Lecture Series

KWSQA is offering this KWality Talk as in-person only, details under Location below! Register: Online at our KWality Talk Page. Speaker: Tina Fletcher Topic: Guided Exploration: Applying AI to assist with software quality tasks All you need is a laptop, access to any LLM (a free version is fine), and your curiosity! This will not be a fully scripted session; we'll simply get in a room together and experiment with ways that you might leverage AI in your software quality and testing work. Here are some use cases we'll explore: Generating test case ideas Creating synthetic test data Writing code for automated test cases Performing risk analysis Improving bug reports ... plus anything else the attendees are interested in trying Some of the questions we'll aim to answer in real-time, together: How can an appropriate level of context about the application you're working on be included as part of your prompt? What general prompting techniques can be used to improve the quality and usefulness of the outputs? Do different LLMs produce better outputs for the same tasks? How should data privacy and confidentiality factor into your usage of AI? ... plus any other interesting questions that come to mind during the session Session goals: Attendees leave the session with at least one practical idea for how to start leveraging AI in their software quality tasks Attendees' imaginations have been sparked with additional AI use cases to continue exploring in the future Meet our Speaker:  Tina is currently the Head of Engineering at Primal, and brings a software quality-focused mindset to the teams and projects she leads. She’s also a Director on the KWSQA (Kitchener-Waterloo Software Quality Association) Board, an occasional conference speaker, and a bit obsessed with her vegetable garden. Find her online at tinafletcher.ca. KWality Talk Details Time Doors will open at 12:00 pm. Announcements and discussion start at 12:05 pm. Meeting ends at approximately 1:00 pm. Lunch As with all in-person KWality Talks lunch will be provided. Please ensure you note any dietary restrictions in the ticket registration process.  Registration Please follow the instructions on the KWality Talk Page to register for this event. Location This months in-person event will be held at the Waterloo Accelerator Centre at 295 Hagey Boulevard, Waterloo, ON, N2L 6R5. Code of Conduct People attending our meetings are expected to adhere to the KWSQA code of conduct.

Register: Online at our KWality Talk Page, the attendance link will be included in an email the day of the event. Location: Online. Please ensure that your onscreen name matches your registration name. Time: The meeting starts between 11:55 am and 12:00 pm, a waiting room might be enabled if you arrive prior to this time. Meeting ends at approximately 1:00 pm. Speaker: Jigesh Shah and Mradul Kapoor Topic: Elevate your GenAI driven Testing with long term memory using vector database In today’s world, creation of Test Cases and Automation Test Scripts using tools likeChatGPT or AWS Bedrock has become commonplace. However, these efforts often stay within the immediate context of the testing session or the specific area of the application that is shared during the conversation. For instance, when providing details about a User Story, the generated test cases are typically specific to the given content. Imagine extending this capability to generate test cases\automation scripts based not only on current information but also leveraging past releases data and other interconnected areas that may be directly impacted. This is where the integration of Vector Database with GenAI APIs comes into play. This integration not only facilitates the generation of contextually rich test cases\scripts but also enables the storage of data for training and storing in the database for future use.  This presentation aims to provide insights into leveraging GenAI APIs with Vector Database to generate both component as well as End-to-End test cases based on provided User Story details and past learnings. It will demonstrate how the integration establishes context through User Story to Test Case Mapping, resulting in the generation of comprehensive End-to-End Test Cases. Beyond functional test cases, the presentation will deep dive into the generation of comprehensive automation scripts using these test cases. It will also showcase how you can customize the generation of automation script as per your automation framework with vector embeddings. Bio:  Jigesh Shah is an Engineering Manager specializing in Quality Assurance, with extensive experience in the eLearning and Healthcare industries. He has developed numerous reusable testing tools, frameworks, and templates, significantly enhancing testing efficiency. Currently, he provides innovative testing solutions that improve quality for both US and global clients. Jigesh has played a pivotal role in test advisory, management, planning, and execution, and has led offshore testing efforts. His expertise also extends to Performance Engineering, SQL optimization, system resource monitoring, and the implementation of Generative AI technologies in testing processes, achieving a 20% increase in overall efficiency. Mradul Kapoor is a QA leader who He specializes in fast-paced, large-scale implementations with low- and no-code platforms and QA delivery. He leads the overall quality assurance (QA) for client's deliverables including setting up a large-scale testing practice and Testing Center of Excellence (TCoE) to achieve optimum quality standards across various pillars of quality per business specifications, agreed timelines, and effective cost. He is experienced in setting up and managing large-scale TCoE across the shore with the latest QA technology stacks for Fortune 500 firms, as…

KWSQA is offering this KWality Talk as in-person only, details under Location below! Register: Online at our KWality Talk Page. In this months KWality Talk we will be hosting a panel discussion about career paths into, through, and out of software testing. Our panel will be composed of members from our local testing and development community. Our goal is to explore the career paths our panelists have chosen; where they started, where they ended up, what stops they had along the way... and most importantly, how and when testing-focused roles became part of their journey. Our Panelists: Christine McGarry; Security Developer at Arctic Wolf Networks Surekha Rao; Product at D2L Lee Manchur; Chief Information Officer at OCAS Ari Sirin; QA Lead at ETAS KWality Talk Details Time Event starts at 12pm. Announcements and discussion start at approximately 12:10 pm. Meeting ends at approximately 1:00 pm. Lunch As with all in-person KWality Talks lunch will be provided. Please ensure you note any dietary restrictions in the ticket registration process.  Registration Please follow the instructions on the KWality Talk Page to register for this event. Location This months in-person event will be held at the Waterloo Accelerator Centre at 295 Hagey Boulevard, Waterloo, ON, N2L 6R5. Code of Conduct People attending our meetings are expected to adhere to the KWSQA code of conduct.

Register: Online at our KWality Talk Page, the attendance link will be included in an email the day of the event. Location: Online. Please ensure that your onscreen name matches your registration name. Time: The meeting starts between 11:55 am and 12:00 pm, a waiting room might be enabled if you arrive prior to this time. Meeting ends at approximately 1:00 pm. Speaker: Diego Molina Topic: Beyond Selenium: Finding a tool for web testing Are you still using Selenium for your web testing needs? It may be time to explore better options! This talk will dive into test automation tools, comparing Selenium with alternatives like Playwright and Cypress to see which suits you best. First, we'll break down Selenium's features, like its ability to work with multiple browsers, cross-platform support, a robust ecosystem, and various programming language options. We will recognize its downsides: learning it can be challenging, you'll need to wait around for things to load, and handling tricky webpage elements can be a headache. We'll also discuss when there are better options than Selenium. We'll also compare Selenium with Playwright and Cypress. These tools have strengths and downsides that could suit your needs better than Selenium. Throughout the talk, we will provide practical examples to showcase alternative tools and approaches that complement or replace Selenium, depending on specific testing requirements. This will empower you to evaluate Selenium for their projects and consider alternative solutions to make your testing life more effortless. By the end of the session, you will have a solid foundation for choosing the proper framework that will enable you to optimize web testing efforts and deliver more value to your team through test automation. Join us to explore the diverse world of web testing frameworks and unlock the full potential of web testing. Bio:  Diego is a Software Engineer who is fascinated by testing. He is one of the project leads at the Selenium project. Diego loves enabling testers by creating helpful testing tools and infrastructure through versatile Selenium workshops. He can often be spotted speaking at Selenium/Appium/Testing conferences, and most of the time, you can find him on the Selenium Slack channel. Currently, he works at Sauce Labs as a Staff Software Engineer.

Register: Online at our KWality Talk Page, the attendance link will be included in an email the day of the event. Location: Online. Please ensure that your onscreen name matches your registration name. Time: The meeting starts between 11:55 am and 12:00 pm, a waiting room might be enabled if you arrive prior to this time. Meeting ends at approximately 1:00 pm. Speaker: Ashok Kumar Topic: Test Data - The Key to Robust Test Coverage Access to good test data is critical to the success of any test function and testers spend a considerable amount of time preparing, managing & cleaning up this data. In an agile world it becomes even more imperative to be able to perform these test data activities in a faster, more automated manner. For us as distributed agile teams, this was a big problem. We were struggling with creating bulk volume of data at short intervals for multiple teams distributed across a complex agile landscape, with different needs and prerequisites. The results of the tests setup by teams often exhibited erroneous results due to data being cross-used and contaminated. There was also a lot of duplication of test data as well as waste of effort creating data that could have been reused. We were manually creating data, thereby not reaching the needed coverage when data was required rapidly. We also needed to be able to provide test data to external partners, which added a lot of complexity in regards to communication, collaboration and simply sheer volume of data needed. What we needed was a solution that would enable automated creation of data through multiple sources, that could be exposed to external partners as well as our internal teams. We needed to be able to seamlessly connect and extract the required test data in a way that was both performant, easy to use and allowed teams to reserve data to make sure their test results were unaffected by other tests. So we built the solution that fulfills all our needs! Bio:  Ashok Kumar is the head of Quality Assurance & Engineering for Transunion Africa. In this position he leads Testing and Quality Assurance for the Africa region which enables Transunion to rollout innovative credit bureau solutions to our African customers at scale and with high quality. Ashok works with multiple agile teams within the company and coach them on the quality mind-set. Ashok has nearly 2 decades of experience in the testing domain across multiple industries such as financial services, retail, & credit bureau.

KWSQA is offering this KWality Talk as in-person only, details under Location below! Register: Online at our KWality Talk Page. Facilitator: KWSQA Board Theme: Any and all Software Testing Topics! Join us in a Lean Coffee style meeting! Lean Coffee is a structured discussion technique where participants propose and then vote on topics to discuss as a group. In order to focus this conversation and facilitate meaningful conversations in our limited time frame we’ll be encouraging attendees to think of ideas ahead of time to bring to the meeting.  We will still spend some time brainstorming topics we would like to discuss, voting on the topics that people are most interested in, and then discuss those topics one at a time or by breaking out into discussion groups depending on the number of attendees. Having a few topics in mind before the event is also encouraged to allow us to focus most of the time on the discussion aspect, although not necessary. Lean Coffee is a great way to connect and interact with your fellow software quality enthusiasts! These discussions will be facilitated by the KWSQA Board and we're excited to see you there! KWality Talk Details Time Event starts at approximately 11:55 am. Announcements and discussion start at approximately 12:00 pm. Meeting ends at approximately 1:00 pm. Lunch As with all in-person KWality Talks lunch will be provided. Please ensure you note any dietary restrictions in the ticket registration process.  Registration Please follow the instructions on the KWality Talk Page to register for this event. Location This months in-person event will be held at the Waterloo Accelerator Centre at 295 Hagey Boulevard, Waterloo, ON, N2L 6R5. Code of Conduct People attending our meetings are expected to adhere to the KWSQA code of conduct.

Register: Online at our KWality Talk Page, this is an in person event. Location: Morty's Pub, 272 King St N, Waterloo, ON N2J 2Y9 Time: 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm Details: It's that time of year again! On June 19 join the board and members of the KWSQA community at Morty's Pub for an evening of food, drinks, and socializing with your peers. The social will kick off at 6pm and will run until 8pm. We're hoping to host the social on the patio to enjoy the summer weather, but in the case of inclement weather the event will be moved indoors. Food will also be provided through the event by KWSQA. Drinks and extra food will be the responsibility of attendees. We look forward to seeing you there!

KWSQA is offering this KWality Talk as in-person only, details under Location below (with map)! Register: Online at our KWality Talk Page, Speaker: Michael Bolton Topic: Do Large Language Models represent the end of testing as we know it? Are testers doomed to extinction? Or is ChatGPT this year’s Watson, non-fungible tokens, or Metaverse? Fear not, Dear Testers: testing is not going away. As long as there is new technology, there will be product risk that leads to business risk. Responsible organizations will want to know about problems that matter before it’s too late. Discovering those problems requires far more than providing input to a product and demonstrating that it produces some desirable output. Avoiding unpleasant surprises requires skilled, technically and socially competent investigators, performing experiments to reveal truths about software products and their problems. Join us as Michael Bolton looks at the current state of Large Language Models, and how they relate to testing – and how serious testers need not fear the future. Meet our Speaker:  Michael Bolton is a consulting software tester and testing teacher who helps people to solve testing problems that they didn't realize they could solve. In 2006, he became co-author (with James Bach) of Rapid Software Testing (RST), a methodology and mindset for testing software expertly and credibly in uncertain conditions and under extreme time pressure. Since then, he has flown over a million miles to teach RST in 35 countries on six continents. Michael has over 30 years of experience testing, developing, managing, and writing about software. For over 20 years, he has led DevelopSense, a Toronto-based testing and development consultancy. Prior to that, he was with Quarterdeck Corporation for eight years, during which he managed the company's flagship products and directed project and testing teams both in-house and around the world. Contact Michael at michael@developsense.com, on Twitter @michaelbolton, or through his Web site, http://www.developsense.com. KWality Talk Details Time Event starts at approximately 11:55 am. Announcements and discussion start at approximately 12:00 pm. Meeting ends at approximately 1:00 pm. Registration Please follow the instructions on the KWality Talk Page to register for this event. Location This months in-person event will be held at the D2L event space located at 137 Glasgow St, Kitchener, ON N2G 4X8. This event space, including entrance, is located on the side of the building opposite to Glasgow street. Please refer to the map below for directions and information on where to park. Code of Conduct People attending our meetings are expected to adhere to the KWSQA code of conduct.

Register: Online at our KWality Talk Page, Zoom link will be included in an email the day of the event. Location: Online via Zoom. Please ensure that your name on Zoom matches your registration name. Time: The meeting starts between 11:55 am and 12:00 pm, a waiting room might be enabled if you arrive prior to this time. Meeting ends at approximately 1:00 pm. Speaker: Matt Heusser Topic: An Hour of Lean Software Delivery The past decade brought us changes in technology, the mainstreaming of continuous delivery, cloud-first, mobile-first approach, shift left, shift right, sudden remote work followed by return to work mandates followed by restructuring. After all this ongoing change, how do we know if we are actually doing better? Lean delivery, which inherits from lean auto manufacturing, provides a set of tools to measure and improve system performance. In an hour, you'll learn: Where did lean come from (contrasted to the lean startup) Enough to get started implementing it And decide what, if any, is a fit for you Customized for testing and quality To help you measure and improve your software process  In a way that stands up to scrutiny In one hour. Bio:  The managing director at Excelon Development, Matt Heusser is the co-author of “Software Testing Strategies: A Guide for the 2020s.” He is also the 2014 recipient of the Most Influential Agile Test Professional Person (MIATPP) award in Potsdam, Germany, and a 2015 recipient of the Most Popular Online Contributor to Agile at the Agile Awards (Marble Arch, United Kingdom). Over the course of his adult career in software, he has served two terms on the Association for Software Testing and delivered keynote speeches on the topic on three continents. Learn more about Matt at https://www.xndev.com

KWSQA is offering this KWality Talk as in person only! Register: Online at our KWality Talk Page, Speaker: Jim Jordan Topic: When something can affect a person’s well-being, ethics has something to say about it. Software is one of those things that can affect a person’s well-being, so the process of developing software has to take that into account somehow. One way to identify the moral considerations around developing software is to identify often-overlooked stakeholders who can be affected by the software. This goes beyond the list of purchasers, interface users, colleagues, and investors to those whose lives and personal data are managed by software, even though these persons are not typically considered users. I propose adapting an ethics-grounded decision-making model from business ethics to identify where to focus software testing so these stakeholders’ interests are at least addressed, if not entirely satisfied, within prudential constraints. Meet our Speaker:  Jim has spent 15 years as a software developer at what eventually became Nortel Networks. He is now a senior test developer at D2L. In between he completed a PhD in philosophy, defending a dissertation on cyberwarfare and international humanitarian law. He is listed as a co-inventor on a database patent, has co-written a textbook on business ethics, and has taught many philosophy courses that promote critical thinking and ethical reasoning as workplace skills. KWality Talk Details Time Event starts at approximately 11:55 am. Announcements and discussion start at approximately 12:00 pm. Meeting ends at approximately 1:00 pm. Registration Please follow the instructions on the KWality Talk Page to register for this event. Location This months in-person event will be held at the D2L event space located at 137 Glasgow St, Kitchener, ON N2G 4X8. This event space is located on the side of the building opposite to Glasgow street. Please refer to the map below for directions and information on where to park. Code of Conduct People attending our meetings are expected to adhere to the KWSQA code of conduct.