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Agile Testing. What Is It?
Can It Work?
November 2002
Software testers and quality
professionals have mixed reactions to Extreme Programming and other agile
development methodologies that favor speed over process. Do they provide
better ways to deliver software? Or are they simply licenses for hacking?
Bret Pettichord will review these trends and discuss his experiences working
as a tester on agile projects. He'll present what testers can learn from
agile techniques and values regardless of whether they are working on agile
projects themselves.
Pettichord believes they
present a unique opportunity to develop a practice for agile testing that
uses tests as a way of communicating intention and expectation throughout
the project team. Agile methods currently say little about the role of the
tester. Come hear his discussion of how testers can help ensure smooth
sailing on agile projects.
PDF slides 146KB
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Bret Petticord
Bret Pettichord is a consultant and trainer who
specializes in software testing and test automation. He is co-author of Lessons
Learned in Software Testing, a Jolt Award finalist. He is the editor of
TestingHotlist.com and a columnist for StickyMinds.com. He is currently
researching testability, tests as specifications and relationships between
testers and developers.
Bret is based in Austin, Texas.
http://www.pettichord.com
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Software Process Reviews and Audits:
How, When, and Why
October 2002
A good software development and maintenance manager uses
processes to be successful. Once processes are defined and documented,
someone needs to see if they effective and useful. If they aren't, they
need to be modified. Of course, it's always a good idea to see if they are
being used before setting off to improve them. This presentation will
outline what process reviews/checks are, how they are done, and what you do with
the findings and observations. Unlike audits done in well defined
environments (like accounting), software process checks need to be tailored to
the ever-changing risks of the program they are monitoring. If you do
process engineering, manage, lead, or do measurement, this presentation will
give you some ideas to do your job more effectively and predictably.
PowerPoint slides 239KB
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Tom Gilchrist, CSQE, CSQA
Mr. Gilchrist has worked at Boeing for the last 19 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. He currently is a program focal for Accreditation
and Quality Assurance for a large, factory software improvement program.
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) and
serves as the ASQ software division's Region 6 counselor. Tom is currently
involved in the University of Washington's Extension Software Testing
Certificate program as both an instructor and as a member of the advisory board.
He also is the chairman of the Seattle Area Software Quality Assurance Group.
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Overview of Six Sigma in a Software Company
September 2002
Lean how to apply Six Sigma quality control techniques to software to
improve customer satisfaction and development productivity.
PowerPoint slides 127KB
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Russ Albright, Director of Six Sigma, Microsoft
Mr. Albright is responsible for determining
the effective use of Six Sigma, driving key improvement projects and Six Sigma
training and mentoring for the Microsoft product teams. Prior to joining
Microsoft in 1997, Russ served as Senior Director of Finance and Productivity at
Nabisco, Inc. where he held a variety of positions including merger and
acquisition integration and launching a major productivity initiative.
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The Change Agent: Leveraging the Testing Role
August 2002
How can you help change your corporate culture to appropriately regard the
role of testing? Learn to position testing as a valued part of the project
team. Since testers provide the expertise in such critical areas as defect
detection and prevention, their meri can be leverage simply by making their
function understood by other project team members. You'll learn to:
Publish a framework model that makes testing visible and clear to your audience.
Balance your approach among the 3 P's: People, Process, and Project.
Implement standardized techniques in soliciting & organizing test
requirements.
Change Agent slides
PDF 67KB
QA Test Planning
diagram PDF 70KB
QC Framework
diagram PDF 157KB
SDLC Components
and Roles diagram PDF 12KB
Example Test
Requirements PDF 94KB
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David Capocci, CSQA, CSTE
Senior QA/QC Consultant, SAFECO Insurance
Mr. Capocci serves on the Advisory Board for the University of Washington
Software Testing Certificate program and has taught classes for the
program. He coordinates Seattle exams offered by QAI through SASQAG.
He has presented at QAI's International Software Testing and Extrement Testing
conferences, and at the STAR conference.
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A Database Testing and QA Roadmap
July
2002
"This talk will give you a top-down
checklist for covering database testing and quality
assurance issues."
Database testing is an often-overlooked area of the testing process.
This
talk presents the essential checkpoints for testing the back end database
as a stand-alone module, and as a component of an application.
PowerPoint
Slides (160KB)
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by Ron Talmage
Mr. Talmage heads Prospice, LLC, a database consulting firm based in
Seattle.
Ron is current president of the Pacific Northwest SQL Server User
group, a Microsoft SQL Server MVP, and co-editor of the PASS newsletter.
He writes for SQL Server Magazine, and SQL Server Professional,
and has a series of articles on testing SQL Server in CoDe magazine.
Ron has presented at numerous conferences, most recently at Microsoft
Tech Ed Europe in Barcelona, Spain. You can reach him at rtalmage at prospice.com
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Working
in Open Space: A Special Guided Tour
June
2002
In these times of swirling change, conversation
qualifies as real work and is essential for powerful, profitable action.
As specialization and customization increase, complex webs of
relationships and information emerge, pressure for frontline
decision-making and on-time delivery rises, and individual control seems
to be slipping away, it's never been more important to be deeply connected
with our partners at work. Open Space Technology is a simple, powerful way
to catalyze effective working conversations and truly inviting
organizations to thrive in times of swirling change.
During the presentation, John will be soliciting
suggestions on how to make SASQAG more relevant and useful to you, our
membership. If you would like to join the discussion (and even it you
don't), please plan to join us for this special event. Be prepared for
something different and exciting you can take back and use in your working
environment.
PowerPoint
Slides
(not used at meeting...for further info)150 KB
Reports
from Open Space (Word,) 86 KB
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by John Napier
Mr. Napier is an independent software quality consultant with multiple
certifications from the Quality Assurance Institute, the American Society for
Quality, IEEE and the Project Management Institute. John is no stranger to
SASQAG. Athough he has not recently been a member of the SASQAG leadership
team, he was one of SASQAG's founders, the first public meeting speaker and our
first Membership Chair, BB (before Berit).
Special Support from:
Peggy Holman, The Open Circle Company
www.opencirclecompany.com
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Ten
Guaranteed Ways to Fail at Improving Software Quality and Ten Better Approaches
May 2002
The software business has suffered from decades of optimistic
delusions about methods for getting control of quality and deadlines. Many
methods and tools are enthusiastically tried for a while, but do not deliver and
fade away. Some methods persistently deliver if used correctly - but we have a
habit of not using our best methods correctly - and they fail in that case too.
In addition many people assume that quality means few bugs - yet real software
quality is a large number of quality dimensions such as reliability (which is
NOT bug density, of course), maintainability, portability, usability,
adaptability, interconnectivity, testability. So we are going to argue that
tools which are only focused on bugs, and which cannot directly deal with all
other dimensions of quality will fail to get us the qualities our stakeholders
need.
Get the slides in
PowerPoint (2MB) or PDF (2MB) format
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by Tom Gilb
International Software Consultant, Author, and Lecturer
Mr. Gilb was born in Pasadena in 1940, emigrated to London
1956, and to Norway 1958, where he joined IBM for 5 years, and where he
resides when not traveling. He has mainly worked within the software
engineering community, but since 1983 with Corporate Top Management
problems, and 1988 with large-scale systems engineering. He is an
independent teacher, consultant and writer. He has published eight books,
including the early coining of the term "Software Metrics"
(1976) which is the basis for SEI CMM Level 4. He wrote "Principles
of Software Engineering Management" (1988, now in 13th printing), and
"Software Inspection" (1993). Both titles are really systems
engineering books in software disguise. His pro-bono systems engineering
activities include several weeks a year for US DoD and Norwegian DoD, and
Environmental (EPA) and Third-World Aid charities and organizations.
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The IEEE Computer Society's
Certified Software Development Professional Exam
Overview and Discussion
April 2002
The IEEE has recently approved a certification
examination for a Certified Software Development Professional (CSDP). The
exam is targeted for mid-level software engineers with 9,000 hours of experience
in the exam body of knowledge. The initial pilot of this exam was
conducted in the spring of 2001. The test window for the first regular
exam is April 15 - June 30, 2002. The test window for the second regular
exam is October 5-26, 2002.
This presentation will provide an overview of the application process and CSDP
certification requirements, taking the exam, the examination day, and what
happens after the examination. Mr. Tripp will discuss the general body of
knowledge along with recommended bibliographical reference resources, and the
value of those resources. You will learn how many people have taken and
passed as well as general criteria for passing the exam.
Get the slides in
PowerPoint format (102KB)
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by Leonard Tripp
Chairman, IEEE Professional Practices Committee
Mr. Tripp works as a Technical Fellow at The Boeing
Company in the areas of software engineering processes, standards, and
certification. He is the chair of the Professional Practices
Committee of the IEEE Computer Society. Leonard served as the 1999
President for IEEE. He has developed software engineering standards
since 1982, including being chair of the IEEE Software Engineering
Standards Committee from 1992 to 1998. From 1993 to 1998 he served
as the US Head of Delegation to the ISO committee on software engineering
standards. He has authored three books and 45 technical papers.
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Debate on Metrics (BTSSB or CWOT)
March 2002
Are software metrics the Best Thing Since Sliced Bread (BTSSB),
or a Complete Waste Of Time (CWOT)?
"What gets measured gets done." Is this true in software?
Come join a debate on the relevance of metrics in software. There will be
plenty of time for the audience to pose questions to the panel, so think of some
good ones. Come prepared to cheer on your favorite side and "boo and
hiss" the opposition. These debates are popular and fun and you're
almost certain to learn something.
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by Steve Neuendorf (and others)
Mr. Neuendorf has spent eighteen years in
software engineering metrics and process improvement, and the 15 years
before that in various consulting, teaching, industrial engineering, and
cost and management accounting positions. He is experienced with Function
Point Analysis (FPA). He has designed and implemented processes that use
FPA for management and improvement of activities and processes. Steve is
well versed in the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity
Model. He is familiar with ISO 9000 standards and their use and has worked
extensively with ASME commercial and nuclear quality standards.
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Patterns of Software Test (PoST)
February 2002
This talk will give a brief overview of patterns. It begins with
Alexander and his architectural patterns and gives as an example the
"window place" pattern. Example patterns from the Design
Patterns book will be presented. You will learn about work on
software testing patterns including Binder's book. The
Category-Partition pattern will be used as an example. Finally
you'll hear about the Workshop on Patterns of Software Test, including a
brief discussion of how to write patterns and examples such as the
Architectural Achilles Heel and Test Result patterns.
Get the slides
in Adobe PDF format (417KB)
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by Keith Stobie
ASQ-certified Software Quality Engineer
Mr. Stobie works as a Test Architect at Mcrosoft
where he plans, designs, and reviews software architectures. He
currently works on a web services runtime for .NET. He directed and
instructed in QA and test process and strategy at BEA Systems, including
project work on BEA WebLogic Collaborate and WebLogic Enterprise.
With over 20 years in the field, Kieth is a leader in testing methodology,
tools technology, and quality process. He is a qualified instructor
for systematic software testing and software inspections. Keith is
active in the software task group of ASQ and participates in IEEE 2003 and
2003.2 standards on test methods. He has published several articles
and presented at many quality and testing conferences. Keith has a
BS in Computer Science from Cornell University.
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Process Improvement While Management Isn't Looking
January 2002
Many of the presentations and articles that talk about process improvement
state that upper management support is crucial to a successful process
improvement initiative. But what if you don't have that support?
The presenter wil offer several strategies to get your process improvement
started while management isn't looking. These strategies will
included data collection and presentation methods, forming alliances,
getting the information you need, and establishing a corporate memory.
Get the slides
in PowerPoint format (110KB).
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by Earl Beede, Senior Process Architect ,
Construx Software
Mr. Beede leads several of Construx's public and
on-site seminars. He has worked over the past 13 years in the
telecommunications, aerospace, and defense industries. He is a
member of the IEEE Computer Society.
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