STAREAST 2025 - Agile Testing
Sunday, April 27
Fundamentals of AI—ICAgile Certification (ICP-FAI)
Monday, April 28
Stop Guessing and Start Planning with Better Behavior Discovery
NewAre you tired of working on user stories that seem to be missing vital details for testing? Are you frustrated with being left out of vital design conversations? Or are you fed up with sizing estimates that never turn out to be true to reality? Then it’s time to stop guessing your way through product development and start planning it with better behavior discovery. In this tutorial, we will learn how three vital roles – business, development, testing – can collaborate on what features to build and test through the structured activities of story mapping and example mapping. We will practice...
Test Automation Strategies: Navigating DevOps, Agile, and Complex Technologies
In the era of DevOps, agile methodologies, and the ever-expanding landscape of intricate technologies, the traditional bulky test automation strategy document has rapidly lost its relevance. Testers are grappling with the challenge of succinctly communicating intricate testing objectives. Yet, a beacon of optimism shines through! A streamlined, actionable, and impactful test automation strategy tailored for agile, DevOps, and even the notorious waterfall approach is within reach. Join Janna as she draws upon real-world test strategies from her experience, deconstructing the essential...
Badass Agile Coaching Skills for Everyone
Some perspectives imply that Agile Coaching is for a small set of specialized agilists who serve to improve everyone else or that it’s a unique role that others, including managers and leaders, shouldn’t do or will find difficult to master. This talk intends to debunk those notions by illustrating the power and impact of Agile Coaching skills for everyone. In this workshop, Bob Galen will explore the nuance associated with Agile Coaching to demystify it. He’ll share and explore the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel as a competency model for agile coaching. We’ll do a deep dive into the critical...
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...
Automation Framework Essentials
Automation is critical in today’s software delivery lifecycle, and yet many organizations struggle to keep their automation running. How can we mitigate difficulties and get consistent automation runs and results we can trust? The secret is implementing a solid automation framework, but that isn’t as easy as it seems. Chris Loder has built several automation frameworks over his career and has learned what works—and, more importantly, what doesn’t. This tutorial will cover what an automation framework is, the benefits of having one, and the keys to a successful framework, including...
Tuesday, April 29
Creating a High-Performance Agile Team
Many teams have a relatively easy time adopting the tactical aspects of agile methodologies. Usually, a few classes, some tools’ introduction, and a bit of practice lead teams toward fairly efficient execution. However, these teams are quite often simply going through the motions—neither maximizing their agile performance nor delivering as much value as they could. Borrowing from their experience and lean software development methods, Bob Galen and Mary Thorn explore high-performance team patterns, which are the thinking models of mature agile teams, including large-scale emergent...
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...
Agile Test & Transformation Leadership in Action
Leading and driving change in our companies, organizations, and teams can be as difficult as pushing a wet rope uphill! Even with the best processes and tools, we may not achieve our business and customer satisfaction goals when our environment is stuck in the status quo. Ultimately, transforming an organization is about changing culture. Our values, beliefs, goals, assumptions, purpose, priorities, and other factors influence culture. Test managers and leaders are critical players in driving cultural change. Mike Sowers will explore the key attributes of being a Test Transformation Leader...
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-...
Quality and Testing Measures and Metrics
To be most effective, leaders—including development and testing managers, ScrumMasters, product owners, and IT managers—need metrics to help direct their efforts and make informed recommendations about the software’s release readiness and associated risks. Because one important evaluation activity is to “measure” the quality of the software, the progress and results of both development and testing must be measured. Collecting, analyzing, and using metrics are complicated because developers and testers often are concerned that the metrics will be used against them. Join Mike Sowers as he...
Wednesday, April 30
SQL Server Indexing Strategies Using Query Store for Improved Performance in Retrieving Data
In the realm of database management, optimizing query performance is crucial, especially for SQL Server environments dealing with large datasets. The challenge lies in identifying and implementing effective indexing strategies that can significantly enhance data retrieval performance. During her talk, Navya will address the common issues of slow query performance and inefficient indexing, often exacerbated by the complexity of modern data systems and the dynamic nature of query patterns. To tackle this problem, she leveraged SQL Server's Query Store feature, which provides a powerful tool...
Thursday, May 1
Redefining Quality: Empowering Autonomous Teams for SaaS Excellence
Traditional roles within software development teams are being redefined in today’s fast-paced world of cloud platforms and Software as a Service (SaaS). The rise of DevOps has blurred the boundaries between development and operations, emphasizing speed, agility, and continuous delivery. Amid this transformation, the debate about whether to have a separate QA team is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Instead, the focus should shift to building autonomous, cross-functional teams equipped with the skills and ownership required to deliver high-quality SaaS products efficiently. Ronit...
Enhancing Automation Testing with Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) and the Screenplay Pattern
In Esri's quest to improve automation testing, they faced a significant challenge: integrating Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) into the existing framework without discarding established tools. The goal was to maintain a shared business language while simplifying the testing process. To tackle this, Junuen's team adopted the screenplay pattern and rebuilt their XCUITest framework from the ground up. This innovative structure focused on tasks, interactions, and abilities, all elements of the screenplay pattern, enabling them to prioritize what truly mattered in their tests: the end-user...
The Revolution Was Not Televised: Software QA in the Era of Streaming and Livestreaming Services
You heard about it—Netflix's Love is Blind Live event fiasco last year, Pluto's VMA's blues in LATAM, and other subpar experiences for some streaming services, both live and on-demand. How is software QA involved in those? Or, how was it NOT involved? As content production and distribution companies consolidate and grow their streaming services and peripheral activities including: user personalization, loyalty, and engagement; tailored quality assurance and testing efforts become critical to ensure a fully immersive and optimal experience. In this session, Ramy will explore how to scope,...
Reception and Summit Kickoff: As a Leader, What Is Keeping You Up at Night?
Kickoff the Testing & Quality Leadership Summit with a reception and some networking.
Friday, May 2
Summit Welcome - Opening Remarks
After enjoying the Summit breakfast starting at 8:00 AM, join your moderator Jeff Payne as we kick off the STAREAST Testing & Quality Leadership Summit for 2025.
Balancing AI Innovations with Fundamental QA Principles
The pressure to adopt new technologies like AI and automation without a strong foundation in core QA principles is fraught with risk. Jumping into AI without understanding how to best leverage AI within QA for business success can cause quality issues. But lagging behind your competitors when it comes to utilizing AI can result in loss of market share. Join Igor Dorovskikh as he guides QA leaders on creating a balanced approach that integrates the use of AI capabilities within essential QA fundamentals. You'll learn how to define and implement these core principles, identify the pitfalls...
Summit Lean Coffee: Leadership Secrets from the Room
While everyone has their own approach to leadership, we all have our go-to tips and tricks that can help others lead teams, organizations, and ourselves. These may be techniques for motivating staff, growing team skills, managing senior executives, or finding the right people for your organization.
During this collaborative lean coffee session, Jeffery Payne will facilitate a discussion to elicit and discuss those leadership secrets used effectively by Summit participants. Using a lean coffee meeting format, participants will choose which aspects of leadership to discuss, vote on...
Think Tank Discussion Parts I, II, III, and Wrap-Up
Think Tank Discussion Part I: Problem Definitions | 11:15 AM
Join with your peers in an engaging and highly interactive session to discuss the issues that affect you most. Using answers to the question “As a Leader, What is Keeping You Up at Night?” posed at Thursday’s evening reception, participants will form small groups to work on finding solutions to pressing leadership & management issues. Discussions will review identified issues, barriers to change, and focus on innovative strategies and practical next steps. At the end of the think tank, all feedback will be collected and...