get the benefits of test automation, but only those who carefully manage the process get to enjoy these benefits. In this talk, Rex will cover some of the key areas that must be managed to succeed at test automation. These areas include:

• Understanding the business case and calculating return on investment.
• Assembling the proper team with the proper skills.
• Determining how test automation will affect your overall test process.
• Selecting the right set of tests to automate—and avoiding the wrong ones.
• Designing test automation frameworks for maintainability.
• Managing the process from initial needs identification to maintaining an established test automation program.
• Surmounting the typical challenges along the way.

The manager responsible for a test automation projects will go away from this talk with practical ideas that she can apply tomorrow.

WORKSHOP (Half-day - 3 hours) - day two 9:00-12:20
Rex Black, President, RBCS (USA)
The Future of Test Management

Outsourcing. Open source. Legacy systems. Too much testing in too little time with too few resources. Simultaneous skills gluts and skills shortages. Choosing the right certifications for testers. Systems of systems. Iterative and Agile methodologies. Connecting to business value. These are ten systemic, long-term topics that confront current and future test managers.

The successful test manager will enter the future ready to handle these issues, while other test managers will become former test managers due to their failure to handle them.

In this workshop, Rex Black will talk about these challenges and possible solutions to them.

• What role do test tools and test automation play in these issues?
• What skills do we need as test managers, and what skills do our testers need?
• What test process implications exist for each issue?

Rex will illustrate the points with anecdotes and case studies from current and past RBCS clients. You'll have the opportunity to engage directly with Rex and raise your own concerns for the coming times and get his considered and experienced take on them. From this session, which will be more an engaging consult, you'll leave better able to survive and thrive in the coming decade.

Specialising in ramping up testing teams, test processes and test automation, Mark currently leads the team responsible for the testing of the BBC's News, Sport, Weather and Democracy Live websites.

Collectively, these websites account for 86% of traffic to all the BBC's online offerings. He has worked in a variety of industries, including security, finance, education and media with both European and US companies. He has had a number of software engineering papers published and presented on the subject of BBC test automation activities at Google Test Automation Conferences (GTAC).

Mark will present the keynote talk in Wellington and Sydney, The Story of Testing the BBC News Website and Underlying Architecture.

KEYNOTE (1 hour) - day two 2:20-3:20 
Mark Micallef, QA Team Leader and Automation Specialist, BBC (UK)
The Story of Testing the BBC News Website and Underlying Architecture

The BBC News website has been online for more than a decade and with around 65 million daily hits, is one of the most popular in the world.  As a result of years of evolution, a large project is currently being undertaken to overhaul the underlying architecture as well as the look and feel of the site.

The project is happening in a particularly busy year full of major events (Winter Olympics, Formula 1, UK Election, World Cup, etc) giving us very few low-risk time windows in which to be able to launch the new architecture and site.  Any disruption to journalists during these events could be catastrophic to the organisation's reputation.  The project also marks the organisation's first committed transition to Agile development, automated testing and one click deployments, amongst others.

This talk will look at why the change was necessary, the challenges encountered and how they were dealt with.  Challenges discussed will include:

• Dealing with resistance to change.
• Issues resulting from a decade's worth of legacy code, practices, and content and the need for backward compatibility.
• How the organisation introduced effective automated testing.
• Test data generation and management.
• Ensuring the platform performs well in all international bureaus.
• Deployment and switch-over approach.

Secretary of the Association for Software Testing and seasoned trainer, Dawn is passionate about improving the state-of-the-art and the state-of-the-practice of software testing rather than continually promoting last year's "best practices."

Dawn is a highly regarded trainer of software testers. She blends experience and humour to provide testers of all levels with tools and techniques to help them generate new approaches to common and complex software testing problems.

She has more than twenty years of experience supporting, administering, developing and testing software and hardware systems - from small business operations to large corporate enterprises like John Hancock, Xerox, Rational Software and New England Medical Center in Boston. She has also run her own consultancy and been a technical training manager.

In addition to being the Secretary of the Association for Software Testing , Dawn is a member of the American Society for Quality (ASQ), Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) and holds ASTQB/ISTQB Certified Tester Foundation Level (CTFL) and ASTQB/ISTQB Certified Tester Advanced Level - Functional Tester (CTAL-FT) certifications.

Along with consulting for PerfTestPlus, whose clients include Dell, IBM, Microsoft TV and Mobile ESPN among others, Dawn's popular training covers Mastering Test Design, How to Break Software, Systematic Software Testing, Strategic Software Test Planning and Software Testing Certification courses.

Dawn will present a keynote, Are You in the Boat? - Managing Intra-Team Dysfunction and the workshop, Will Your Systems Stand the Test of Time?- Delivering Software Robustness! in Wellington and Sydney.

KEYNOTE (1hour) - day two 3:40-4:40
Dawn Haynes, Senior Trainer & Consultant, PerfTestPlus (USA)
Are You in the Boat? - Managing Intra-Team Dysfunction

Throughout my career, I've been a part of many projects where it feels like the testers are out of sync with other members of the team in terms of striving to achieve a common goal.

I've seen testers reporting issues that only seemed to matter to them, I've seen testers try to “stop ship” when what was needed was information, I've seen testers focused on application areas that aren't scheduled to ship in the next release, and I've seen testers set their “quality bar” to “perfect” while the rest of the team is looking for “good enough for an internal sales pitch to get the project funded”. 

These disconnects typically lead to uncomfortable situations. None of these situations help to make testing better or more efficient, and all of these situations can be avoided by doing just one, simple thing - working toward the same project vision as the rest of the team.

Join Dawn in this session for an amusing series of anecdotes about how teams get out of sync and the problems it causes.  With each anecdotes comes a model for indentifying the particular dysfunction, tips for avoiding that dysfunction by "keeping everyone in the same boat" to begin with, and ideas about how to resolve that dysfunction and "get everyone into the same boat and back on course".

WORKSHOP (Half-day - 3 hours) - day two 9:00-12:20 
Dawn Haynes, Senior Trainer & Consultant, PerfTestPlus (USA)
Will Your Systems Stand the Test of Time? - Delivering Software Robustness!

Robustness testing is an important and often overlooked area of testing, especially when test teams are over-tasked and under-resourced. A common “standards-based” definition for robustness in software is the degree to which a system operates correctly in the presence of exceptional inputs or stressful environmental conditions.

I frequently find software that fails to operate correctly when I believe my inputs are valid. It seems the only thing getting stressed is me. This always makes me wonder who gets to decide what is an “exceptional” input or “stressful” condition and how something so obvious to me during what seems to be normal usage escaped test.

While I agree that it is not unreasonable that testing to verify that requirements are met usually commands the highest priority, over-focusing on requirements can easily lead teams to spend all of their time trying to prove that the software works at the expense of exposing ways in which it doesn't.

Deliberately implementing a small number of simple robustness tests into your overall test strategy can dramatically reduce the risk of causing stress to your users by exposing them to unnecessarily fragile software. Unfortunately, even a small amount of robustness testing can be challenging to implement.  In order to truly integrate robustness into your testing program, you need the mission, the strategy and the support in place to be successful.

This presentation explores several techniques to aid you in developing or enhancing your strategy for evaluating the robustness of your software.

Henrik is a leading European consultant in the field of testing in Scrum environments and the use of Exploratory Testing. In 2008 he co-founded House of Test, a testing consultancy and outsourcing company based in Sweden and China.

His main areas of focus are in Test Process Improvement, Exploratory Testing, Session Based Test Management, Context-Driven Testing, Heuristics, Risk Based Testing, Rapid Software Testing and Agile Testing. Henrik works mainly with helping organisations in transitioning from traditional development processes like RUP and waterfall into Agile processes such as Scrum, Lean, Test Driven Development and KanBan.

He is a follower of the school of Context-Driven Testing. Henrik describes the essence of Context-Driven Testing as a project-appropriate application of skill and judgement. The Context-Driven school of Testing places this approach to testing within a humanistic, social and ethical framework. Ultimately, context-driven testing is about doing the best we can with what we get. Rather than trying to apply "best practices", we accept that very different practices (even different definitions of common testing terms) will work best under different circumstances.

Prior to founding House of Test with two colleagues, Henrik was a quality engineer in the medical devices industry, a consultant in the IT services field on SAP integrations, a test manager with Sogeti and in the telecommunications industry he managed the development testing of major parts of multimedia software applications for Vodafone Live 3G.

Henrik has presented at software testing conferences in Europe and North America on topics such as test management, embedded systems testing and exploratory testing. His current assignments often find him as test management consultant and Agile coach on Scrum projects.

Henrik will present in Wellington and Sydney the keynote, Testing Scrum: Avoiding the Sideline, Getting Across the Advantage Line, and the half-day workshop, Making the Move to Exploratory Testing (ET).

KEYNOTE (1 hour) - day one 11:30-12:30
Henrik Andersson, Founder & Consultant, House of Test (Sweden)
Testing Scrum: Avoiding the Sideline, Getting Across the Advantage Line

Agile and Scrum attract huge attention and interest in Sweden as they do in New Zealand and Australia. Many companies today claim to be Agile. Some are successful but many are struggling and starting to realise that they need to do more than just say that they are Agile to become Agile.

Scrum has been one of the most popular methods to adopt - perhaps the most popular. Many companies look at Scrum and see it as a quick and easy process to implement. One misunderstanding is that Scrum is enough and complete; that you do not need to practice anything further to solve all of your problems.

My story is about one team at one company that I believe has a lot in common with what many of you are struggling with. This team had run just over 20 sprints before I started coaching them. They had been trying hard for quite a while and made many improvements, but still were struggling.

The first thing the team members told me was that on paper they used Scrum but felt they were not really practicing Scrum. Looking further into how the team was working, I noticed that they did do the things that Scrum stated - things such as having a Product owner and a Scrum master, user stories, sprint planning, daily meetings, demos, retrospectives - but still got no leverage from it. How could this be? What were they doing wrong? How did they change? And what did the team achieve?

The answers to these questions will be addressed during this talk. Lots of pitfalls to avoid, pictures, tips and tricks will be presented, all derived from actual experience. 

WORKSHOP (Half-day - 3 hours) - day one 1:30-4:50 
Henrik Andersson, Founder & Consultant, House of Test (Sweden)
Making the Move to Exploratory Testing (ET)

Exploratory Testing (ET) promises many rewards for testers and testing, whatever environment you are working in (Agile, Waterfall or some Hybrid), but many struggle with just getting started. This workshop is for those of you who have read a bit about ET and gained some basic understanding of it but have not yet been able to figure out how to get it into your practice at work.

This workshop will focus on how you can bring ET into you workplace without major disruption to your current overall test process.

There is no "one way" to introduce ET and that is why I will not provide you with answers! The intention with this workshop is that you, with support from myself and your group, will figure out and create your own strategy that you trust will work for you in getting ET started. This workshop will not be a lecture and will require your active participation.

We will not practice ET in itself. First you will receive some background and context from a case where I helped an organisation with a strategy and framework to start using ET without major changes in their overall test process. This will give you a way to get started.

We will split into smaller somewhat homogeneous groups like, "less then five testers at the company" or "working in the  financial industry". This is so you will share similarities and common context within the group. Your assignment will be to create a realistic plan to get ET working at your company. We'll look at:

• what you need to do yourself,
• who you need to get buy in from and
• what actions you need to take to get going.

You will also come up with two major obstacles or problems that threaten your strategy. We will have a presentation and short discussion about what your group have come up with. You will now have not only your own strategy but also the other groups' solutions to bring home.

In the second part of the workshop you will focus on your identified obstacles and problems. We will form new groups, each taking one item and coming up with a couple of different ways to solve these problems. Each group will present suggested solutions.

You will come away from this workshop with several ways in which you could introduce ET and also a number of solutions to your major challenges.

Kapila Bagga (Australia)
Test Analyst, Netspace Online Services

Kapila has received an “Excellence Testing Service Award” for on time delivery of high quality product and is Brainbench Certified for Software Testing & Quality Assurance. Kapila has worked on Telco projects like online sign up, internal sign up, My Netspace for Netspace Online Systems Pty Ltd; WFM - Work Force / HR management systems; ecommerce Portal management system; Hospital Management System; Internet Banking; COTS (IBM Web sphere) portal for collaboration of legal document management system across legal / law franchises.

Her experience includes software test planning, development and monitoring of traceability matrix, preparation of validation specifications, conditions, test data and test reports and test execution, including functional testing, sanity testing, regression testing, integration testing, system testing, performance testing, user acceptance testing, load testing, volume testing, stress testing and end to end testing.

Kapila has worked in various application architectures including clustered / distributed application environments, web-applications, windows based applications and Linux based applications on windows. 

Kapila will present the stream session in Sydney, Testing on a Small Budget.

STREAM SESSION (1 hour) - day one (Sydney only 1:30-2:30)
Kapila Bagga, Test Analyst, Netspace Online Services (AU)
Testing on a Small Budget

Testing is an investment in quality. But over half of companies do not spend enough on software testing. Often all of the other activities which must take place before test execution are delayed. This means testing also has to be done under severe pressure, forcing us to apply innovative techniques to perform testing efficiently on a small budget. 

This session focuses on how testing on a small budget can be optimised, thereby improving cost effectiveness and cycle time efficiency of testing activities to respond to changing business needs. It further probes into the following to perform successful testing on a small budget:

• Compliance and modelling Entry and Exit criteria.
• Regression automation.Sprint documentation / Requirement Brief.
• The people factor. (Few specific skills and knowledgeable people).
• Risk based testing and Usage modelling.
• Failure probality.
• Priority in testing.
• Developer defect Trend modelling.
• Quality Modelling.

Sanjay Dixit (NZ)
Test Manager, Transpower

Sanjay is a Test Manager in Transpower. Sanjay is a certified CSQA, PMP, CISA, ITIL Practitioner and ISTQB Advanced Test Manager. He has worked in the USA, Japan, Sweden, Russia, India and China in the software quality and testing fields in the areas of ERP software development and process consulting for large financial organisations like Chase Auto Finance & City Financial and now in the utility sector.

Sanjay has over 15 years experience in various roles as a Quality / Test professional. He is passionate about Quality and is genuinely concerned about the blame, shame and disrepute that quite often gets attributed to Quality and Testing. He has been working patiently and persistently to change these perceptions in all of the organisations he has worked for. He encourages IT practitioners to promote and foster a process focus in the development lifecycle to continually deliver high value that meets business needs. Sanjay takes a co-operative exchange of ideas outlook to help further the software quality and testing profession.

In a stream session in Wellington Sanjay will present the talk, Learnings from Implementing 'Outcomes-Based Testing Services' (Managed Testing Services).

STREAM SESSION (1 hour) - day one (Wellington only 1:30-2:30)
Sanjay Dixit, Test Manager, Transpower (NZ)
Learnings from Implementing 'Outcomes-Based Testing Services' (Managed Testing Services)

The Testing Services landscape is swamped with suppliers offering a wide variety and range of testing services. The services span from plain body-shopping on one end to a completely outsourced 'Testing Center of Excellence' service on the other.

Everybody seems to dance to a 'been there, done it ALL' tune. Almost everybody seems to attract and retain the best testing talent, to manage test resources efficiently, to deploy testing best-practises, processes and methodologies effectively, to be test tool agnostic and to have garnered the required expertise, managerial and specialist alike, in lowering costs and adding value. On the other hand it is increasingly difficult to fill permanent testing roles and even harder to keep them productively busy throughout the year.

It is little wonder then that it becomes quite a challenge for IT organisations to decide and settle on a practicable and effective model to engage with potential testing services suppliers.

Based on recent local experience, this presentation gives you an opportunity to look at the benefits, issues, risks, pitfalls and challenges associated with implementing an 'Outcomes-Based Testing Service' (Managed Test Service) relationship. It will be delivered with an intention to lift the awareness of Quality and Test Managers about setting the right expectations when implementing a suitable service offering within their organisations.

Sophia Hobman (NZ)
Test Practice Lead NZ, Hewlett Packard 

Sophia is responsible for the testing strategy and capability development for testing services in NZ. She spends a lot of time involved in QA of testing delivery of mission critical programmes of work. A key focus for the last year and a half has been in working with global pusuit teams to develop offshore solutions for government and commercial deals.

Internationally, HP has provided off-shoring services for large customers such as Proctor and Gamble, General Motors and Telstra and Sophia has worked with the HP Global Delivery Centres (of which 15 specialise in testing) to understand these off-shoring offerings and bring them to her New Zealand customer base. 

Sophia is also able to work with global product specialists for HP testing tools including Quality Center and Security Center. "To top it off I am currently working with our Cloud specialists to understand HP's innovative offerings around environment provisioning on demand."

Her career in testing started at the National Bank as a Test Analyst before progressing to BNZ as a Test Coach for Y2K projects. In 1999 Sophia joined Unisys and established the testing capability for Global Outsourcing team, NZ.  After a break on maternity leave Sophia then worked for Equinox as an associate, and EDS before going onto work as an owner of the Testing Consultancy Services group for CGNZ prior to being acquired by HP.

Sophia has worked in all major test roles from Test Analyst  through to Test Programme Manager, and Senior Test Consultant working across Government, Communications, Transport, IT and Finance industries. Sophia was a founding member of the ANZTB, is ISTQB certified and holds a post graduate Diploma in Information Systems from Victoria University.

Sophia has been with HP for the last five years as a Senior Test Consultant and as the Test Practice Lead for NZ since 2008.

STREAM SESSION (1 hour) - day one (Wellington only 2:30-3:30)
Sophia Hobman, Test Practice Lead NZ, Hwelett Packard (NZ)
Off-Shoring - A Trend We Can't Avoid - But What Does This Mean for Me?

Off-shoring, best-shoring, it sounds akin to right-sizing, down-sizing, any kind of sizing. What does it mean for me, what does it mean for the local industry?

There has been a global trend towards off-shoring work as a cost reduction initiative for many years and NZ has been lagging behind the rest of the world in terms of uptake.  However, the global recession has hit all industries hard and NZ businesses can no longer afford to ignore the 20% - 30% potential cost savings that can be achieved through off-shoring.

Off-shoring gives the added advantages of being able to “follow the sun” and maximize productivity across a 24 hour window; while NZ is packing up, India and the Philippines are coming online.

What about the challenges of making this work successfully? Different cultural alignment, communication challenges, the need for better requirements management, network security issues, trade barriers? These are just a few to consider.

Sophia will discuss the potential pitfalls and traps and how to make off-shoring work successfully for your organisation.

But “what's in it for me” you ask? If you think this doesn't apply to you, think again. If 70% - 80% of all testing jobs for large corporate organisations go off-shore, what will that do to the local testing industry? How can you future proof yourself to minimise the impact and take advantage of this trend?

Shawn Hill (NZ)
Conversions,Tools, Test and IT Manager, Software of Excellence

Over the last 8 years Shawn has championed, installed and maintained numerous Open Source solutions from bug tracking to script writing and storage to wikis and forums. Some have failed and some have worked. These systems have dealt with expansion worldwide to other companies within Software of Excellence.

Shawn began his career when solutions to a raft of problems were developed and delivered in COBOL, Lotus Notes and even Visual Basic. These solutions were delivered on Mainframes, XENIX and UNIX environments and Windows implementations from 3.11 to NT4. He was involved with the delivery of many world firsts including same day payments, continuous conveyer weighing and bar-coding of agricultural product bails. Shawn moved from delivering technical support and solutions to consultancy where he focused on Computer Workshop processes looking at improved delivery to customers.

He has been involved with delivering storage solutions with the first fibre optic SAN (Storage Area Network) solutions in New Zealand and NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices with ground breaking changes to RAID (Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks) implementations and algorithms.

Shawn will present the stream session, The Implemtation and Use of Open Source Tools in Testing in Wellington.

STREAM SESSION (1 hour) - day one (Wellington only 3:50-4:50)
Shawn Hill, Conversions,Tools, Test and IT Manager, Software of Excellence (NZ)
The Implementation and Use of Open Source Tools in Testing

Paul Denize (NZ)
Senior Test Consultant, Datacom Systems

Paul specialises in automated web application testing and open source systems.  He has had a development and systems management career with the Royal New Zealand Navy, the oil industry, security systems and the banking sector. Currently Paul manages test projects requiring high degrees of confidence in Functional behaviour and Performance. In addition, his automated tests are performing environmental deployment verification and daily production health checks.

He lectured for a number of years at the University of Waikato on Software Engineering where he developed an interest in Software Quality and Software Test Processes.

Now an advocate of both open source and test automation, Paul is looking forward to sharing his experiences on adopting Web Application Testing with Open Source Tools (Watir) in his stream session in Wellington.

STREAM SESSON (1 hour)  - day two (Wellington only 9:00-10:00)
Paul Denize, Senior Test Consultant, Datacom Systems (NZ)
Web Application Testing with Open Source Tools (Watir)

Test automation with the right approach can empower testers and provide better quality tests in shorter timeframes. The key is not always in the tools but the way in which we use them. Used in the right way, the tester provides more attention to the product under test than the tool used to test it.

Open source frameworks are providing those with initiative the opportunity to develop assets that can enhance the way we currently test. Automation can make tests viable that are cost-prohibative to test manually. Good automation practices keep the test analysts focused on the application under test and not the test tool technology.

Paul will demonstrate how easy it is to get started in test automation with Watir.

Paul will also delve into the possibilities it offers to extend functionality. Datacom heavily uses such an extension they call H2O. This extension offers full hands-off daily test execution (regression and production health checks).  The tests can be run by non-testers and the results read and understood by both managers and non-testers. H2O has proved itself on a number of major development projects so far. H2O was designed and developed by Paul over the past 3 years.

This presentation aims to introduce Watir to the audience so they can download Watir and start developing Watir scripts immediately.  Participants do not need to be developers.  There is no steep learning curve nor complex test management environment to learn; test developers just use their own text editor.

You'll see that automation need not dominate the way you test, how your test assets are structured, or start to dictate the way they are executed.  What's more, Paul suggests that, by implementing his approach, you should  get a return on invested time as you go.

Oliver Erlewein (NZ)
Test Manager, Datacom Systems

A Test Manager with Datacom in Wellington, Oliver specialises in Performance Testing. He has been in the testing industry since 1998 and performance testing on several large government, banking and insurance projects over the past 5 years.

In his testing work, his goals are to remain pragmatic and get the best return by applying his experience and various Open Source Tools. Oliver will present the stream session in Wellington, Delving into Performance Testing: Local Experiences.

STREAM SESSON (1 hour)  - day two (Wellington only 10:20-11:20)
Oliver Erlewein, Test Manager, Datacom Systems (NZ)
Delving into Performance Testing: Local Experiences

In a country of four million people you could question why we need to test performance. The IT miracles we use daily have been invented for countries that are vastly bigger than our own nation. Surely this technology should easily cope with the needs of the few? And if that doesn't help, we could argue that Moore's law will save our project anyway, just wait a bit.

As ludicrous as that sounds, it does seem to be a commonly held belief. There are still many performance sensitive projects in New Zealand that don't subject themselves to performance testing or even a performance investigation. The risk to these projects can be immense.

This talk focuses on my experiences with performance testing in New Zealand. I would like to give you a feel for what can go wrong and the possible consequences, where to look and how to look at your project from a performance perspective, and what you can do to detect or even avoid performance issues.

Ultimately I'd like to help show you how to confidently take performance testing into consideration on your next project.

John Lockhart (NZ)
Chief Tester, WebTest

John has experience in testing environments from the smallest and most casual to large corporate teams and has seen a large number of successes and failures of both testing and automation. In New Zealand, John introduced automated regression tests for one of the largest ecommerce sites in the country, showing Agile open source approaches could work well with mission-critical sites handling billion dollar plus turnover.

John moved from being a development manager and project manager to co-found WebTest, a company passionate about changing the way testing is done in New Zealand. He sees testing as the most exciting area in software development because there is such a huge range of approaches you can take.

He has presented to audiences on Agile and automated testing and wants to see testers equipped with the attitudes and tools that make them the heroes of the teams they play in. John will present the stream session in Wellington, Agile Test Automation in Practice.

STREAM SESSION (1 hour) - day two (Wellington only 11:20-12:20)
John Lockhart, Chief Tester, WebTest (NZ)
Agile Test Automation in Practice

There are many lessons testers can take from the Agile movement, including being cross-skilled and using appropriate tools to enable rapid testing cycles while enhancing regression coverage.

In this session John leaves behind the general introductions and arguments regarding Agile and commercial vs open source tools and to the range of tools available and instead gives a full worked example using FitNesse and FitLibraryWeb to implement a realistic set of tests, based on an actual project.

He will go step-by-step through all of the important aspects of planning and implementing this suite of automated tests. He will provide background material for beginners and access to examples, enabling them to be installed and run easily for additional review.

There is a lot of material to cover showing the key types of automated acceptance testing. The approach can be used either in the traditional testing role or provide extra value when used as executable specifications or in Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD):

• Defining tests at the business level of abstraction.
• Load and performance tests done quickly by combining FitNesse and JMeter.
• Automated smoke and integration tests.
• Functional tests and their use as regression suites.
• Business rule tests and their use as executable specifications.
• Implementing tests by layered abstraction (parameterised macros).
• Installing and using FitNesse/FitLibrary/FitLibraryWeb.
• Automation through the GUI with little or no code.
• Avoiding the common drawbacks of GUI-based testing.

This should give participants enough to immediately begin to implement Agile automation, even if their project is not managed in an Agile style and irrespective of the team's approach to unit testing.

The same approach can also be applied to non-web and non-GUI tests e.g. Web Services or “green screen” command response systems and can also be extended via scripting approaches to different types of testing and non-testing utility purposes so the tester becomes the go-to person in the team.

Martin Davie (AU)
Team Leadership and Communication Strategy Training Lead, Software Education

Martin delivers the courses: Small Team Leadership, Developing Effective Communication Skills, Power of Persuasion & Influence and Facilitation Skills for Workgroups. He holds an Honours Degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Bristol University in the U.K, is an accredited practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming and holds a Graduate Certificate in Leadership in Workplace Development from Southern Cross University, NSW. His background includes manufacturing, engineering, military experience and I.T. Training.

Martin will present the keynote talk in Wellington, The Adroit Tester - Becoming a Masterful Communication Conduit Between Management, Developers and the Testing Team.

KEYNOTE (1 hour) - day one 10:30-11:30 (Wellington only)
Martin Davie, Team Leadership and Communication Strategy Training Lead, Software Education (AU)
The Adroit Tester - Becoming a Masterful Communication Conduit Between Management, Developers and the Testing Team

If the tester is to be perceived as the Champion of Quality and not the Policeman of Defects, then the challenge is how to communicate this role to management, development and the business so that these divisions of the organisation understand that their goals are being met, not just the requirements of the test plan.

The challenge of communication is eliminating ambiguity. What one phrase or term means to management, the business or the developers does not necessarily mean the same to the testers.

This talk will focus on methods to clear the chaff in verbal communication and introduce strategies that will help you get to the nub of any issue, build pride within the test team, and help testers develop an enquiring mind - one that looks beyond being the Gatekeeper of the Quality Gateway, to somebody who is motivated to communicate a testing outcome that is clear to the business, management & other key stakeholders. 

Tim Semen (AU)
Senior Usability Consultant, The Hiser Group

Tim has ten years of experience in tri-channel (online, stores and print) ecommerce, online and offline usability testing, building usability into the organisation, and creating end-to-end customer experiences.

Formerly of Staples Inc., a Fortune 200 company in the United States specialising in the sale of office products, Tim has been involved with and run projects of all sizes from beginning to end, including the three year redesign of Staples.com, the second largest grossing web site after Amazon.com (in 2005 and 2006). Joining Staples as only the third member of the group, he has been closely involved in the growth and development of usability in a large organisation and helped it grow to a team of over 15.

Currently with The Hiser Group, he has worked with dozens of companies in a number of fields across Australia on projects encompassing the totality of usability activities. Tim has co-developed and taught graduate courses in Online Usability Testing - using the web to gather quantitative usability data to complement the richness of qualitative usability testing.

He specialises in tri-channel integration and customer experience, having worked on a wide range of projects- web sites, coupons, POS systems, small device inventory management, self-service centres and more.

At STANZ Sydney, Tim will present the talk, Testing and Usability: It Works. Now, Does Anyone Know How It Works?

STREAM SESSION (1 hour) - day one 2:30-3:30 (Sydney only)
Tim Semen, Senior Usability Consultant, The Hiser Group (AU)
Testing and Usability: It Works. Now, Does Anyone Know How It Works?

Testing the product, whether it is software, hardware or a website, is sometimes understood to be the whole extent of work related to usability. It is, however, only one item within the greater scope of usability-related activities. Activities which, if properly planned for and distributed across the SDLC can make the lives of everyone, including yours, substantially simpler.

We will look at how to begin determining what to test, then testing based on both product specifications and testing with the people who will be using the product. We will also look at a range of other activities which contribute to creating a usable product and where those activities best fit into the product life cycle - items like usability goals, personas, scenarios, collaborative design and low-fidelity testing which can help build ease of use into your products from the beginning.

Many of these earlier activities live on in the project, becoming reusable elements that can help provide guidance during later stages of the process.  

Hani Achkar (AU)
Test Manager, DDI Health 

Hani Achkar has been a long-time proponent of model-based testing as a significant aid in addressing the testing needs of software development organisations.  With a career spanning 25 years in system, software and hardware testing, Hani has worked with many prestigious organisations in the Australian Defence and Commercial sectors.

Hani currently holds the position of Test Manager with DDI Health, a Perth, Western Australia, company specialising in e-health, offering enterprise IT services, PACS for radiology, and clinical IT solutions across the diagnostic and general healthcare market.

Prior to his role with DDI Health, Hani has held the positions of Test and Reliability Engineering Manager with Xtralis Pty Ltd, Test Consultant with IBM GSA within the Test Centre of Excellence, Test Manager with Australian Defence Industries and Principal Test Engineer with Adacel Technologies.

Hani also holds patents in the UK and USA in Model-Based Testing of Embedded Systems. He is passionate about formal test techniques, methodologies and their application in the domain of software testing and especially Model-Based Techniques.

Hani will present in Sydney on Model-Based Testing of Web Applications.

STREAM SESSION (1 hour) - day one 3:50-4:50 (Sydney only)
Hani Achkar, Test Manager, DDI Health (AU)
Model Based Testing of Web Applications

Change is a constant - sounds like an oxymoron but we in the test fraternity all accept it to be true. Change is inevitable, of course, and in a rapid development environment such as software development, change and constant change is an all too common occurrence. As prudent leaders in the testing profession we make allowance for change. It does not change the facts, however; even a minor requirement or software change can mean major upheaval in test preparedness, schedules and resource needs.

How do we limit the impact of change, improve our timeliness and responsiveness as well as accommodate the ever-increasing demands placed upon our time, talent and resources?

In response to the challenges posed by change, at DDI Health, we have implemented what we believe to be a highly innovative and yet practical, if little practiced or understood technology. Model-Based Testing (MBT).

The subject matter of the presentation focuses on the MBT approach and demonstrates that MBT is practical, available and realistic. Consideration is given to the successful implementation of MBT which requires changes to the traditional implementation of software testing. The changes include changes to the necessary skills and competencies of the testers undertaking MBT.

This is not a discussion of “silver bullet” solutions but of a proven, pragmatic and practical solution to a dilemma faced by many organisations and practitioners - how to competently and comprehensively address the functional testing needs of web-enabled and hosted applications.  

SQNLDR Fernando C. Gonzalez
MScMESE (EW) BEng (CompSys )Hons MIEAust CPEng
Senior Design Engineer, Joint Electronic Warfare Operational Support Unit (JEWOSU), Royal Australian Air Force

SQNLDR Fernando Gonzalez assumed his current role as the Senior Design Engineer, Quality Manager and Regulatory, Quality and Training Flight Commander at JEWOSU (Joint Electronic Warfare Operational Support Unit) in Mid-2008. Prior to this he was Electronic Warfare Systems Flight (EWSF) Commander and had earned an Air Commander Australia Commendation for his work developing the Air Defence capability from a static surveillance training aid to an operational vehicle-based capability designed for rapid deployment and reprogrammability.

Fernando completed a Masters of Science in Military Electronic Systems Engineering (Electronic Warfare) at the Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham (UK) in 2002. His thesis was on the design of a Counter Terrorist Steganography Search Engine. The thesis earned him an IEEE award and it is still considered the leading paper on the topic, cited many times in other works since.

Fernando is also President of Adelaide's Spanish Radio, Public Relations Officer for the Australian Andalusian Flamenco Society, Commanding Officer of 604SQN Australian Air Force Cadets, OIC of the RAAF's Clipsal 500 ground display and Board member and Sponsorship lead for the Association of Old Crows (AOC), the world Electronic Warfare and Information Operations professional body.  

At STANZ he will present in Sydney only the keynote talk, Fast, Safe Software for the War Fighter.

KEYNOTE (1 hour) - day one 10:30-11:30 (Sydney only)
SQNLDR Fernando C. Gonzalez, Senior Design Engineer, JEWOSU, RAAF (AU)
Fast, Safe Software for the War Fighter

The Joint Electronic Warfare Operational Support Unit (JEWOSU) is the Australian Defence Force's centre of expertise for Electronic Warfare (EW). JEWOSU is an Authorised Engineering Organisation operating under the most stringent Technical Airworthiness governance with full accreditation to provide certified software for incorporation into Army, Navy and Air Force war fighting platforms.

JEWOSU Engineers and Technicians provide EW software that must perform without fault where not only tactical and strategic outcomes are at stake but the very lives of the war fighters who drive, fly and sail them. Military operators make split-second decisions based on the quality and reliability of EW software.

Often the timeframes are so compressed, the software must act before the operator can react. This calls for total confidence in software designed and tested for survival. Join SQNLDR Fernando Gonzalez for this fascinating insight into software testing for the war fighter.  

Sonja Bernhardt (AU)
CEO, ThoughtWare 

Sonja is the first Australian to be inducted into the Hall of Fame for Women in Technology International (www.witi.com), the Founder of WiT - Women in Technology (wit.org.au) and Co-Founder of AWISE - Australian Women in IT and Science Entity (awise.org.au).

CEO ThoughtWare, the developers of i.on my care, Governance, Risk Management and Compliance software solution, Sonja is an Australian IT industry identity, regular ABC radio technology presenter, published author and multiple award winner.  She is a firm believer in the importance of science and technology and frequently presents to business and industry groups on related topics.

With three management and information technology-related degrees including an MBA, she holds a diverse range of executive board and committee appointments; local, state, national and international, including recent appointment to the United Nations supported International Taskforce for Women and IT (ITF). Other appointments include providing advice to Federal Technology and Innovation Ministers, judging Australian ICT innovation and providing suggestions for IT policy within her home state of Queensland.

Sonja will present the short bonus breakfast session in Sydney only, At WiIT's End.

Bonus Breakfast Session - day two 7:30-8:20 (Sydney only)
Sonja Bernhardt, CEO, ThoughtWare (AU)
At WiIT's End

A controversial look at significant girl and women in technology activities and their failure to attract and retain females in technology careers.

Why? What have we been doing wrong? What can we do about it or is it too late? What are the real reasons/causes behind this?  Why do we need women in technology anyway?

In this reality-based probing session, these questions will be investigated along with lessons of things that have worked and suggestions for the future.  

A light continental breakfast is included in this bonus session. Please note that numbers are strictly limited, so your early reservation is a must.  

Tanya Harris (NZ)
CIO, Reserve Bank of New Zealand 

Tanya is the Chief Information Officer, Head of the Knowledge Services Group and a member of the Senior Management Group of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. Tanya joined the Reserve Bank of New Zealand in April 2002 as the Head of Human Resources, after working at the New Zealand Treasury for almost 10 years. In July 2007, Tanya accepted an appointment as Chief Information Officer. In this role, Tanya's responsibilities cover: core technology infrastructure, business analysis and applications, helpdesk and web support, library, information and records management, and the Programme Management Office.

Tanya will present the short bonus breakfast session in Wellington only, Women in Information Technology.

Bonus Breakfast Session - day two 7:30-8:20 (Wellington only)
Tanya Harris, CIO, Reserve bank of New Zealand (NZ)

Women in Information Technology

Join Reserve Bank of New Zealand CIO, Tanya Harris, over breakfast as she takes an informal look at what it takes to succeed as a woman in IT.  

A light continental breakfast is included in this bonus session. Please note that numbers are strictly limited, so your early reservation is a must.  

Julie Gardiner (UK)
Partner Consultant, Grove Consultants

Julie has nearly twenty years experience in the IT industry. At UK-based Grove Consultants, Julie, a certified ScrumMaster, provides consultancy and training in all aspects of testing, specialising in risk-based testing, Agile testing, test management and people issues.

She has worked as an analyst programmer, Oracle DBA and project manager. Julie has first-hand experience as a test analyst, test team leader, test consultant and test manager. Julie has won best presentation at STAREAST; best presentation at BCS SIGiST; and best tutorial at EuroSTAR.

A very highly-rated keynote speaker and workshop presenter at STANZ 2008, Julie will deliver this year's one-day pre-conference worshop in Sydney covering how to better manage your test estimation and becoming a trusted software testing advisor.

PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP (full day)  9:00-5:00 (Sydney only)
Wednesday 25, August, 2010
Julie Gardiner, Partner Consultant, Grove Consultants (UK)
Managing Your Test Estimation and Becoming a "Trusted Advisor"

Test estimation is one of the most difficult software development activities to do well. The primary reason is that testing is not a stand-alone activity and is often plagued by upstream destabilising dependencies. Julie describes common problems in test estimation, explains how to overcome them and reveals six powerful ways to estimate test effort.

Some estimation techniques are quick but can be challenged easily; others are more detailed and time consuming to use. The estimation methods are:

• FIA (Finger in the Air).
• Formula or Percentage.
• Historical.
• Consensus of Experts.
• Work Breakdown Structures.
• Estimation Models.

Julie also looks at how you can approach the "set-in-stone deadlines" that often are presented to testing and effectively communicate estimates for testing to senior management.

Aligned with this is the challenge of becoming a trusted advisor and presenting the testing message effectively.

Providing good, timely, factual and relevant information to Project Managers and Stakeholders is essential for projects to succeed. But why do some Test Managers find it difficult to get the message across? And why does it seem as though Project Managers willingly ignore sound advice?

Key points covered here will include:

• How to get from "shoot the messenger" to "Trusted Advisor".
• The Test Report Tool-Kit - seven powerful monitoring techniques.
• Controlling Actions - providing solutions not just problems.

With hands-on exercises throughout the workshop, you'll gain experience using the techniques and ideas covered during the day.

By the end of the workshop you'll have a stronger understanding and technique selection ability for your estimation practices and be better equipped to confidently answer the questions:

• How can we present the information so that the correct message is being received?
• How can we assess the testing objectively?

Spreadsheets, templates and utilities will be given out for you to use on the day and back in the office to help improve your estimation practices and get the right information to the right people to help in the challenge to become a "Trusted Advisor" in the software testing arena.

You can book this workshop seperately or as part of your overall conference package. See Fees & Packages for details or you can book now.