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Past Meetings 2000

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Please read our SASQAG End of Year 2000 Report.
Quality Assurance in Incremental Development and Maintenance Projects November 2000 Measuring and improving the quality of development projects that use an incremental development or maintenance lifecycle is sometimes difficult. Often, the time it takes to review documentation and code is longer than the time to make the changes. This presentation will help project managers, project leads, developers, and QA managers understand how to tailor QA and QC tools and techniques to effectively measure and improve development and maintenance processes. PowerPoint Slides 391KB	Tom Gilchrist, CSQE, CQA Mr. Gilchrist has worked at Boeing for the last 16 years as a lead software engineer, senior software engineer, and is currently an Associate Technical Fellow in the field of software quality assurance for Boeing Commercial Aircraft Group, Information Systems. Before his work at Boeing, he worked as the principal in a number of software development startup companies and has worked as a software development consultant. Tom is a member of the American Society for Quality (ASQ), has been named a certified quality analyst (CQA) by the Quality Assurance Institute, and serves as the ASQ software division's Region 6 deputy counselor. Tom is currently involved in the University of Washington's Extension certificate program in software testing as both an instructor and as a member of the advisory board.
Automation Testing Using Visual Basic October 2000 Visual Basic is one of the most popular and widely available programming languages in use today. It can also be the automation program of choice for testing Windows applications. The expense of most major automation testing tools has led many companies to investigate using Visual Basic scripts to automate their software testing. Visual Basic is flexible and easy-to-use, which makes it a valuable tool in many different capacities on a testing project. Power Point Slides and a Word paper in a 287KB ZIP file.	Mary Sweeney, Technical Instructor and Automation Specialist for Data Dimensions, Inc. Ms. Sweeney has taught courses and consulted on automation topics across the United States and in London, England. Mary has been a speaker at Star East 2000 and the Seattle Visual Basic Developer's Association. She holds degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics from Seattle University and a certificate in Software Engineering Management from the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie-Mellon University. Mary is on the faculty at Bellevue Community College teaching software development courses.
Test Requirements: The Basis of Testing September 2000 What do you measure during testing for test coverage? How do you track your test requirements? Where do you get your test requirements if you don't get good functional/technical requirements? This presentation highlights a longer 2-hour version of a class at SAFECO that establishes a baseline understanding among testers regarding test requirements in a world where you may not necessarily have functional or technical requirements handed to you. Test Requirements PowerPoint slides 259KB.	David Capocci, CQA, CSTE - Senior Quality Assurance Systems Analyst, SAFECO Insurance David has been in the QA/QC field for 11 years now. You may know him as SASQAG's coordinator for local certification exams. He is currently working on baselining the SAFECO QA community with a set of QC skills, process framework, and standards through the use of "In-Service" training sessions from SAFECO's IS Education department. David is a senior consultant to the SAFECO QA units in all areas of QA, specializing in automation strategy. He has served in an advisory role for the University of Washington's Software Testing program and as an instructor for the certificate in Software Testing.
Developing Testing Personnel Classroom Education vs. On The Job Training August 2000 Bring your comments and experiences and join our panel members for a lively discussion comparing the benefits and differences between Classroom Education and On The Job Training. Life As a Tester PowerPoint Slides 59KB	Steve Tockey, Vice President, Contrux Software Hiroko Roe - Senior Program Manager, UW Extension, University of Washington Mike Powers - Principal Consultant, Data Dimensions, Inc. Michael Kammer, CSTE - QA HW/SW Test Engineer, Palm Inc.
Process Compliance in Practice Tools & Techniques for Managing Processes July 2000 We hear a lot about process in how software is developed. What is the evidence that the process is effective? How do you "harvest" process benefits? In this presentation, Dr. Jolley discusses how the Gilchrist-Nelson Two-Engine Model is utilized to sustain processes by addressing these questions. With the goal of process tracking and oversight to support decisions that a process manager has to make daily, key process attributes are defined and tracked, including benefits, usage, responsibilities, and process category. Skip will not only discuss some of the steps he has gone through in managing complexity through process, but will also show typical examples. Acrobat Slides 27KB	Skip Jolley, PhD After earning a PhD in Computer Science in 1972, Dr. Jolley evolved from a software engineering practitioner in the 70's (consulting firm, military systems engineering firm) and 80's (Boeing) to a process engineering practitioner in the 90's (Boeing). Currently Skip is manager of a project providing an architecture and supported processes that enable engineers to access all applications required to perform their role in a key business process.
Building an eBusiness Test Group June 2000 Imagine that you have just been offered a dream job - setting up a QA department at an exciting eBusiness startup. Would you know where to begin? How to staff your department? How to build a test environment? What processes to put in place first? From his personal experience, Mr. Hancock can answer all of these questions. He will explain the primary considerations necessary for success, and he will describe some of the avoidable pitfalls. You will learn what it takes to ensure a high quality ecommerce web site. Acrobat Slides 50KB	Jim Hancock Mr. Hancock is the Director of Quality Assurance at CVS.com, where he is responsible for the quality of the CVS.com web site and order fulfillment. His prior experience includes work at ST Labs/DDI as the Client-Server Group Test Manager and Senior Test Lead, with a focus on test automation, client-server and Internet testing. He has recently been accepted into the Executive MBA program at the University of Washington.
Testing Object-Oriented Software May 2000 Object orientation is becoming the new paradigm in software design, development, and programming. What affect does this shift have on test planning and practices? How much must a tester understand about objects and object models to design and execute effective tests? This presentation will show how to apply conventional techniques, such as black box and white box testing, and will explain some of the challenges and opportunities for testing that are created by the new world of object-oriented programming. Acrobat Slides 130KB	Steve Tockey Mr. Tockey has spent nearly 20 years in the software industry, working at Lawrence Livermore Labs, Boeing, and Rockwell Collins. He is an expert in object-oriented development, distributed computing, and related software quality assurance techniques. His work is widely published and he has taught software engineering courses at Seattle University. He is currently the Vice President of Consulting at Construx Software in Bellevue and is the corporate representative to the Object Management Group.
A Low Tech Testing Dashboard April 2000 Dashboards are a widespread tool in project management. James Bach will present a particular formulation of a testing dashboard that helps to educate project staff and management on the basic structure and dynamics of a test process, and communicates actionable information, not just a bunch of numbers. Learn how this device was used successfully at Aurigin Systems, Inc. to explain test cycle status to managers and developers. Acrobat Slides 51KB	James Bach Mr. Bach is founder and owner of Satisfice, Inc., specializing in heuristic testing, risk-based testing, exploratory testing, and other practices that have become state of the art in this world of rapid, component-based software development. He is a frequent presenter at software testing conferences and a well-known contributor to a variety of industry journals. James spent several years in the Seattle area as Chief Scientist at STLabs (now Data Dimensions), before founding his company in Virginia.
Configuration Management for the Enterprise March 2000 Wondering how you can build more software, faster, and know exactly what you're shipping to your customers? A panel of experts will tell you how to get control of your business in two words - Configuration Management. Trained and certified by the internationally recognized Institute of Configuration Management, our distinguished panel are members of a local chapter of Configuration Management professionals, the Northwest CMII Users Group. They will offer real-life examples of how a solid CM program provides the foundation for success - of the change control process, software development process, and the entire enterprise. PowerPoint 2000 Slides 226KB	Thomas Robinson Mr. Robinson is a Configuration Management Architect/Analyst and past president of the Northwest CMII Users Group. Scott Etherington Mr. Etherington has developed engineering release processes and audit procedures. He is president-elect of the Northwest CMII Users Group. Patrick Forbes Mr. Forbes is a Business Systems Analyst for IS QA systems and is the current president of the Northwest CMII Users Group.
The Tools and Techniques of Software Quality Assurance (keeping rework from destroying your business plan) February 2000 How do you define quality and what can you do to define, measure, and improve it in a software development environment? Tom will outline some basic tools and techniques anyone can use to build an SQA strategy that will produce manageable results. Whether you are a software developer, tester, project manager, or SQA focal, this presentation will outline some of the basic tools and techniques you can take back to your organization to answer the question "how can we develop software products that our customers value?" The talk will include handouts that can be used to implement many of the techniques discussed in the presentation. PowerPoint Slides 903KB	Tom Gilchrist Mr. Gilchrist has worked at Boeing for the last 16 years as a lead software engineer, senior software engineer, and is currently an Associate Technical Fellow in the field of software quality assurance for Boeing Commercial Aircraft Group, Information Systems. Before his work at Boeing, he worked as the principal in a number of software development startup companies and has worked as a software development consultant. Tom is a member of the American Society for Quality (ASQ), has been named a certified quality analyst (CQA) by the Quality Assurance Institute, and serves as the ASQ software division's Region 6 deputy counselor. Tom is currently involved in the University of Washington's Extension certificate program in software testing as both an instructor and as a member of the advisory board.
Internet Quality Assurance January 2000 Does all of the news about Internet startups and e-commerce make you wonder how quality programs are implemented in such a fast-paced environment? Software development for the Internet offers some familiar challenges as well as some new ones. Learn about several successful techniques for rapid application development, including paper prototyping, HTML prototyping, writing test cases at requirements time, and load testing as early as possible. We'll also hear about potential pitfalls, such as software licensing, hardware capacity, firewalls, caching, and hardware requirements for load testing. PowerPoint Slides 100KB	Mark Bullock Mr. Bullock currently manages the Quality Assurance team for Driveway.com, an Internet file storage and sharing service. He entered the software testing field after 12 years as a software developer. Mark has years of experience using Software Inspections and was actually asked to slow down a development project..

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