UK Tester Forums

Finding Quality Assurance Harmony in Agile – A Practical Road Map to Success - George Wilson, Original Software
Agile is a methodology that requires a change in the way QA and development work together. The use of technology and automation are much more difficult and finding a practical approach to testing is critical for successful Agile projects. George Wilson will explore how testing in Agile is different and give pragmatic advice to ensure application quality within an Agile environment.

Performance management: from black art to process - Peter Holditch, Dynatrace Software
Gartner state that 60% of priority 1 and 2 production issues arise from the application level, not the underlying infrastructure, and as complexity continues to increase this trend is set to continue.

We will be discussing what information needs to be gathered from production, test and even earlier, what tools need to be used – and in which of the dev, test, prod silos they apply, in order to systematically manage this without distracting developers by making them into part time ‘ninja operators’. We will also look at the common bugbears of troubleshooting: reproducing issues in test and effectively narrowing down the root-cause of complex application issues, with a final reflection on how some of these elements might be brought together into systematic processes. Essentially, how can we attempt to put an end to today’s requirement for ad-hoc non-functional wizardry and foster harmony between developers, testers and operators?

Seven Things That You Might Not Know – (But may find really useful) - Graham Thomas, Independent
This workshop will take you on a magical journey through some very useful but mostly unknown tools for perception and comprehension which will aid you in your daily testing life.

The tools, and their techniques are easy, fun to learn, and very powerful to use. And they will help you to master testing in the industry’s currently very demanding transition from that of a structured V-model history to a leaner, more agile and exploratory approach.

Effective Load Testers. Who are they? How are they created? - Gordon McKeown, Facilita
This session is an exploration of the qualities, experience and career trajectories of successful load testing personnel. Are load testers best if they are “ex something else”? Are ex-developers the best pool of talent? Should load testing be a part-time role for current developers? Can functional testers become load testers? Is “trainee load tester” a realistic role for a fresh graduate? What is career progression for a load testing specialist? Is a good team the sum of disparate parts and are there in fact various types of effective load tester? All this and more will be put under the spotlight as we exchange experiences and views.

A Framework for Testing in Scrum Projects - Paul Gerrard, Gerrard Consulting
Scrum seems to have spread like a virus in organisations wishing to adopt an Agile approach. In fact, many teams seem to think that because they use Scrum they ARE agile. Naive Scrum adopters make a familiar, foolish mistake: "Doing less IS agile". Based on recent project work, this session introduces a framework for testing in Scrum projects that addresses some problems facing Scrum adopters.