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• Bad Metrics and What You Can Do About It , Presenter: Paul Holland
• Integrating Agile Testing – Even in a non agile world, Presenters: Paul Holland, John Hazel
• Can you have collaboration without chaos?, Presenter: Griffin Jones
• Surviving an FDA Audit: Heuristics for Exploratory Testing - Presenter: Griffin Jones
• Key Habits of Highly Successful Agile Organizations , Presenter: Selena Delesie
• Creatively Breaking the Mold, Presenter: Selena Delesie
• Soft Skills for Testers - Presenter: Neil Price Jones

ST. GEORGE HALL
665 King Street North
Waterloo, Ontario

Hotels

The Walper Hotel
Block reserved until March 31st under KWSQA
20 Queen Street South
Kitchener ON N2G 1V6
Phone: 1-800-265-8749
http://www.walper.com/

Cambridge Hotel & Conference Centre
Block reserved until March 23rd under KWSQA Conference
700 Hespeler Road | Cambridge, Ontario | N3H 5L8
Phone – 519.622.1505
http://www.cambridgehotel.ca/

The full agenda showing all session and workshop options (subject to change) is now available for download as a PDF or JPG.

Day 1 kicks off with a keynote presentation by Paul Holland, manager of the North American Physical Layer Test team for the Access division of Alcatel-Lucent and is followed by a series of breakout sessions attendees can select according to their needs.
 
Day 2 includes a series of half day workshops.

Check out the Speaker section for a list of presenters, session and workshop descriptions and speaker bios. The full schedule can be found above by clicking on the link.

DAY 1 – APRIL 23

8:15am-9:00am – Registration/Breakfast
9:00am-9:15am – Opening Remarks
9:15am-10:15am – Keynote: Paul Holland – Bad Metrics and What You Can Do About It
10:15am-10:30am – Break
10:30am-11:45am – Session # 1
11:45am-12:45pm – Lunch
12:45pm–2:00pm – Session #2
2:00pm-2:15pm – Break
2:15pm-3:30pm – Session #3
3:30pm-3:45pm – Break
3:45pm-5:00pm – Session #4
5:00pm-7:00pm – Networking (cash bar available)

DAY 2 – APRIL 24

8:30am-9:00am – Registration/ Breakfast
9:00am-12:00pm – Morning Workshop
12:00pm-1:00pm – Lunch
1:00pm-5:00pm – Afternoon Workshop
 

Click to view, or right-click to download the full schedule as a PDF or JPG.

DAY 1 – BREAKOUT SESSIONS

Testing with an Accent – A Primer for Internationalization

Presenter: Paul Carvalho
Topic: General Testing
Content Level: Any
 

Session Description: Internationalization Testing is more than just testing with accented characters, and you don’t need to speak a different language to be good at it. In today’s modern world, people from all over the world will use your applications. Are you taking these users into account? Will your App or System Under Test handle different configurations or data inputs as easily as the default settings and values?

In this session we will cover: (1) risks you need to add to your Testing Strategies to expose potential holes that may affect your international markets, (2) simple tools and tricks you can use, and (3) discuss ways to incorporate i18n into your regular testing to make it seamless. Go beyond the standard ASCII character set! Explore with the richness of your real user base to deliver more value.

Are You Stuck In An Agile Project?

Presenter: Henrik Andersson
Topic: Agile Testing
Content Level: Intermediate
 

Session Description: Are you still running the test steps and are you still planning your two week sprint? Does it feel like you don’t belong to the agile team? An agile process is a light-weight process where the whole team will strive towards the same goal and as a tester in an agile team. I want to contribute to success, which means that I need to test new features fast and give the developer feedback of the new features that were implemented. The way of testing in an agile project requires different skills of the tester. I will discuss how I wrote test cases that are readable and easy to maintain and give some challenges into regression testing. I will touch on how to engage the entire team to feel responsible for the quality of the software and how I introduce the exploratory testing for the developers. Included will be an introduction to the concept DET, Developers Exploratory Testing. DET is the concept founded by Jayway. As test cases, for the regression test, I used a notation called Gherkin that is used in Behavior Driven Development. How can notation from BDD help me as a tester in a regression testing and how can DET be a part of regression testing. This type of testing is light years away from boring test steps that has to be executed and test planning as well as regression testing that require no brain activity. This type of testing requires technical skills and commitment to build the best product ever.

Fight the Good Fight

Presenter: Jason Little
Topic: Leadership
Content Level: Any
 

Session Description: I’m a business guy, not a tester and throughout my career I’ve seen “QA” as the industry whipping-boy for too long. Enough is enough. It is ludicrous for an organization to put the onus of quality on “QA”. Worse than that, it’s irresponsible to place the stress of “ensuring quality” on a sole department. From my experience the perception that testing is the problem when poor quality is observed is plain wrong. Organizations that deliver software are much more complex than an assembly line that makes toasters. There are many ways to fight the good fight and depending on your organization’s culture, some might work while others might get you fired. I will share with you techniques for identifying your organizational culture which will help you find a common language to speak to “the business” to make progress towards improving quality.

The Road to Agile from the Bottom Up

Presenter: Kevin Malley
Topic: Agile
Content Level: Any
 

Session Description: What happens when those that work the trench day in and day out see a need for change? What if that change is a shift in how everyone works and when discussed at a broader level everyone thinks they are already working like this but in fact they have just picked up on a bit of the lingo. Originally adopting agile as a method to close the gap between development and test, we will walk through how the teams working agile like influenced wider scale changes, how these changes have lead to greater customer satisfaction, better adherence to release schedules and better productivity. As the saying goes no pain no gain, and our road to agile is no exception, we will share some of the pains and certainly some of our successes in our ever evolving road to agile.

Co-presenter Info: Tracey Clark Research In Motion, Manager SAP QA & SV&V

Surviving an FDA Audit: Heuristics for Exploratory Testing

Presenter: Griffin Jones
Topic: Getting audited and learning how to deal with it
Content Level: Any
 

Session Description: In FDA regulated industries, audits are high-stakes, fact-finding exercises required to verify compliance to regulations and an organization’s internal procedures. Although exploratory testing has emerged as a powerful test approach within regulated industries, an audit is the impact point where exploratory testing and regulatory worlds collide. Griffin Jones describes a heuristic model-Congruence, Honesty, Competence, Appropriate Process Model, Willingness, Control, and Evidence-his team used to survive an audit. You can use this model to prepare for an audit or to baseline your current practices for an improvement program. Griffin highlights the common misconceptions and traps to avoid with exploratory testing in your regulated industry. Avoid mutual misunderstandings that can trigger episodes of incongruous behavior and an unsuccessful audit. Learn how to maintain your composure during a stressful audit and leave with valuable heuristics to help you organize and present your exploratory testing results with confidence.

Interviewing for Success

Presenter: John Hazel
Topic: Leadership
Content Level: Any
 

Session Description: John Hazel has been a SW test manager for 14 years and over that time he has developed non-traditional interview questions that have proven time and time again to tap into the thinking brain of potential testers. Working with his fellow manager, Paul Holland, they have interviewed well over 500 candidates to fill roughly 100 positions. By using and refining these interview questions they have managed to maintain a very high success rate. John will share their interview questions and explain why traditional interview techniques are not as effective at finding excellent test professionals.

Standing In

Presenter: Fiona Charles
Topic: Testers Representing Stakeholders
Content Level: Any
 

Session Description: Everyone on a software project has an obligation to deliver the value expected by project stakeholders. But arguably, testers have a special obligation. We have a duty to represent our stakeholders as we test. Who are “our” stakeholders? This isn’t always as obvious as we might think. There are the potential users of the software—and then who? Stakeholders can come in many forms, and the ones whose interests we represent may not always be limited to those identified by or for the project. In this interactive session, we’ll explore who our testing stakeholders are and why it’s our job to represent them: questions central to what we do as testers.

Testing Effectively with Specification by Example

Presenter: Declan Whelan
Topic: Acceptance Testing
Content Level: Any
 

Session Description: Are you tired of mindless manual regression tests? Does your testing get continually squeezed between development delays and unmovable ship dates? Are you frustrated that software delivered to you simply does not work or has major gaps that make testing futile? Specification by example is a practice that expresses desired functionality as scenarios that are sufficiently clear that they can be automated. This allows a testing mindset to be applied early in the development cycle and helps drive development towards making these scenarios work. And it builds a valuable regression suite that is focused on the most important system scenarios.

This session will be an introduction to specification by example and will provide practical tips on how to get this going in your organization.

Can you have collaboration without chaos?

Presenter: Griffin Jones
Topic: Testing management
Content Level: Any
 

Session Description: Some software testing over- values the efficient mechanical execution of tasks; and fidelity to the collective wisdom embodied in organizational processes. This “Procedural Over-Specification” model works – to a point. It has very firm, clear control – but does it always produce the most meaningful testing? Is there a more effective model that leverages the knowledge and creativity of the people doing the task, yet exerts reliable control in a different way? Can you have collaboration without chaos? Yes, it is called an “adaptive discretionary control model”. Griffin dissects this model – showing the prescriptive and discretionary parts; then examines how the “orient” function animates and gives it adaptability. We then explore some arch-types of control and the values that they are oriented on, while classifying task activities into types and preferred control methods. Leave with an understanding of how you can leverage the wisdom and creativity of people to make your testing more meaningful.

The Automation Doctor Is In!

Presenter: Adam Goucher
Topic: Automation problems
Content Level: Any
 

Session Description: I have been automating web apps for over a decade and in that time have encountered countless solutions and fallen into an even greater amount of traps and rabbit holes. Are you currently stuck in a trap or rabbit hole? Bring it to this session and see if you can go home with a rope or ladder to escape it.
 

Soft Skills for Testers

Presenter: Neil Price Jones
Topic: General Testing
Content Level: Any
 

Session Description: Topics to be covered during Soft Skills for Testers to include:

• What is the most important skill?
• Listening Skills
• Presentation Skills
• Interviewing Skills
• Negotiation Skills
• Attention Spans
• Attention to Detail
• Self Analysis Workshop and Quiz

This presentation for beginning testers discusses the most important skill a Software Tester can possess to further their career. It discusses various methods of communication and information gathering. It continues with some processes for resolving issues and some other characteristics that a tester might need to do a good job. A workshop at the end will allow people to assess (individually) their soft skills and work out a plan for improvement.

Key Habits of Highly Successful Agile Organizations

Presenter: Selena Delesie
Topic: Agile
Content Level: Any

Session Description: Transitioning to Agile can be challenging. You have probably been told what you’re supposed to do and the process everyone will follow. But that’s easier said than done, isn’t it? You’re left wondering how people are supposed to interact and how the organizational culture is going to change.
 
Do you speak up and help define requirements, or do you sit back and do what you’re told?
 
Do you leave programmers alone so they can get stories completed faster, or do you work closely with them to understand defects?
 
How do our interactions change with managers and executives?
 
… and what does it all really look like?
 
Having been through Agile transitions that have succeeded and failed, Selena will examine the trends that led to different outcomes. You’ll be surprised to discover that a successful Agile transition is more than process, techniques and collaboration alone. Join this session to learn the key habits that will transform you and your organization into an Agile success story.

DAY 2 – WORKSHOPS

Snakes & [Web] Services

Presenter: Adam Goucher
Topic: Automated Checking of Web Services with Python
Content Level: Any
 

Workshop Description: Yes, you can test Web Services through a browser, but that is slow — even if you automate it using something like Selenium. A quicker way to do it is to interact with the service directly through automation. This session shows an automation based approach to testing Web Services and Web Services based applications. Though the code built will be Python, the idea is applicable to any other language. Likewise, having a basic understanding of programming will help in comprehension.

Mind-Mapping Your Test Strategy

Presenter: Fiona Charles
 

Workshop Description: A test strategy is the set of big-picture ideas embodying the overarching direction or design of a test effort. It’s the significant values that will inspire, influence and ultimately drive your testing, and the overall decisions you have made about ways and means of delivering on those values. Rather than the weighty templates standard in many organisations, a lightweight medium like a mindmap is a far superior tool both for developing a test strategy and for communicating its essentials to your stakeholders.
In this session, we will walk through an example to illustrate how a mindmap can be used effectively for a test strategy, and then participants will have the opportunity to practice developing and presenting their own mind-mapped strategies.

Your Career as a Tester

Presenter: Fiona Charles
 

Workshop Description: “Quality is dead.” Or—”Testing is dead.” On the conference circuit, these are fashionable things to say at the moment. If you believe they truly represent the future of software testing, then it’s time to start looking for a new career. But if you believe the foreseeable future will hold a place for skilled testers and test leaders, then you need to keep adding to and honing your skills so you can continue bringing value to software projects, however they are conducted. It won’t be enough to stand still; you’ll need to keep increasing your value.
 
That will likely mean some mix of:

• Continuing to develop your knowledge and deep skills across a broad range: technical, analytical, project, business
• Channeling your efforts on high-return activities, rather than on excessive documentation
• Focusing your critical thinking capabilities on all aspects of project risk, not only on software bugs
• Building partnerships with programmers

 
Where do you want to go in software testing? How are you going to get there? Definable skills are essential, but so are more nebulous skills and personal qualities like collaboration, empathy and courage.
 
In this workshop we’ll work together to explore where you want to go and the skills and personal qualities you want to develop. We’ll examine many resources and activities that can help you do this. Finally, you’ll build a roadmap to the future you want to make for yourself in software testing.

Pitfalls in Agile Testing and How to Avoid Them

Presenter: Paul Carvalho
Topic: Transitioning to Agile
Content Level: Introductory / Intermediate
 

Workshop Description: Good Agile Testing is hard. Transitioning to Agile is doomed if the testers, team or org. aren’t prepared to handle the changes in how testing is performed, managed and communicated. The path to great testing contains many traps and pitfalls along the way – including: only performing manual testing, automated tests that aren’t maintained, and user stories that aren’t “done” on time. In this interactive workshop, you will explore some of the major challenges and discover ways to avoid them. Everyone tests. Are you ready?
 

Creatively Breaking the Mold

Presenter: Selena Delesie
Topic: Creative Testing
Content Level: Any
 

Workshop Description: A key habit of highly successful organizations is creativity. They are able to innovate to get the right work done faster with high quality. Creativity is easy to consider in concept, but being creative in your day-to-day work is challenging in reality. In this workshop, we will explore what creativity is and how you can tap into it on a daily basis. We will work through a series of exercises to learn and practice applying your creative mind through activities that you do as a tester, such as reviewing requirements, software design and reviews, designing and running tests and reporting information. Whether your software lifecycle is Agile, Waterfall, or something else, you will easily be able to apply your learnings back at work. Join Selena to reclaim your creative energy, inspire your mind and break the mold.

Integrating Agile Test – Even in a Non-Agile World

Presenter: Paul Holland
 

Workshop Description:
 
SCRUM vs. Undone Test Team vs. Waterfall test team
Session Based Test Management (SBTM) – Description, Charters, Implementation
Appropriate documentation – Test plans, Session reports, Dashboard
Estimating effort, Planning, Monitoring, and Tracking – The Test Whiteboard
 
This will be an interactive workshop with examples and exercises designed to allow participants to practice using the concepts being presented.

Adam Goucher

Principal Consultant, Element 34

Adam is in the midst of an identity crisis. He is a tester by trade, but spends his time building Selenium scripts and frameworks for people. Tester? Programmer? Consultant? All of the above? His is also co-editor of ‘Beautiful Testing’; a testing anthology of which 100% of revenue goes to Nothing But Nets to provide anti-Malaria nets to children in Africa.
 
 

Declan Whelan

LeanIntuit, Agile Coach

Declan Whelan is an agile developer and coach. He is also a professional engineer with twenty-five years of experience in a wide range of software industries including the financial, medical, educational, and manufacturing sectors. He has started four technology companies and has consulted with many other technology organizations in Canada.

Fiona Charles

Principal Consultant, Quality Intelligence

Fiona Charles is a software test consultant who teaches organizations to match their software testing to their business risks and opportunities. With extensive experience in software development and integration, she has managed testing and consulted on testing on many challenging projects for clients in retail, banking, financial services, health care, telecommunications and emergency services. Throughout her career Fiona has advocated, designed, implemented, and taught pragmatic and humane practices to deliver software worth having—in even the most difficult project circumstances. Her articles on testing and test management appear frequently and she speaks and conducts experiential workshops at international conferences. Fiona edited The Gift of Time, and guest-edited the “Women of Influence” issue of STP magazine. Fiona is co-founder and host of the Toronto Workshop on Software Testing.

Griffin Jones

Consultant, Congruent Compliance

Griffin Jones provides consulting services on context-driven software testing and regulatory compliance to companies in regulated industries, e.g., FDA. Recently he was the Director of Quality and Regulatory Compliance at iCardiac Technologies which provides core lab services for the pharmaceutical industry to evaluate the therapeutic efficacy or safety of their potential new drugs. Griffin was responsible for all matters relating to quality and regulatory compliance for an FDA, GCP, 21 CFR Part 11 regulatory compliant quality system, including frequently presenting the verification and validation (testing) results to external regulatory auditors. Griffin was previously a product quality lead for eighteen years at Eastman Kodak. He is currently the principal consultant with Congruent Compliance and can be reached at griffin.jones@congruentcompliance.com.

Henrik Andersson

.Net Developer & Consultant, Jayway

Henrik Andersson is a software test inspirer and consultant at Jayway. He loves the challenge of integrating testing in an agile team and improving how testers and developers can work together. Henrik is co-founder of the Southern Chapter of the test community Swedish Association of Software Testing. When not speaking at conferences or in test communities, he is spending his time writing articles, blog posts and holding test courses throughout the Nordic countries. Henrik started his career as a developer, and then moved on to software testing. By speaking both languages he brings the gap between developers and testers closer.

Jason Little

Agile Project Guy, JRL & Associates Inc

Jason is currently developing iOS applications for Q4 Web Systems and prior to joining Q4 worked as an independent Agile Coach for 2 years in medium and enterprise organizations. Jason has been using Agile before it was called ‘Agile’ and has over 15 years experience working with professional service teams and software teams. Jason founded the Silicon Halton Agile/Lean peer to peer group in 2011, is a meetup junky and spoke at Agile 2011 and LSSC 2011.

John Hazel

Test Manager, Alcatel-Lucent

John Hazel leads the Customer Focused Test team for Alcatel-Lucent’s Wireline Access portfolio. With over 20 years in telecommunications hardware and software development, he has spent the last 12 years in system testing and management. His focus is on working with test organizations to adapt existing practices toward a value-added risk-based approach regardless of the development environment. Most recently he led the transformation of the ALU Access team from requirements-oriented product test to customer-focused system test using exploratory techniques and direct engagement with the end customer. John is also an Executive Officer of the Professional Engineers Ontario Ottawa Chapter, and Chair of the Education Outreach Committee, partnering with schools and other organizations to unlock the inner scientific curiosity and creativity of elementary and university students.

Kevin Malley

Team Lead SV&V, Research In Motion Ltd.

Kevin Malley has worn multiple testing and project management hats throughout his 14+ year career. He has had experience in the broadcast, financials and handheld device industries and currently holds a QA Team Lead position at Research in Motion. At RIM Kevin is focusing on guiding and supporting his team of software testers, in collaboration with their development partners, to adopt the Agile methodology.

Paul Carvalho

Consultant, Software Testing and Quality Services (STAQS)

Paul Carvalho has been in the IT industry for more than twenty years, with roles in testing, management, software quality assurance, development, training and technical support. He specializes in systems analysis, test design and exploratory testing, and has a gift of teaching for understanding. As an Agile Testing Coach, Paul helps testers and teams grow and adapt to complement development efforts and to deliver more value to projects. He has been published in Better Software magazine, is a regular speaker at testing peer groups and conferences, blogs occasionally, loves scripting with Ruby, and enjoys discovering new ways to break systems and applications. It is rumored that he is also author of the forthcoming book “Handbook of Software Testing.”

Selena Delesie

Founder, Delesie Solutions Inc.

Selena Delesie is the founder of Delesie Solutions Inc, a consulting services company helping software organizations accomplish their mission. As an inspiring leader and in-demand speaker, trainer, author and coach, she has helped thousands of people more effectively and efficiently deliver high-quality solutions that exceed expectations. Selena’s presentations, workshops and articles on leadership, organizational culture, product planning, software development and testing practices have made her an in-demand and innovative leader in the software industry. Meet Selena at www.SelenaDelesie.com.