STARWEST 2024 - Software Tester
Customize your STARWEST 2024 experience with sessions for software testers.
Wednesday, September 25
Build Your Career and Your Worth, Not Just Your Relationship with Your Manager
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...
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...
Testing Retrospective: Lessons from the Past
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...
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
Testing for Synergy: Progressive Testing Strategies for Interdependent Product Suites
In today's dynamic business landscape, organizations grapple with the challenge of innovating across multiple product developments simultaneously. This session explores the intricacies of concurrent development involving seven products, highlighting the pivotal roles of scrum teams, engineering approach, and collaborative testing strategies. Traditional independent product testing approaches prove insufficient in the context of interdependence and a unified platform. The discussion centers on the need for an evolved testing strategy that shifts left, meticulously addressing integration...
“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...
Cloud Testing of Cybersecurity Features in Mobile Apps
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...
Multi-Modal GPTs Are Coming For Your Testing! How to Adapt?
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...
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,...
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...