STARWEST 2024 - Tester
Sunday, September 22
Fundamentals of AI—ICAgile Certification (ICP-FAI)
Fundamentals of Agile Test Automation
Agile Tester Certification—ISTQB/ICAgile
Software Tester Certification Foundation Level—ISTQB CTFL
Monday, September 23
Ramping Up Modern Performance
PreviewModern software is developed in a continuous manner, with several backend services frequently being deployed and scaled in the cloud. Furthermore, as organizations move toward agile, DevOps, and continuous delivery, it is vital for them to move away from traditional approaches to evaluate performance. Are you interested in ramping up or polishing your skills on performance testing? Leandro Melendez will introduce attendees to modern, agile, and continuous performance testing. You’ll learn performance assurance principles and everything from fundamental performance concepts like...
The How and When of Communication
Ever struggled to communicate test progress or persuade a stakeholder on the quality improvement initiative you have? Do you struggle getting developers to appreciate the need to build testing into the lifecycle? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then this session is for you. Julie Gardiner shares key ingredients for getting your message across more effectively. She shares a communication model she has used for nearly 20 years in her career to get her message across and, more recently, how the science of timing can play a major part of how communication is received. Through...
Evaluating and Testing Generative AI: Insights and Strategies
Generative AI (GenAI), exemplified by groundbreaking systems like ChatGPT and LLAMA, is revolutionizing the software landscape. These advanced technologies represent some of the most sophisticated software ever devised, capable of navigating an unprecedented range of prompts and questions, many of which have never been posed in human history. Their ability to generate varied responses to the same query and even fabricate answers when uncertain poses unique challenges in verification and testing. This talk delves into the intricacies of validating such systems and identifies areas needing...
Full-Stack Testing for Microservices Architectures
Software development is trending toward building systems using small, autonomous, independently deployable microservices. Leveraging microservices makes it easier to release software early, more frequently, and even continuously, which aligns well with Agile and DevOps. But how does the microservices architectural pattern affect software testing and testability? How can you ensure microservice-based applications have an adequate level of test coverage at each level? Does this paradigm change the test automation pyramid, and if so what does that look like? Join Tariq King as he walks...
Smarter Test Design with Classification Trees and Pairwise Techniques
In many teams, the total number of possible combinations of inputs, outputs, browsers, and devices for the software we need to test has grown to an alarming number. As testers, we need to choose the most important tests first, but how do we do that without understanding the potential scope in the first place? In this tutorial, Julie Gardiner will share two powerful testing techniques that can help us be more efficient and effective with our testing. Classification trees are a structured, visual approach to identifying test objects and documenting test ideas and data in a way that allows...
Become Your Company's Quality Consultant
Companies of all sizes face difficulties in achieving higher quality standards within their organization. As quality engineering includes various roles and activities, it is also challenging to find the right people to analyze the current state from a wide perspective and provide the recommendations that will allow these organizations to mature their teams, improving their DevOps culture in the process. Join Péter Földházi as he illustrates the knowledge and skills necessary to become your company's quality consultant. Péter's goal is to involve engineers from beginner to advanced levels...
Testing on the Right: Lessons in Monitoring and Observability
Observability has exploded onto the software engineering zeitgeist over the last five years, and for a good reason. However, it suffers from being misunderstood and sometimes equated with a closely related subject—monitoring. This confusion is compounded by the fact that some of the existing tools and frameworks just adopted a lot of the observability terminology in just the letter of the word, not the intent. Not having a solid grasp on the basics of observability is becoming unacceptable in the world of effective software quality engineering. Kaushal Dalvi shares his experiences in the...
Confident Communication Drives Powerful Quality Leadership
Driving a culture of quality starts with effective communication. Join Erika Chestnut to unlock your communication superpowers! Imagine a cheat code that helps us boost productivity and team vibes by 10x. Leverage behavior self-assessments to help discover your unique strengths, communication styles, and reactions to challenges. Erika will help you learn to communicate effectively with your team, management, and cross-functional teams to build a culture of quality. You will learn to assess how others best receive and process information and how to put the best tips and techniques into...
Tuesday, September 24
Supercharge Your Workflow: To GitHub and Beyond
Whether you are new or experienced with GitHub this class is for you! Supercharging your workflow caters to anyone who wants to enhance their Agile and DevOps process with the capabilities of GitHub. GitHub has long been the premier site for open-source projects and is now turning a pivotal corner into becoming the predominant platform for all aspects of the development lifecycle. Some examples of this include; protecting company code through various GitHub Products or curating marketplace actions and workflows prior to use. This tutorial will look at how to leverage GitHub Actions (CI/CD...
Getting Smart on AI-Assisted API Testing
API testing has become more and more popular as service-oriented architectures have become common. In addition, testing at the API level can be effectively automated to provide maintainable regression tests that work well in a DevOps process. In this tutorial, Jeffery Payne discusses what API testing is all about and how AI is being leveraged today to make it easier to perform. Techniques and tools are discussed that highlight where in the testing process API testing makes the most sense. Various open-source and commercial tools will be demonstrated and the pros and cons of various...
Exploratory Testing in the Heat of the Sprint
Agile teams are burdened with the challenge of delivering working product increments after short iterations of development. Getting software from an ambiguous terse, incomplete requirement–to a done, working, solid, valuable, high-quality code requires testers to continuously adapt to change in a turbulent context and deliver actionable results. Chris Blain will illustrate how charter-driven session-based exploratory testing techniques can empower agile teams and help them learn quickly and adapt based on what really matters. Testers can design and execute tests on the fly as they explore...
Modern Web Testing with Playwright
Everybody gets frustrated when web apps are broken, but testing them thoroughly doesn’t need to be a chore. Playwright, a new open-source browser automation tool from Microsoft, makes testing web apps fun! Playwright offers a slew of nifty features like automatic waiting, mobile emulation, and network interception. Plus, with isolated browser contexts, Playwright tests can set up much faster than traditional Web UI tests. In this session, we will automate concise yet robust web app tests for a Kanban board web app with Playwright in TypeScript. You'll learn to test modern web apps of any...
Harnessing Generative AI in Software Testing: A Real-World Guide
The advent of Generative AI (GenAI), including Large Language Models (LLMs) and tools like ChatGPT, is not just another technological shift—it's a paradigm change, particularly in the realm of software testing. Unlike the transitions to mobile or cloud computing, GenAI introduces both unparalleled utility and disruption in software quality assurance. This session is dedicated to demystifying GenAI in software testing, distinguishing hype from reality, and providing practical tools and techniques to enhance your team's software quality while also highlighting potential pitfalls and...
Prompt Engineering for Software Quality Professionals
With the sudden rise of ChatGPT and large language models (LLMs), professionals have been attempting to use these types of tools to improve productivity. Building off prior momentum in AI for testing, software quality professionals are leveraging LLMs for creating tests, generating test scripts, automatically analyzing test results, and more. However, if LLM's are not fed good prompts describing the task that the AI is supposed to perform, their responses can be inaccurate and unreliable, thereby diminishing productivity gains. Join Tariq King as he teaches you how to craft high-quality AI...
AI-Assisted Testing: Using GitHub Copilot and Other Tools to Accelerate QA
There is no question that Generative AI models can improve the productivity of almost every role within the software development process. However, while a lot of attention has focused on generating software using tools such as GitHub Copilot, Amazon CodeWhisperer, Tabnine, and more, these tools can assist software testers in their job too. Join Coveros CEO Jeffery Payne to explore how Generative AI solutions help software testers generate and supplement tests, create automated test scripts, and even suggest improvements to what you’ve already created. Learn how AI can increase test...
The Influential Tester in Agile Development
Avoiding siloed development is a tricky business. It’s so easy for agile teams to fall into the rut of testers only doing traditional testing activities and programmers strictly doing their time-worn coding activities. But there are actually many places testers can be influential and contribute value on cross-functional teams. Robert Sabourin will share several examples of how testing skills can be applied to a wide variety of activities in an agile project. For instance, testers are among the most skilled team members in story grooming, elicitation, and exploration. Risk analysis in self-...
Learn How to Implement a Test Automation Framework in Java
In the realm of software development, the challenge of maintaining high-quality standards while meeting tight deadlines is ever-present. GenAI enabling developers to produce code and potentially even more defects in shorter time clearly calls for more rapid test automation development. One of the most complex and time consuming activities is designing and building an effective test automation framework. Péter will provide some theoretical background, then the attendees will implement a UI test automation framework in Java. One of the key aspects covered in this tutorial is proper...
Modern Web Testing with Cypress
The web has evolved. Finally, testing has too. Cypress is a modern testing tool that answers the testing needs of modern web applications. It has been gaining a lot of traction in the last couple of years, gaining worldwide popularity. If you have been waiting to learn Cypress, wait no more! Filip Hric will guide you through the first steps on how to start using Cypress and set up a project on your own. The good news is, learning Cypress is incredibly easy. You’ll write your first test in no time, and then you’ll discover how to write a full end-to-end test for a modern web application.
Wednesday, September 25
Inflection Points
Software testing was once so difficult that only humans could do it. A million people a year are clicking web pages, hand-crafting scripts that marry code with automation frameworks, and creating permutations of API calls. But, the craft of software testing is changing. Every aspect of software testing is changing. Software engineering is also changing, with software accelerating developers to build “more” and “faster”, and all that software needs to be tested. Software is soon generating software–ever more software that needs to be tested. Even the rates of these changes are...
Engineering Love Stories or Nightmares: Can QA Be Happily Ever After?
Priyanka Halder, VP of QA, will delve into the fascinating journey of quality engineering over the past decade, highlighting the dynamic evolution and innovative strategies that have underpinned the success of billion-dollar health tech and media companies. The talk traces the early days of experimentation with various quality assurance models, both in-house and outsourced, reflecting on the lessons learned and the pivotal decisions that shaped the future of quality in the industry. A significant milestone in this journey was the strategic partnership with the developer experience team and...
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...
Automation Face-Off
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...
Generative AI is Transforming Software Testing: What Testers Need to Know
We have all seen it. The word AI is appearing next to every test tool, and the promises are coming thick and fast. AI seems like the perfect addition to increase the quality of the tests we run, but what if the opposite is true, and it’s the death of quality engineering as we know it? There has been no greater transformation in test quality than test automation in the last decade. We have gone through the horrible years of record and replay automation that never provided the ROI that was promised, and we finally settled on automation engineering, where we treat our automation code with the...
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...
Performance Assurance and SRE - Panel
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-...
AI in Testing: A Moderated Panel Discussion
Artificial intelligence is the newest trend in software testing. But what is it, and how will it impact the tester's role, both today and in the future? What do you need to do to embrace this emerging technology? Tariq King will moderate this panel discussion to give you an opportunity to hear the opinions of industry leaders about AI in testing. You will have a chance to drive the debate, so come prepared with all your AI questions.
Lightning Strikes the Keynotes
Throughout the years, Lightning Talks have been a popular part of the STAR conferences. If you’re not familiar with the concept, Lightning Talks consists of a series of five-minute talks by different speakers within one presentation period. Lightning Talks are the opportunity for speakers to deliver their single biggest bang-for-the-buck idea in a rapid-fire presentation. And now, lightning has struck the STAR keynotes. Some of the best-known experts in testing will step up to the podium and give you their best shot of lightning. Get multiple keynote presentations for the price of one—and...
Thursday, September 26
Revenge of the Nerds: How to Build a Tech Career Niche in the AI-verse
A major question so many of us have on our minds is, HOW do I shift my career to something related to AI so I can stay relevant? This has been coming from industry professionals as well as college grads/new job seekers across ALL industries. QA is no exception! Dona shifted her career to an AI niche in the past year and have hassled and helped many others do the same thing. She want to help YOU do it, too. Let's discuss. What is AI today? What are the five skill sets relevant in the AI-verse? How can you create a career niche in the AI-verse based on your industry and goals? Lastly, Dona...
Automation Zero to Hero in Two Weeks
Several years ago, Dave was a seasoned QA Engineer starting a new job. As the new guy, he was initially tasked with the mind-numbing task of verifying that data in reports matched expected data in a spreadsheet. This task took three weeks to complete manually. He vowed he would never do that again, so the next time around, Dave automated the process in two weeks using an open source automation tool he had never used before, all while laying the foundation for an automation framework that now has over 90 contributors across 12 product lines. Session attendees will learn how to build,...
Agile Security Testing Tools
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...
“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...
Manual Test Cases Suck...So Get Rid of Them!
It has been a commonly held belief that an ever growing list of manual test cases, kept and maintained by the QA team is the best way to provide training, metrics and a roadmap for future automation efforts. But what if this base assumption is wrong? What if instead of having just a number of passing or failing test cases, we could better speak to factors like risk and quality before our products go live and have a little extra time to be creative with our testing? Rebecca Peterson wants to teach you the steps she and her coworkers have made to move towards living documentation that can...
Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3: Building & Testing Great Products in the AI Era
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,...
AI-Assisted Exploratory Testing for Healthcare Software Based on STEEEP Domain of Healthcare Quality
PreviewIn 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...
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
PreviewFeeling 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...
Leveraging and Measuring the Use of Formal Testing Methods in Product Development
PreviewWithout 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...
Not All Who Wander Are Lost—Exploratory Testing in Agile/DevOps
As we modernize and automate our tests in DevOps, or even adopt AI, we need to consider what we might be missing. In this presentation, Aaron will discuss the history of exploratory testing, how it gained popularity with agile and DevOps practices, and why we still need it as we move forward with AI-driven testing. We will briefly look at what a healthy test pyramid involves and discuss why we would want to use planned exploratory testing as part of the healthy pyramid. We will cover how exploratory testing is different than ad hoc testing, how to plan it, time box it, and use a charter....
You Don't Talk about That at Work!
There are things you don't discuss with your colleagues—even less so with your boss. Mental health issues are certainly a big no-no. Sophie Küster will discuss her experiences talking about the big workplace "No-Nos" and how that led her to support herself, as well gaining support from her boss, co-workers, and mentors. Ultimately, being able to discuss these workplace taboos led to her and others becoming their most authentic selves. When Sophie started working as an agile tester, she kept her history a secret. She didn't speak openly about topics that were close to her heart: mental...
Friday, September 27
Feeling Lucky, Won't Delete Later
How many of you know someone who just seems to be REALLY lucky? Good things just seem to happen to them over and over again? A few years ago, I noticed this with people in my life and wondered…is there a way to be lucky on purpose? And turns out--it's very possible! Luck is not a singular binary thing, where you are or are not lucky. Instead it’s 5 (or more) different things, many things you can DIY yourself. In this talk you will learn about the many different kinds of luck, how you can do them on purpose and change your life for good, just like I did!