STARWEST 2024 - Concurrent Sessions

Change in organizational structure, especially your direct manager, can be very stressful and life altering. After all, people leave managers, not companies right? Aprajita Mathur would disagree. Change is hard for all of us and sometimes losing the person with whom we were so closely aligned and working can be hard to successfully navigate. Aprajita has been blessed to have had over 15+ managers in her career, an average burn rate of 1.5 years or less. Though this was a challenging path at the start of her career, having this vast experience has taught her what really matters in the long...

It is known that developers are most productive when they can stay in flow, but also that delaying or omitting tests can cause disruption, breakage, and security issues down the line. By properly leveraging background automation, team collaboration, and machine learning in your native DevOps workflow, you can get the best of both worlds: productive flowstate AND safe code. In this talk, Jon Peck will take a look at ways to take advantage of asynchronous test notifications, single-pane-of-glass reviews, and GPT-based tools for faster coding, test generation, and vulnerability remediation....

We prepare for the future by learning from the lessons of the past. During this session, you will look back at some of the craziest bugs John Jenkins has run across during his career, and see what lessons can be gleaned from them to help tackle the problems of tomorrow. Bugs come in all shapes and sizes, and can exist in processes just as easily as they can exist in code. In this session, both types will be examined, including: the too much free space bug, the V1 bug, the too much test data bug, and more. The session will also explore some of the best practices John has developed in his...

In today's technology-driven landscape, where software and hardware intertwine seamlessly in embedded systems, adopting a DevOps culture becomes imperative. This talk delves into the dynamic world of embedded systems and explores how organizations can successfully implement and nurture a DevOps culture within this unique domain. DevOps, with its emphasis on collaboration, automation, and continuous improvement, has revolutionized software development. However, adapting these principles to the realm of embedded systems presents distinct challenges and opportunities. Our discussion will...

Integration tests are often rife with pitfalls that can result in confusing, flaky, or otherwise completely unmaintainable tests. Those pitfalls can often be mitigated by testing in containers, as this usually provides the most straightforward path to creating ephemeral test environments. Containerized tests typically provide isolation and reproducibility, but they can be costly to initially set up, especially if the system under test is not built for a containerized environment. Nonetheless, there are many benefits to containerized testing, even if the system under test won’t ultimately...

As philosopher Heraclitus once said, “The only thing that is constant is change.” Which means that when stop fighting change, stop staying stuck in “the way things have always been” and START embracing the power of change—within our mindsets, offices, objectives—we START transforming into the most relevant and resonant versions of ourselves, our teams, and our organizations. As a change-agent both inside technology and WAY OUTSIDE, this interactive (and fun) session is focused on you gaining the clarity, creativity, and confidence necessary to wield the power of change and have impact...

Migrating your apps to Kubernetes and breaking up monoliths pose a unique set of testing challenges. Container-based testing gives us enormous flexibility and scalability and your testing strategy should take that into account. Waiting for a full environment and simply migrating your test scripts is risky and doesn't take advantage of Kubernetes container management features. Making sure your migrated app can handle normal load as well as spikes requires careful planning. You may also want to compare different clouds. In this talk, Matthew will go through some proven strategies for using...

Debugging problems in a distributed system can be hard. Finding the root of the problem and assigning the work to a specific team after a user failure can be challenging and time-consuming. Often front-end and API tests are not enough. Imagine if you could see exactly what happened step-by-step during an end-to-end test, combining Cypress with distributed traces, to write test specs against every section of the distributed services as well. Now you can. Embed trace-based tests directly in Cypress to get insight into your distributed system, including both the front end and back end....

In this presentation, the primary objective is to introduce an innovative AI-assisted self-generating exploratory test automation model designed specifically for healthcare software applications. The overarching goal of this platform is to elevate the quality assurance process within the realm of healthcare software by dynamically formulating, executing, and adapting test scenarios. These scenarios are meticulously crafted to align with the crucial STEEEP (Safe, Timely, Effective, Efficient, Equitable, and Patient-Centered) healthcare quality domain, thereby fostering an improvement in...

As you research the latest in generative AI technology, you will see that the development and availability of multi-modal GPT engines are fundamentally changing the way applications are tested and described. These new GPT models can generate and interpret voice, text, and images seamlessly. For example, you can ask them to navigate an application to accomplish a business task and comment on their actions. This means that we’re for the first time entering the world of AI-assisted/performed exploratory testing. When you couple this with the capabilities of GPT models to identify UI elements...

Were you recently promoted or are aspiring to lead or manage an overseas Quality Assurance team? Have you been asked to build/collaborate with a virtual QA team? Stressed about managing an offshore team with all the challenges and circadian rhythm being affected? Managing virtual teams can be challenging to say the least. No matter what the calling is, if your goal is to meet the company objectives and drive QA teams towards excellence at the same time, this session will guide you through the FSNP (Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing) stages for achieving a successful Quality...

As a Quality Engineering Director for a consulting firm delivering innovative data products to the US Department of Defense, Sufyan was faced with a new challenge. The US Government had directed all agencies delivering software solutions to the Department of Defense to provide the ultimate advantage to its warfighters. All software solutions must meet the Compile to Combat (C2C24) directive in that all requests for changes to software being used by the military must be delivered in 24 hours from the point of development to delivery. As a Quality Engineering team, this meant long and...