There is just a few days left before we begin the EuroSTAR Live Speaker Showcase.
Don’t miss our five thought provoking live webinars from Anne-Marie Charrett, Karen Johnson, Kristoffer Nordström, Declan O’Riordan and Huib Schoots.
All those who attend the Live Speaker Showcase will receive eBook releases from Stuart Reid and Karen Johnson.
Check out the full line-up…
Webinar: Hiring professional testers
with Huib Schoots
Date & Time: 19/05/2014 @ 2PM (BST)
Software development is about people. But how do you recognize an excellent testing professional? And how do you get the right people in your projects?
It is hard to recognize professional testers. Every tester is unique and brings different characteristics to the table. Every project is different too and to be successful in finding the right professional tester for your project different characteristics may be important. There are many characteristics to be considered so to be able to recognize professional testers heuristics can be used.
In this webinar I will present my heuristics to recognize a professional tester. You will also learn about how I use them in practice. Finally you’ll learn about what interview techniques I use to hire the right person.
Presenter: Huib Schoots
Huib is a Senior Consultant at bij Improve Quality Services. With over fifteen years of experience in IT and software testing, Huib is experienced in different testing roles. Curious and passionate, he is an agile, exploratory and context-driven tester who attempts to read everything ever published on software testing. A member of the Dutch Exploratory Workshop on Testing, black-belt in the Miagi-Do School of software testing and co-author of a book about the future of software testing, Huib maintains a blog on magnifiant.com.
Webinar: The Art of Asking Questions
with Karen Johnson
Date & Time: 19/05/2014 @ 4PM (BST)
As software testers, we need to learn a product thoroughly, we need to understand the user interface, the audience, the intended use of a product and we need to know how a product has been built so that we can test and investigate the robustness and readiness of a product. So we ask lots of questions. We ask designers, developers, product owners and many other people questions throughout our day and yet, rarely do we stop to recognize the skill of asking questions, let alone focus on how we might improve our approach to asking questions. Listen to the webinar as Karen Johnson talks about the art of asking questions. At the end of the session, you can ask her questions too.
Presenter: Karen Johnson
Karen N. Johnson is an independent software test consultant. Her client work is often centered on helping organizations at an enterprise level. In recent years, she has helped companies transitioning to Agile software development. While focused on software testing and predominantly working with the testers throughout an organization, Karen helps teams and organizations improve quality overall. Her professional activities include speaking at conferences both in the US and internationally. Karen is a contributing author to the book, Beautiful Testing by O’Reilly publishers. She is the co-founder of the WREST workshop, the Workshop for Regulated Software Testing. She has published numerous articles; she blogs and tweets about her experiences. Find her on Twitter as @karennjohnson (note the two n’s) and her website: http://www.karennicolejohnson.com.
Webinar: Application Security Testing – Where did it all go wrong?
with Declan O’Riordan
Date & Time: 20/05/2014 @ 2PM (BST)
This webinar will focus on:
1. The historical path to the present situation;
2. The distinction between application security and other types such as network security;
3. The volume of warnings that are being ignored;
4. How ignorance has become the norm;
5. The problems with ISO 27001 and Information Security Management Systems;
6. Exaggerated fear of complexity;
7. Reliance on silos of expertise and inadequate tools;
8. The lack of Pathfinders;
9. Finally, how everyone in the SDLC can help themselves by attending the EuroSTAR conference and letting me show them the path to application security.
Presenter: Declan O’Riordan
Declan O’Riordan is a tremendous profes… actually you know it’s me writing this don’t you? I haven’t written any books and don’t have anything to sell, I’m not special at all. I’m just a system test manager, and I’ve learned how to include application security testing in my daily work. If I can test application security, then you can too.
This is the only subject in my 33-year IT career that I’ve ever felt is so important I have to get up on stage and make more people aware. When I started speaking about application security I found the audiences really enjoyed the story and returned to work galvanised into action. I’m confident the EuroSTAR audience will feel the same. This is useful stuff.
Webinar: Why every systems test department should have a Test Developer (…or two)
with Kristoffer Nordström
Date & Time: 21/05/2014 @ 2PM (BST)
The talk will describe why there exists a need for a system test department to add the skill set of a test developer to the system test department. What unique skills does the test developer bring to the group and what benefits does that entail? Where do you find a test developer for hire or how do you transform existing employees into this role?
Of course there are potential drawbacks in hiring test developers instead of testers – the talk will describe what those drawbacks are and how to circumvent them.
A test developer is a engineer with a divergent skill set and belongs in two different camps – on the one hand the engineer has to be an excellent software developer and on the other hand the engineer has to be passionate about software testing. How to combine these two identities?
The possibilities of having a test developer in your group is something that I will describe – for example making sure the test developer understands the needs and problems that your testers are facing on a daily basis
Why don’t we see the role of a test developer that often? What separates a great test developer from the mediocre ones? Why is a tester who has acquired scripting skills not a test developer?
One area that you should use test developers for is to implement test automation support. Your test engineers shouldn’t waste their time running the same manual scripted regression tests over and over again every time a new release is done. What other custom made tools can we expect from a test developer?
Key outcomes:
By the end of this talk I hope to have inspired people into seeing the possibilities of hiring a test developer and also to inspire developers and testers alike to take the step to transform into a test developer.
Presenter: Kristoffer Nordström
Kristoffer Nordström is a Test Developer that in his 9 years career has worked with technologies such as Telecommunications System, Distributed Compilers, Cloud technology, Smartphone OS development, Embedded systems, and much more.
A testing devotee, and a member of the Context-Driven test community who with his own company, consults and also teaches the course “Python for testers”.
Webinar: Disruptive Testing
with Anne-Marie Charrett
Date & Time: 22/05/2014 @ 2pm (BST)
New technologies and a need for innovation mean we test within a rapidly changing and evolving environment. But no matter how much we estimate and plan, something seems to throw these plans into chaos. Agile helps us to minimise this disruption through an iterative and incremental approach but regardless we seems to get surprised and frustrated by change.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb argues that much of what we do lives in Black Swan territory. A black swan is a metaphor for an unpredictable event that in hindsight was preventable. Sound familiar? Software testing is the ultimate black swan challenge. Our very role is to search for unpredictable events. The irony is that in the process of hunting for these black swans, our testing itself becomes the target of black swans! For example, development takes longer than anticipated, business change their minds and bug retesting takes longer than hoped. These black swans impact our ability to accurately estimate and plan.
Taleb argues that instead of attempting to improve prediction we are better off developing a more robust approach to change. It’s time for a rethink in testing. It’s time to change our approach from one of control to one that embraces disruption. One in which testing becomes stronger and more valuable as a result of change. But how? The key lies in developing a testing mindset and developing tester skill. In this talk I will discuss how to help testers become expert black swan hunters and how to develop a testing process that embraces disruption and welcomes change.
Presenter: Anne-Marie Charrett
Anne-Marie is a software tester, trainer and coach with a reputation of excellence and passion for the craft of software testing. An electronic engineer by trade, software testing chose her when she started conformance testing against European standards. She now consults and trains testers specialising in transforming test teams into powerhouses of testing skill.
Anne-Marie is Irish born and bred. She now lives in Sydney, Australia where she consults and lectures at the University of Technology, Sydney on software testing. She blogs at MaverickTester.com and offers the occasional tweet at @charrett.
eBook 1: Tester Motivation – the results from a 600 tester survey
by Stuart Reid
An extensive survey on the motivation of over 600 testers has been performed and the results are presented in this eBook. The eBook comprises three parts. Initially there is a brief list of ten top tips on tester motivation, which summarize the major conclusions of the two detailed white papers that follow.
Next there is a white paper which addresses the relevance of generic motivation theories to software testers and provides practical guidance on motivating testers based on evidence from the survey. Results of measuring testers’ motivation in terms of the Job Characteristics Model and Pink’s Motivation 3.0 are presented, and new combined models with stronger prediction accuracy are suggested.
The last paper considers the survey respondents in six distinct testing roles: Developer/Tester, Test Analyst, Test Lead, Test Manager, Test Consultant and Head of Testing. The factors that affect testers in each of the roles are compared and contrasted, as are the range of activities they perform. It is clear from the results that different roles are best motivated by different factors, and, for some factors, something that motivates testers in one role demotivates testers in another. The effects on motivation of education, professional qualifications, experience levels, salary, and outside interests for each of these different roles are also reported.
eBook 2: Thinking Skills: Bridging Skills from Theory to Practical Use
by Karen Johnson
Karen N. Johnson’s chapter from Beautiful Testing published by O’Reilly in 2008 describes how her professional experience intersected with her personal life while testing medical software. This roughly 15-page chapter can be read by beginning to advanced software testers, and even by people who don’t work with computer software. Karen describes her own experience testing medical software in a regulated software environment where a mix of scripted and exploratory testing practices were used. The chapter outlines what multiuser testing is and why testing with that perspective was so important for the product under test. Her chapter shares the experience of working in a scientific lab and the attempts to test with simulated real usage.
