STAREAST 2025 - Test Strategy, Planning, Metrics
Sunday, April 27
Wednesday, April 30
Heuristics to Help You Design, Build, and Choose Test Tools
How well do we design and acquire our tools? Drawing on compelling evidence gathered from a series of interviews, workshops, surveys, and case studies with industry gurus and hands-on practitioners, we’re diving deep into a set of heuristics. Each one is a gateway to discovery, backed by explanations and enriched with engaging exploratory activities based on solid research. As an attendee, you will gain access to resources that can help enable critical thinking and reflection about tools and the problems they solve. We will see how sometimes heuristics can pinpoint when a tool might...
Building a QA Team from the Ground Up
At some point in your career - especially at newer companies and start ups, there might come a time when you are hired onto a development team as the very FIRST QA hire! With such an exciting opportunity, there is so much at stake. Your performance will not only depend on your testing skills, but your ability to add value to the development process AND the product! In this presentation Stephanie will go over her own experience building a QA team, and some important milestones and challenges she hit along the journey. She will talk about how to evaluate the team you are being hired into,...
Expanding Your Testing Scope: Thinking Beyond System Health
A big part of testing is ensuring that you're anticipating and proactively detecting problems before they appear. This means thinking beyond bugs and errors and considering tests that assess your system's ability to meet the needs of the business and customers. For example, most businesses and architectures are designed to deliver operational and cost efficiency. The challenge is, many organizations don't actively test/measure their efficiency. Customers also have expectations about their experience. What testing do you do to evaluate how the system is meeting its experience goals? This...
Elevating Test Leadership: Strategies for Effective Team Management and Career Growth
Mastering test leadership involves not only guiding your team through complex testing scenarios but also fostering their professional development and advancing your own career trajectory. In today’s fast-evolving tech landscape, test leaders face the challenge of balancing rigorous quality assurance with identifying the talent, development of team’s skills and career trajectories. During his tenure as Practice Head of Quality Engineering at a major tech firm, Srinivas Rao Labhani implemented a comprehensive strategy of implementing a sense of belongingness to the organization, learning...
How to Automate Your Desktop Apps with Ruby and Appium
Desktop automation is not easy, and for a while, Augustin Gottlieb Pequeno found automatically testing desktop apps a challenge. In this talk, he will share his automation journey with you so you can avoid the pitfalls and pain points common to desktop automation and properly build an automation framework for your desktop apps that can run on a CI/CD pipeline, while being able to support cross-platform testing. In addition, he will also explore the use of Ruby for test automation and how this often overlooked niche language is perfect for desktop automation testing when combined with...
Panel - Revolutionizing Test Automation: The Impact of Generative AI on Quality Engineering
As Generative AI rapidly reshapes how we work, its impact on quality engineering and more specifically test automation is profound. Join our panel of AI and testing experts as they dive into how Gen AI is transforming testing practices, from creating smarter automation frameworks to redefining manual testing roles. Explore cutting-edge tools, discuss the challenges of integrating AI into test strategies, and debate the ethical implications of AI-driven quality engineering. This thought-provoking session will be driven by your questions and thus provide actionable insights, inspire...
Thursday, May 1
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,...
Why Testing Needs to Be Part of Your Brand Loyalty Strategy
Every experience counts – In a recent Sauce Labs study, 57% of consumers said they’d consider switching to a competitor after just 3-4 negative interactions with a company’s website, software, or mobile app. With all the options available, consumers are growing less forgiving, putting a bigger emphasis on the need for a clear brand loyalty strategy that takes the execution of the digital experience into bigger consideration. Design and engineering are key to the equation and the culmination of that is implementing a testing strategy – one that makes the rollout and updating of new features...
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...