Workshops

Angie Jones: Advanced Automation for Agile:UI, Web Services, and BDD

As testing shifts left in an agile world, teams rely on the fast feedback of automated scenarios for continuous integration/deployment. Automation frameworks must be designed to be stable, robust, and flexible. The traditional way of automating UI scenarios in a silo doesn’t lend itself to agile practices.

In this hands-on workshop, you will build an advanced automation framework capable of keeping up with the demands of agile development. This single framework will be capable of supporting the automation of UI and web services, as well as Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) initiatives.

You will learn how to :

Utilize and optimize BDD specs for test automation

Use Cucumber to write steps that execute BDD specs

Use Rest-Assured to employ web services to make your UI tests quicker and less brittle

Upon completion of this interactive workshop, you will know how to utilize Cucumber and Rest-Assured to enhance your existing Ul frameworks to be more agile-friendly

 
Angie Jones is a Senior Automation Engineer at Twitter who has developed automation strategies and frameworks for countless software products. As a Master Inventor, she is known for her innovative and out-of-the-box thinking style which has resulted in more than 20 patented inventions in the US and China. Angie shares her wealth of knowledge by speaking and teaching at software conferences all over the world and leading tech workshops for young girls through Black Girls Code.

Fiona Charles: Survival Guide for the Ethical Tester

A recent Business Insider article described a “huge” online discussion between programmers about “the unethical and illegal things they’ve been asked to do”.

Chances are high that you as a tester will also be asked some day to do something in your work that conflicts with your values. Perhaps it has happened to you already.

The power of software over people’s lives is increasing daily. Its sheer pervasiveness makes it easy to take its impacts for granted. Yet we know that some systems can do irreparable and invisible harm when they fail—and sometimes when they work “correctly”.

Even seemingly insignificant software can present ethical issues for the people who build and test it. Apps that track locations or collect apparently trivial personal data can be used by corporations or governments to invade privacy, influence elections and shatter human rights.

In this workshop we will examine the different kinds of ethical quandaries a tester might be faced with. We will work together to explore and develop practical methods of addressing them, covering such topics as:

How to recognise a situation that might present you with an ethical issue

The importance of identifying your own ethical bottom line

Understanding and managing the real risks presented by an ethical issue, including the risks to you and your career

Ways to challenge unethical or illegal management directions

Escalating your concerns to a responsible authority without wrecking your career

Testers can’t escape ethical issues in their work. Let’s equip ourselves to deal with them in advance, before a given situation becomes urgent.

Fiona Charles teaches organizations to manage their software testing risk, and IT practitioners project skills “beyond process”—hands-on practical skills essential to thrive and excel on any kind of software project. An expert test consultant and manager, she has been immersed in the action through 30+ years of challenging projects across the business spectrum on both sides of the Atlantic. Throughout her career, Fiona has advocated, designed, implemented and taught pragmatic and humane practices to deliver software worth having. Fiona publishes articles and blog posts, and she conducts experiential workshops at international conferences and in-house for clients. She is the co-founder (with Anne-Marie Charrett), of Speak Easy, a volunteer organization whose goal is to increase gender diversity and help new speakers find their voices at tech conferences. Contact Fiona via her website www.quality-intelligence.com, and follow her on twitter @FionaCCharles.

Michael Kaufman: Leading & Coaching with Responsibility

Do people around you waste valuable time and energy NOT taking ownerships for obvious and important problems? Christopher Avery, with more than 25 years of applied research in the field of leadership on how responsibility works in the mind, has developed this workshop: “The Responsibility Process – Leading and Coaching.” In this one day interactive workshop, for Leaders and Coaches, you will learn the mental processes and language of responsibility, and how your understanding of responsibility will change the choices being made.

Benefits:

Leave this workshop ready to apply what you learn about yourself and others

Understand how your mind uses The Responsibility Process to keep you stuck or propel you forward

Improve how you demonstrate, lead and coach ownership behaviour with the tools and activities you will learn

Understand the difference between accountability and responsibility and the mental processes they invoke in you and those you lead

Learn how to invite and allow others to try on what you will learn, what is required and where the pitfalls lie

Realize why giving advice may be the weakest tool you have available—and what you can do that’s more effective

Evaluate and choose the basic tools to support your success in practicing and teaching ownership behavior

Address your important topics and interests that intersect with this content

Hands on:

Work directly with The Responsibility Process and The Keys to Responsibility to practice leadership and coaching tools that Christopher and his students in The Leadership Gift Program apply with their teams and clients.

Teams that attend together will leave with a new shared language for highly effective leadership, teamwork, change, and performance.

 
Mike is an Agile Coach and Trainer, full of passion for coaching people and teams. He fully believes in the agile principles and strives to incorporate them into everyday living. Mike believes agile is a better way to work and live and supports teams in adopting and improving these values and principles. He is also an Accredited Leadership Gift Practitioner.