STARWEST 2024 - Test Automation
Wednesday, September 25
The Rise of the Virtual QA Engineer: Harnessing GenAI
In this talk, Dmitriy will delve into the transformative journey of integrating GenAI, into the core of his team's testing and development processes. This integration has not only enhanced their productivity by 15% but also yielded a 20% time saving and a significant cost reduction per test case. Want to know how? The session will explore his team's strategic implementation of GenAI, overcoming security challenges, leveraging diverse (LLMs), and the meticulous design of prompts that culminated in a prompt library. See how tailored extensions for the code editors and corporate chats...
Building and Testing Serverless API Applications with AWS SAM
The primary draw for implementation of AWS serverless applications is the supposed simplicity. Anyone that has attempted to implement testing on a serverless application, however, knows that it is anything but simple. Serverless technologies allow for the faster construction of more complex applications with more complex integrations while also providing new technologies and execution environments, all of which pose a challenge to those used to testing in a more traditional way. This presentation looks at an API-based serverless application as an example and introduces how the application...
Delete Responsibly: A Guide to Managing Flaky Tests in iOS UI Automation
Flaky tests pose a significant challenge in maintaining the reliability and efficiency of UI test suites. This talk delves into practical approaches for handling flaky tests, emphasizing the importance of responsibly removing or rewriting tests that consistently demonstrate flakiness. Join Zhanat to explore strategies such as implementing retries judiciously, utilizing monitoring tools for better oversight, and engaging in collaborative problem-solving sessions with iOS teams to address ambiguous failures. Through real-world examples, attendees will learn how to avoid common pitfalls that...
API Automation Mastery: From Novice to Ninja
APIs are vital for modern software and tech. Why? Because apps are becoming more complex due to: rapid tech advancements, the need to integrate various components, and demand for sophisticated features. But more complexity means more risks of bugs, security flaws, and performance issues. To tackle these risks — API testing is crucial to ensure software reliability, security, and performance. Also, API testing helps developers save time. How? By finding issues early in development rather than fixing them in production. So…teams NEED to improve their API testing skills in today's fast tech...
Cautionary Tales in Integration Testing
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...
Kafka and Kafka Testing: Streamlining Real-time Data Processing
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,...
Thursday, September 26
“Low Code”—Coded Automation Using Free Tools
Using artificial intelligence to generate test code is a hybrid automation strategy that combines the best of both worlds. Tests can be created very quickly by almost anyone using AI, yet the tests are still planned by humans and maintainable by humans. With the right prompts, you can have AI construct traditional test code using open source testing tools that the world is already familiar with (Chai, Mocha, Cypress). As a result, you end up with structured code that is logical and easy to maintain without having to wonder what the AI is testing. In this session, Timothy will look at...
Breaking the Chain of Blame: True End-to-End Testing with Distributed Tracing
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....
AI-Assisted Exploratory Testing for Healthcare Software Based on STEEEP Domain of Healthcare Quality
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...
The Art of Winning Leadership Support for Web Accessibility
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 champions,...
Effective Ways to Manage Offshore QA Teams
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...
Leveraging and Measuring the Use of Formal Testing Methods in Product Development
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...
Compile to Combat in 24 Hours—The Death of Regression Tests
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...