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....

What do you think about when you hear the words "test automation"? Are you considering developing your own tools to help you probe the product deeply, or will you apply a commercial tool for automated checking? Are you excited by new, powerful, enabling technologies, or do you worry that a robot will replace you? One thing is for sure: when we apply tools, we fundamentally change the context and the nature of the work we do.Our panelists are software testing experts who will discuss all this and more with you! Together, we'll probe what people mean by automation, the power that tools can...

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...

Delivering performance applications is a multi-layered challenge these days. Teams must assure that the application performs on multiple fronts. Each new function must have quick responses and be as slim as possible from the coding moment. It must be quick and light for a single request, handle concurrency, and coexist with multiple other processes even in micro-serviced applications spread all over the place. Not to mention, it must handle lots of loads once in production. It must stay performant and available within the agreed thresholds. The impressive amount of tasks to tackle and co-...

Testers are not part of the process; they don’t have sufficient knowledge of the client’s business to understand the big picture. This failure to understand leads to unsatisfactory outcomes that leave the client with unanswered questions. For a client to feel testing is of value, the software must work seamlessly and exceed their expectations. The solution is to shift testing left towards discovery and include testers early in the process so they have a stake in end-to-end results. Testers must understand the subject matter, ask questions, and be a valued part of the core team....

In today's data-driven landscape, real-time data processing is the backbone of modern applications. Kafka, a distributed event streaming platform, has emerged as a critical component in building data-intensive systems. This presentation provides an in-depth exploration of Kafka and the essential practice of Kafka testing, offering attendees valuable insights into harnessing the power of real-time data streams while ensuring robust system reliability. Key topics to be covered are: an introduction to Kafka to understand Kafka's architecture and core components, importance of Kafka Testing,...

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...

The Internet is full of insecure applications that cost organizations time and money while damaging their reputations when their systems are compromised. We need to build secure applications as never before. While security and agility may appear to be natural opposites that don’t mix well, they don’t need to be. Learn how to integrate application security testing into your testing practices. Join Tom in exploring real-world examples of secure application testing practices incorporated into the iterative development used in agile projects. Learn to marry agile testing with application...

Everyone involved in the SDLC knows quality is important. Absolutely. After all, who wants to push out (let alone use) software that doesn't work well? But, does your organization really embrace QA in all its glory? Do they see QA as more than ‘just’ testing? Do you see QA as more than ‘just’ testing? If your answer is 'No' to any of these questions, then this talk is for you. Yes, we test and log defects, but we also have to be diplomatic champions of quality assurance. We have to work to make sure our organizations see QA as a proactive function that spans the Software Development...

Join Vinod Kashid as he walks through his experience building end-to-end automation for performance testing and engineering. His team was tasked to do daily performance testing activities for a critical application and business executives were expecting detailed application performance outcomes on a daily basis. Manual performance test execution and analysis were time consuming processes and were delaying the overall run time for final report. Business stakeholders wanted to implement zero touch automation from performance test execution to analysis and reporting (including deep-dive...

There is tremendous IT turnover today and a lack of skilled resources for some job roles such as threat hunters in a Security Operations Center (SOC). This session will explore how escape rooms can teach IT leadership about building a cybersecurity team. An escape room is an ideal teaching tool that an organization can leverage to address the challenge of assembling a security team and navigating problems together. Success starts with the team and having the right mix of talent and skills which should reveal the clues to the game. Join James to explore the job roles in a SOC and skills...

A good objective has five components that effectively communicate a business outcome and why it matters: Activity: What will we be doing? Scope: What are the boundaries of the work we will touch? Beneficiary: Who is the intended recipient of the new work? User Value: Why does this work matter to the new user? Business Value: Why does this work matter to the business? PI Objectives can be daunting but can be made much easier when you add in some key components or a formula: [Activity] + [Scope] so that [Beneficiary] have [User Value] to [Business Value]. In this session, Richelle...

GOOD NEWS! To build a high quality customer-centric AI app, you need to bring your old-timey software testing practices into the AI era. But what does that mean? Well, it turns out building AI apps is pretty much like building ANY other app…with a FEW added extras. We need to bring customer focus to EVERY step of our building and testing process. Things like, how do we choose the data we’ll use to train our AI product? Which humans are in the loop? How to fine-tune and ground our models in REAL data? And, of course, how to leverage our usual software quality bread-and-butter (red-teaming,...

In CI/CD pipelines, automated testing services validate functionality of apps across hundreds of real-world mobile devices and OS versions. However, these same automated testing services can use methods and tools that violate security policies such as: emulators, virtualization, resigning, debugging, dual spaces, Magisk and more. Once security protections are added to a mobile app, the security features will trigger and may prevent automated testing. In this session, Karen will discuss how you can eliminate the need to test protected and unprotected builds separately. You will also...

Feeling unheard in your fight for web accessibility? What if you could turn this struggle into a success story? Join this candid conversation on navigating the nuanced journey of integrating accessibility, even when convincing leadership seems like an uphill battle. Together, we'll reflect on Renata's initial stumbles, identify common pitfalls, and strategize to avoid them. Anticipate leadership concerns by understanding deeper motivations behind their resistance. Master the art of speaking their language and tailor your message to resonate with decision-makers. Empower your...

Without training in software testing that includes formal methods such as equivalence class partitioning, boundary value analysis, decision tables, state diagrams, and others, an engineer, in good faith, will test the code intuitively until reaching “qualitative confidence” that testing is sufficient. The team at Trimble, Inc. provided training to engineers in a wide variety of formal testing methods so they could gain “quantitative confidence” that code has been tested sufficiently, by using methods known to achieve concrete coverage in requirements and code. Subsequently, Trimble...