Lecture Series

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: Laveena Ramchandani Topic: As one of the most challenging roles in an organization, modern Test Managers not only have to understand how to plan, implement, and manage a complex testing effort but also how to communicate and lead these efforts.Join Test Manager Laveena Ramchandani as she shares the skills and strategies needed to be successful in Test/QA leadership. Drawing from her own experiences and from those with varying backgrounds, she offers actionable guidance for those aiming to become, or just starting to work as, a Test Manager.Explore how to choose and deploy the right processes, tools, and team members to meet your quality mandate. Learn how to create a culture that values feedback. Understand why growing and retaining your best people is critical in uncertain economic times. Key takeaways: Traits to cultivate Being a people manager Tools and techniques: How to choose what’s best for your team Giving and receiving feedback Working smart Bio:  Laveena Ramchandani is a passionate Test Manager who has been testing for nearly 10 years and is always seeking to learn and share. She is a community leader for data science testing and testing in general. Her entry on the digital platform has enhanced many individuals to learn a new area within testing. Laveena was a finalist for The Digital Star 2022 at the everywoman in Technology awards. She has also been on various podcasts, international speaker and blogs trains new testers.

KWSQA is offering this KWality Talk as in person only! Register: Online at our KWality Talk Page, Speaker: Ken De Souza Topic: Being on-call can be really hard at times. Incidents happen and when they do, it can cause alert fatigue, long hours, lots of stress and not getting your day job done. In this talk, Ken will discuss his experience working for a company that grew rapidly over several years and where on-call needed to evolve to make it more humane. As part of this talk, Ken will discuss strategies such as:– Being an advocate for better quality software, so that it prevents outages and unnecessary alarms– Dealing with the emotional component of the firefighting related stress when incidents happen– How to help change your organization so that it makes on-call part of the culture. Attendees will take away:– Way of making your on-call rotation more humane– Identifying ways of evolving how your on-call rotation can work effectively in order to prevent incidents from happening– Ideas around making your alerting and monitoring better to prevent burnout and to increase your visibility. Bio:  Ken De Souza has been in software development for over 20 years. He is a software developer, currently specializing in building tools and culture related to helping developers securely deploy and monitor the code they create, with a passion for delivering high quality software at a rapid pace. He has spoken at software development conferences over the last 10 years. He currently resides in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. 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. Location 151 Charles St W Suite 100, Kitchener, ON N2G 1H6 We are happy to announce that we will be holding our first in-person Kwality Talk since 2020 at Communitech! Communitech is located in the Tannery Building at 151 Charles St W. Once you arrive please enter the main lobby of the building and look out for KWSQA board members who will be waiting to direct you in green KWSQA branded shirts. Parking: Communitech has asked that attendees park in the City of Kitchener parking lots. The closest one to Communitech is on Water Street. (Parking not included in ticket price.) Code of Conduct People attending our meetings are expected to adhere to the KWSQA code of conduct.

For the time being, the KWSQA is continuing to offer KWality Talks online for free via Zoom. Register: Online at our KWality Talk Page, Zoom link will be included in registration confirmation email. Location: Online 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: Rashmi Nagpal Topic: Have you ever wondered why 87% of machine learning models never make it to production? Who must be held responsible if a machine learning algorithm discriminates or shows bias? Are the decisions taken by these models trustworthy? In this talk, let’s unravel the answers to such complex questions! Machine learning has had a significant impact in many areas, including medicine, entertainment, security, and education, but its use can also result in increased cognitive dependence on technology and ethical concerns such as bias. Therefore, it is crucial to address these issues by reducing the impact of human biases and creating trustworthy, reliable, and understandable machine learning systems. The key takeaways of my talk would likely include the importance of understanding and interpreting the decision-making processes of machine learning models, as well as the need to ensure that these models are fair, accountable, and trustworthy in their predictions and actions. Additionally, the talk may highlight the challenges of building interpretable models and the importance of evaluating and testing models for bias, as well as the need for transparency and accountability in the development and deployment of machine learning systems. Bio:  Rashmi is a Software Engineer with a passion for building products in AI/ML. In her almost 4 years career in tech, she’s brought products to life at pre-seed startups, scaled teams and software at hypergrowth unicorns, and shipped redesigns and features used by millions at established giants. When she's not coding, capturing cosmos using her telescope, or playing board games with friends, you can find Rashmi playing with her maltese breed pet dog, Fluffy!

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 21 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!

For the time being, the KWSQA is continuing to offer KWality Talks online for free via Zoom. Register: Online at our KWality Talk Page, Zoom link will be included in registration confirmation email. Location: Online 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: Rob Bowyer Topic: The core of a test is the same regardless if it is a scripted test intended to be run manually, an Exploratory test that is performed in a less structured manner, or if it is an automated test that will run the exact same way every single time. In this session, we will explore the core of a test. We'll have an opportunity to discuss our interpretation of a test and what makes a good one. The session will be interactive, so if you have strong opinions on what a "test case" is, then this session is for you. Bio:  Over the past 20+ years, I have been helping individuals and teams develop software in a rapid and cognitive manner. As a coach and leader, my main focus is on mentorship and enabling individuals to succeed. As a Software Tester, my experience is in a wide variety of domains, including healthcare, mobile, education and municipal. Currently, I am teaching software quality and testing topics at Conestoga College.

For the time being, the KWSQA is continuing to offer KWality Talks online for free via Zoom. Register: Online at our KWality Talk Page, Zoom link will be included in registration confirmation email. Location: Online 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. Facilitator: Lisa Crispin Topic: Please join us for a virtual Lean Coffee style meeting! Lean Coffee is a structured discussion technique where participants propose and then vote on topics to cover. There is no agenda defined in advance. This is a great way to connect and interact with your fellow software quality enthusiasts! Bio:  Lisa Crispin is the co-author, with Janet Gregory, of three books: Agile Testing Condensed: A Brief Introduction, More Agile Testing: Learning Journeys for the Whole Team, Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams; the LiveLessons Agile Testing Essentials video course. She and Janet co-founded the Agile Testing Fellowship, which offers “Holistic Testing: Strategies for agile teams” live training course both remotely and in-person. Lisa was voted by her peers as the Most Influential Agile Testing Professional Person at Agile Testing Days in 2012. She is co-founder with Janet of Agile Testing Fellowship, Inc. and is happily available for training and consulting. Please visit www.lisacrispin.com, www.agiletestingfellow.com, and www.agiletester.ca for more. Contact Lisa on Twitter as @lisacrispin, and LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-crispin-88420a/.

For the time being, the KWSQA is continuing to offer KWality Talks online for free via Zoom. Register: Online at our KWality Talk Page, Zoom link will be included in registration confirmation email. Location: Online 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: Rob Richardson Topic: Unit tests? Integration tests? Mocks? Stubs? Fakes? How does this apply to the web? Let’s look at all the ways you can test a web app and demo all the tools you’d use. We’ll live-code most tests to show you exactly what makes a good testing strategy. You’ll leave with a GitHub repo you can use to keep learning or fork and use in your own PWAs. In this code-focused test, we enumerate the types of tests we’d do: unit, integration, end-to-end, API, and others. We then show how you’d write a test in each. In this talk I demo Mocha, Chai, Karma, Cypress, Supertest, and others. Attendees leave with the GitHub repo of both the app and all the tests to continue learning or fork and use in their own work. Bio: Rob Richardson is a software craftsman building web properties in ASP.NET and Node, React and Vue. He’s a Microsoft MVP, published author, frequent speaker at conferences, user groups, and community events, and a diligent teacher and student of high quality software development. You can find this and other talks on his blog at https://robrich.org/presentations and follow him on twitter at @rob_rich.

For the time being, the KWSQA is continuing to offer KWality Talks online for free via Zoom. Register: Online at our KWality Talk Page, Zoom link will be included in registration confirmation email. Location: Online 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. Speakers: Jenna Zhang Dan DeAuraujo Darren Conley Eugene Sokol Lauren Weber Rashmi Priya Richard Martin Topic:In the past couple of years, the world has witnessed firsthand that change is the only constant in life. Perhaps the best mindset one could have today is forging change, which reminds us of the independence, self-sufficiency, and resilience of the hunter-gatherers, who were "absolutely confident that they could get food from their environment when needed." This was due to their discovery of different food sources and their knowledge of hundreds of plants, which allowed them to survive even when the environment had substantial changes, such as droughts and floods. Inspired by that, we propose to approach our test automation strategy in a hunter-gatherer-like style, an approach that is resourceful, collaborative, flexible - organized, but not too rigid. Several of us automation enthusiasts wish to share with you our thoughts & perspectives on this, including topics around how to achieve a D2L style of test automation ecosystem, how to embrace lessons learned from the past to guide our vision as we advance, and how to get there from our present progress collaboratively. Bio: We are a group of Test Developers from D2L who are passionate about test automation. We have various levels of expertise and experiences, with almost a century of combined testing experience. Like a lot of other companies, D2L doesn't have a centralized QA team, so we are all from different Scrum/Dev teams, responsible for different parts of the D2L products.

For the time being, the KWSQA is continuing to offer KWality Talks online for free via Zoom. Register: Online at our KWality Talk Page, Zoom link will be included in registration confirmation email. Location: Online 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: Kenzie Woodbridge Topic: N You have found a secret room in the castle! You gain 26 xp.You enter a large interior space with stone walls and a high stone ceiling. Torches flicker in wall brackets. A large self-referential tapestry hanging on the north wall shows a guild workshop full of happy weavers busily weaving the very tapestry in which they are depicted. There are exits to the east, west, and south.Linden, another player, is here. Gwyrian, another player, is here. say Hi You say “Hi”Gwyrian says “Hey! Do you want to explore this area together?”Linden attacks you with a critical hit from their sword!You are dead! Other people: sometimes difficult to work with and often impossible to predict. In your technical or documentation project, how can you get the right people interested and involved? How can you keep those people happily engaged until the work is done? Is there anything you can do to prevent griefing… err, “interpersonal difficulties” from causing delays? And why do some people seem to thrive in an environment with poor documentation and how can you encourage them to participate in effectively documenting everything anyway?In this talk, I’ll explore ways to accomplish these aims, using strategies drawn from “Player Type Theory”. For 20 years, this theory has been employed by game designers to encourage stable long-term play communities in online multiplayer games. These are strategies that I have used successfully in my workplace and they can work for you too. Bio: Kenzie works at the British Columbia Institute of Technology, as a Senior Systems Analyst, Web Developer, Knowledge Strategist, and Community Manager. Kenzie has a passion for communication, continuous iterative improvement, and for systemic solutions to systemic problems. Kenzie has previously spoken at PSEWeb, BCNET, Write the Docs, the International Conference on Communication & Media Studies, the Association of Internet Research Conference, Bifrost Conference for Leaders in Tech, DevOpsDays events in various locations, Craft Conf, Accento, and STC InterChange, and completed a Master’s degree in Professional Communication by writing their thesis on prosocial community within Minecraft multiplayer servers.Kenzie is awesome and you totally want to be their friend (offer of friendship void where local laws do not permit, not guaranteed in all circumstances, skill-testing questions required).

For the time being, the KWSQA is continuing to offer KWality Talks online for free via Zoom. Due to unforeseen circumstances the November 30th KWality Talk has been rescheduled for December 7th, we apologize for any inconvenience and hope that you can still join us! Register: Online at our KWality Talk Page, Zoom link will be included in registration confirmation email. Location: Online 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: Ian Douglas Topic:Postman has been known for years as an API testing tool, but it does SOO much more. The API builder in Postman will generate a lot of tooling for your team, including documentation, mock servers, server-side and client-side code snippets, and so much more. Teams can share environments, fork and merge changes with one another, as both a web application or desktop application. This workshop will dive into many of these features, starting with the API builder, and explore tools like Swagger/OpenAPI imports, and focus mainly on mock servers using some example RESTful and GraphQL APIs to get teams started with their work. Bio: I am a long-time open-source developer, educator, manager and mentor. I encourage everyone around me to share their collective knowledge, and am a strong champion of diversity in the tech industry. When I’m not working, I’m live-streaming about career advancement and interview preparation, tinkering with 3D printing or IoT projects, or telling dad jokes on Twitter.