Lecture Series

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Speaker: Sue Johnston

Topic: Does your organization rely on heroes to complete your products and projects? Fueled by pizza, coffee and who knows what else, they work all hours, flat out, giving 110% to meet that critical release date. Sometimes they do it week after week. It isn’t pretty. It isn’t smart. And it isn’t agile.

In this session, you’ll explore ideas that aim to prevent that unsustainable and costly scenario and create environments where people can contribute their best work without extraordinary measures.

In her work as a trainer of agile practitioners, Sue has a view of agile life through the eyes of Testers, Scrum Masters, Team Leads, Agile Coaches, Product Owners and other technical professionals. She sees a pattern that gets in the way of team productivity, effective work and project success. It’s the gap between the expectations organizational leaders hold – or were sold – and what’s possible under the circumstances. (Twice the work in half the time, anyone?)

Changing those circumstances is the role of agile leaders. While few still believe, “install Scrum, fill up Jira and you’re agile,” there remains an apparent belief that agility is the responsibility of the development teams, alone. For everyone else, it’s business as usual and that leads organizations to to demand and reward heroic behaviour, which leads to quality slips, burnout and interpersonal drama.

In this session, as an agile leader, you’ll examine this challenge and explore what you might do about it. We’ll create some realistic expectations, based on the patterns of effective teamwork.

Bio: Sue Johnston helps you talk so people listen, listen so people talk and change the world one conversation at a time. After a career as a reporter, she moved to corporate communication, where she was involved in large scale change initiatives and technology implementations (including an early Extreme Programming project) at two of Canada’s financial services giants. She came to believe the crucial communication in organizations is the interaction between people. A professional coach since 2003, Sue has trained hundreds of people in coaching and facilitation techniques. Her workshops are accredited by ICAgile. Based in Waterloo, Ontario, she is the author of “Talk To Me: Workplace Conversations That Work,” the founder of It’s Understood Communication and a partner in Leanintuit. She has lots of letters after her name, but what really matters are letters like this: “Sue is the coach you want to learn from!” You can learn more about Sue and her work at https://itsunderstood.com.

Time: Doors open at approximately 11:30 am. Announcements and discussion start at approximately 11:50 am. Meeting ends at approximately 1:00 pm.

Lunch: provided on a first-come, first-served basis

Location: University of Waterloo, William G. Davis Computer Research Centre, Room DC1302

Maps and directions: See https://uwaterloo.ca/about/how-find-us/maps-and-directions

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Speaker: Jeff Kosciejew

Topic: Using the game “Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes”, we’ll explore and highlight the importance and impact solid teamwork, communication, and creating & developing a shared language, can have on any project or product. Likely different from any other workshop, this really dives into the importance of creating the conditions for success when working with others. This is an interactive session will directly involve a small group actively participating with other observing. However there will be multiple rounds to allow anyone and everyone who wants to participate. And in doing so, we’ll get to see the impact this has on the success of the activity.

Bio: Jeff combines his practical experience in delivering projects and building products from a range of industries with a passion for helping people thrive and grow. He excels at teaching complicated ideas and thrives when facilitating any size of team or group, at all levels of an organization. He combines coaching, mentoring, and teaching to meet people where they are today, and help them along their journey to achieve results that are important and meaningful to them. He employs a diverse range of approaches, techniques, and practices from a variety of frameworks and methods to help make meaningful impacts on the outcomes of work. Taking a systems-thinking approach, Jeff has a proven track record in helping individuals, teams, and organizations identify and implement improvements, not to create great outcomes, but rather to help nudge and evolve the environment where great outcomes are inevitable. Jeff has taught a Project Management module at college, designed, developed, and delivered workshops for small to enterprise companies, and consulted at all levels throughout organizations as an Agile Coach, Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Business Analyst. He’s got a number of industry certifications, but finds his actual experience to be more valuable and meaningful. Jeff finds it amusing to write about himself in the third person.

Time: Doors open at approximately 11:30 am. Announcements and discussion start at approximately 11:50 am. Meeting ends at approximately 1:00 pm.

Lunch: provided on a first-come, first-served basis

Location:
University of Waterloo,
William G. Davis Computer Research Centre,
Room DC1302

Maps and directions: See https://uwaterloo.ca/about/how-find-us/maps-and-directions

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Speaker: Michael Bolton

Topic: The Web is abuzz with talk about “automated testing” and “test automation”. Automation comes with a tasty and digestible story: eliminate “manual testing”, and replace messy, complex humanity with reliable, fast, efficient robots! Yet there are many secrets hidden between the lines of the story.

Automation encourages people to think of mechanizable assembly-line work done on the factory floor, but neither development nor the testing within it is like that. Testing is a part of the creative and critical work that happens in design studios, inventors’ workshops, and research labs. Although they can be assisted by tools, those kinds of work are neither “manual” nor “automated”.

User and tester actions can be simulated, but users and testers cannot be replicated in software. Automated checking does exist, but it cannot do the testing. While tools can help us, we must not lose sight of the important skilled work that people must do to use tools wisely and powerfully.

In this talk, Michael Bolton will reveal secrets about automation that people do not usually consider, disclose or discuss. He’ll present a vision for using tools effectively—one that puts the tester at the centre of testing work and the testing mission: finding problems that threaten the value of our products and our projects.

Bio: 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 25 years of experience testing, developing, managing, and writing about software. For the last 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.

Time: Doors open at approximately 11:30 am. Announcements and discussion start at approximately 11:50 am. Meeting ends at approximately 1:00 pm.

Lunch: provided on a first-come, first-served basis

Location:
University of Waterloo,
William G. Davis Computer Research Centre,
Room DC1302

Maps and directions: See https://uwaterloo.ca/about/how-find-us/maps-and-directions

Speaker: Rob Sabourin

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Topic: Many agile teams rework previously deployed stories, even after plenty of in-sprint testing. Well groomed, refined, stories framed with typical, alternate and error scenarios, gracefully described in well formed gherkin, continue to encounter all sorts of bugs. Software engineering consultant, Rob Sabourin, often sees rework in over 20% of deployed stories. In this presentation Rob shows how agile teams can drive rework down dramatically, often achieving near Zero rework after a story is DONE. Rob teaches teams to identify and implement relevant testing activities above and beyond those derived from well formed requirements. Rob shows agile team members how to identify tests based on reality. He seeks out relevant testing ideas based on what is really being changed in the technological solution. He finds ideas based on what the user really does in the workplace and he discovers rich test ideas based on the real target environments. Delegates learn many excellent strategies to identify, prioritize, and implement reality driven testing. They will ferret out important bugs that really matter eliminating the need for downstream rework.

Bio: Robert Sabourin, P.Eng. has more than 37 years management experience leading teams of software development professionals to consistently deliver projects on-time, on-quality and on-budget. As a respected member of the software engineering community, Robert has trained and mentored literally thousands of top professionals in the field. Robert is an Adjunct Professor of Software Engineering at McGill University who often speaks to conferences around the world on software engineering, Software Quality Assurance, testing and management issues.

Time: Doors open at approximately 11:30 am. Announcements and discussion start at approximately 11:50 am. Meeting ends at approximately 1:00 pm.

Lunch: provided on a first-come, first-served basis

Location:
University of Waterloo,
William G. Davis Computer Research Centre,
Room DC1302

Maps and directions: See https://uwaterloo.ca/about/how-find-us/maps-and-directions

Speaker: James Spere

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Topic: Managers are weird – they like to have metrics on everything. The same is true for product quality. So how do you measure quality? If you’re looking for how to track escaped defect counts and testing find rates, this isn’t the talk for you. I’ll take you through how to start with the customer and work your way backwards – measuring the things that actually impact them. Find out the 2 measurements that really matter, how to actually track them and strategies for enabling your entire company to enable the changes required to really move the quality needle.

Bio: Over his career, James Spere has continually built strong connections between his development teams and customer support, sales and clients with a customer-first approach to software development, deployment, and communication. James uses an open and honest style that has enabled these strong partnerships across multiple industries which he hopes to share during this session.

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Topic: Collaboration with Lansing Area Software Testers (LAST)

Have you got a tough problem at work that you haven’t been able to solve yet? Feel like you could use some fresh perspectives? Then this is the meeting for you!

This month KWSQA teams up with LAST to provide a unique collaborative test clinic. Bring your toughest testing problems to share and draw on the talent and experience of two regions of software quality professionals!

We will provide a video conference link and an online platform (Google Docs) to collaborate. Bring your phone and/or laptop to participate online or just bring yourself to video chat and try to solve those gnarliest of testing problems!

Bio: LAST is dedicated to furthering the software testing community. We do this in a variety of ways by organizing monthly meetups to discuss software testing techniques, experiences, trends and more. The format of our meetups range from Lean Coffee style, presentations, workshops and social meetups.

Speaker: Samantha Campbell

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Topic: Making the Web a Little More Accessible

Accessibility is so much more than adding ALT tags to images. It should be a consideration in all of our digital interactions – writing an email, making a visual presentation, posting a tweet, or coding a website.

This session will go over the current state of web accessibility. Not just what you are required to do under AODA, but how you think about all digital interactions.

Some food for thought:

Have you ever heard a screen reader try to decipher a string of emoji?

Can you apply web accessibility principles to PowerPoint presentations?

Do you REALLY need to have captions for all of your videos?

Let’s talk about it.

Bio: Samantha is a software developer obsessed with the web and the way people use it. It all started with Neopets, and now you can find her hanging out on tech twitter (@MsSammieRose).

She’s also the community organizer of Girl Geek Dinners WR – a networking and dinner series for people interested in STEM. She’s passionate about community building and providing accessible networking and education opportunities.

Speaker:  Maciek Konkolowicz

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Topic: Modern software delivery requires quality and agility at levels of speed which break the sound barrier. Unfortunately, not all teams come prepared with battle plans, and equipment for a fair fight. Listen to Commander Maciek “IceMan” Konkolowicz describe the journey which took his group of inexperienced manually focused team members, and converted them into “the best of the best..in test”.

Maciek will focus on the process and tools which enabled a mindset change toward “Automating All the Things”. Starting with training, moving to driving communities, and finishing with test automation, Maciek will share the dogfights, new equipment, and even some flameouts, that helped his team members (regardless of role) participate and succeed in the struggle for a reliable, scalable testing process.

As an attendee, you will be subjected to the idea that testing is everyone’s responsibility, and will take away processes that will help you push this mentality in your own organization.

Don’t miss this story of cross functional quality awesomeness, and cheesy 80’s movie references!

Bio: Maciek has been a quality champion his entire professional life. For many years, he’s been focusing on learning, implementing, showing and spreading the idea of quality championship to whoever he can corner, be it Dev, QA, BA, or even Project Managers. He’s a passionate technologist who loves to externalize his thoughts to gain perspectives of others. He tries to document his lessons learned at http://macie-j.me and his bad jokes on twitter (@mkonkolowicz). He has spoken at local meetups and conferences and loves to share his passion for the quality crusade.

Speaker: Matthew Middleton

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Topic: Michael Bolton calls software testing “Applied Epistemology.” To me, this suggests that those who wish to practice the art and science of testing need to study broadly, to better understand the contexts in which they work. In this presentation, I’ll be discussing the need for generalists versus specialists, why I think cross-pollination is critical to the testing community as well as the other communities we interact with, and some examples of observations I’ve made with regards to overlapping challenges faced by the cyber security and software testing communities.

Bio: Matt is a QA/QC Analyst for Radient360, and has been a black box software tester for a decade, helping developers catch their bugs before they get out into the wild. He’s primarily been influenced by James Bach, Michael Bolton, and Cem Kaner, and subscribes to the Context-Driven School of Testing. He has taught software testing online, through the Association for Software Testing, as well as the inaugural Miramichi class for PLATO Testing.

Speaker: Sarah McKenna

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Topic: At a Web scraping company covering 3,000 (and growing) websites, staying on top of changes to scripts and target third party sites was a constant struggle until we started logging each http call and response to an easily queried nosql db and built real time error analytics and error handling. Was not expensive or particularly hard yet made a huge impact on overall quality.

Bio: Passionate quality evangelist with 20 years experience leading QA in numerous NYC startups, corporations and government settings, mostly building test operations from scratch to cover functional, security and performance testing. Focused now on ways to introduce AI into automated functional testing.