Join us at our January 27 member meeting for a Lean Coffee* session

TOPIC: KWSQA presents: Lean Coffee

PRESENTED BY: The KWSQA

MEETING OVERVIEW: Lean Coffee* is a structured, but agenda-less meeting. Participants gather, build an agenda, and begin talking. Conversations are directed and productive because the agenda for the meeting was democratically generated.

Meeting format:

  1. You and your peers will start a Personal Kanban
  2. Add ideas on what to discuss
  3. Vote and talk

*Lean Coffee(tm) is a trademark of Modus Cooperandi.  For more info visit leancoffee.org.

MEETING DETAILS

Date: January 27th, 2016

Time: 11:30am – 1:15pm.
Doors open at 11:30.
Announcements start at 11:45.

Lunch: Provided

Place: University of Waterloo
William G. Davis Computer Research Centre
Room DC1301 (The “Fishbowl”)

Maps: https://uwaterloo.ca/map/ for a Campus/Parking Map

RSVP: Send an RSVP email to RSVP@kwsqa.org if you plan to attend.

Membership Fees

Cash/cheque accepted at the door. Credit cards accepted via our payment page https://kwsqa.org/other-events/lecture-series/

(a) Seasonal Membership: $80.00

(b) Seasonal Student Membership: $30.00 for students of an accredited college/university

(c) Single Attendance: $20.00

(d) Single Attendance Student: $10.00

Continue ReadingJoin us at our January 27 member meeting for a Lean Coffee* session

Join us at our next member meeting for Pete Walen speaking on “Test Strategies, Test Plans and Strategic Testing”

TOPIC: Test Strategies, Test Plans and Strategic Testing

PRESENTED BY: Pete Whalen

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY: Pete Walen has been in some form of software development for over 25 years. He has been a developer, a business analyst, a project manager and now a tester and testing specialist. He describes himself as a Software Anthropologist and Tester, which encompasses the examination of how software and people relate, react and interact with each other.

Pete has worked in a variety of shops using a variety of development methodologies and has adopted an attitude of “do what makes sense” for the organization and the project.

He is currently a Senior Software Quality Engineer for Salesforce.
Pete is a member of the American Society for Quality (ASQ), The Association for Software Testing (AST), an active blogger and writer on software testing and organizes GRTesters, a testing meetup in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

MEETING OVERVIEW: Many software organizations expect or require some form of documented Test Strategy. The reasons vary, but the content tends to be very formulaic. The challenge then is making the documented strategy pertinent to the organization in general and the product and projects in particular.

Pete Walen will present some core principles that might help with developing a meaningful, relevant strategy for testing and communicating them. He will also talk about developing test plans that support the strategies and converting these into meaningful, important testing.

N.B. This session will not tell you how to create a test strategy document. Instead, it will focus on developing a strategy that is meaningful in the context of the product and project

MEETING DETAILS

Date: December 2nd

Time: 11:30am – 1:15pm.
Doors open at 11:30.
Announcements start at 11:45.

Lunch: Provided

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

Maps: https://uwaterloo.ca/map/ for a Campus/Parking Map

RSVP: Send an RSVP email to RSVP@kwsqa.org if you plan to attend.

Membership Fees

Cash/cheque accepted at the door. Credit cards accepted via our payment page https://kwsqa.org/other-events/lecture-series/

(a) Seasonal Membership: $80.00

(b) Seasonal Student Membership: $30.00 for students of an accredited college/university

(c) Single Attendance: $20.00

(d) Single Attendance Student: $10.00

Continue ReadingJoin us at our next member meeting for Pete Walen speaking on “Test Strategies, Test Plans and Strategic Testing”

Join us at our October meeting to hear Andrew Annett speak on “Planning Delivery Like You Mean It”

TOPIC: The theme song of adaptive development teams isn’t “Qué Será, Será” – planning delivery like you mean it.

PRESENTED BY: Andrew Annett

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY: Andrew Annett is a seasoned facilitator and coach who believes conversations are the operating system of organizations and anything that promotes flow of quality work is a good thing. Andrew has experience working within agile teams and on large, complex multi-year programs and his passion is for helping the world communicate more effectively (especially with LEGO®.)

He’s a founding member of Leanintuit; a collective of coaches dedicated to improving software product delivery. He’s currently working as the enterprise agile coach at D2L Corporation – an edtech product company whose mission is to make the world smarter.

MEETING OVERVIEW:Despite our best efforts the practices of iterative development seem no better at answering the age-old question of business sponsors: “When am I going to get it?” And we seem to be making the problem worse by insisting on talking in language that means nothing to people outside the team.

This interactive discussion will challenge current thinking about story sizing and planning, tracking progress and forecasting delivery. We’ll be leaving the fantasy deterministic world and visiting our scary probabilistic reality. For the Matrix fans among us it’ll be a red pill/blue pill moment…but don’t worry, where we’ll be going they speak English.

Folks will leave this session knowing how to better assess the capacity of their team(s) and make more reliable promises.

Meeting Details

Date: October 28th

Time: 11:30am – 1:15pm.
Doors open at 11:30.
Announcements start at 11:45.

Lunch: Provided

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

Maps: See http://www.uwaterloo.ca/map/map.html for a Campus/Parking Map

RSVP: Send an RSVP email to RSVP@kwsqa.org if you plan to attend.

Membership Fees

Cash/cheque accepted at the door. Credit cards accepted via our payment page https://kwsqa.org/other-events/lecture-series/

(a) Seasonal Membership: $80.00

(b) Seasonal Student Membership: $30.00 for students of an accredited college/university

(c) Single Attendance: $20.00

(d) Single Attendance Student: $10.00

Continue ReadingJoin us at our October meeting to hear Andrew Annett speak on “Planning Delivery Like You Mean It”

Call for Presenters (Seasonal Lecture Series)

The 2016-2017 season of the KWSQA lecture series is underway!

We love to host new and local speakers!  Got an idea you’d like to try out?  Working on a talk that you want to test or practice?   Drop us a message at info@kwsqa.org for consideration.  Here are some details about presentation format and what kind of things we’re looking for.

 

Presentation format:

  • Over lunch from 11:45am to 1pm
  • Generally at UW, last Wednesday of the month
  • 45-55 minute presentation
  • Can be lecture style, interactive with audience, technical/technique demonstration, workshop style, etc
  • We provide projector, mics, audience.  You provide laptop, content.
  • Topic must be related to software testing/quality, software development practices, relevant to our audience of primarily software testers.

Details to Include in Your Submission

  • Working title
  • Brief description – about a paragraph – of the topic
  • A short bio about yourself (relevant experience in the industry, any past presentation experience, etc)
  • Availability for presenting
Continue ReadingCall for Presenters (Seasonal Lecture Series)