STAREAST 2025 - Test Techniques
Sunday, April 27
Monday, April 28
Ramping Up Modern Performance
Modern software is developed in a continuous manner, with several backend services frequently being deployed and scaled in the cloud. Furthermore, as organizations move toward agile, DevOps, and continuous delivery, it is vital for them to move away from traditional approaches to evaluate performance. Are you interested in ramping up or polishing your skills on performance testing? Leandro Melendez will introduce attendees to modern, agile, and continuous performance testing. You’ll learn performance assurance principles and everything from fundamental performance concepts like correlation...
Test Automation: How to Start and Succeed
Many organizations invest a lot of effort in test automation at the system level but then have serious problems as their product matures and changes over time. As a leader, how can you ensure that your new automation efforts will get off to a good start? What can you do to ensure that your automation work provides continuing added value? Chris Loder will explain the critical issues you need to know to get a good start, and he will share his extensive experience in building great automation. He covers the most important management issues you should address for test automation success,...
Smarter Test Design with Classification Trees and Pairwise Techniques
In many teams, the total number of possible combinations of inputs, outputs, browsers, and devices for the software we need to test has grown to an alarming number. As testers, we need to choose the most important tests first, but how do we do that without understanding the potential scope in the first place? In this tutorial, Julie Gardiner will share two powerful testing techniques that can help us be more efficient and effective with our testing. Classification trees are a structured, visual approach to identifying test objects and documenting test ideas and data in a way that allows...
Testing on the Right: Lessons in Monitoring and Observability
Observability has exploded onto the software engineering zeitgeist over the last five years, and for a good reason. However, it suffers from being misunderstood and sometimes equated with a closely related subject—monitoring. This confusion is compounded by the fact that some of the existing tools and frameworks just adopted a lot of the observability terminology in just the letter of the word, not the intent. Not having a solid grasp on the basics of observability is becoming unacceptable in the world of effective software quality engineering. Kaushal Dalvi shares his experiences in the...
Formulating Tests that Just Make Sense with Gherkin
NewHave you ever been assigned a test case whose steps just didn’t make sense? Perhaps you’ve even been so guilty as to write such a test! Writing clear, concise functional tests can be challenging, but it’s not impossible if we maintain a behavior-driven mindset. In this tutorial, we will learn how to break down complicated behaviors into runnable, repeatable test cases using the Gherkin language. We will frame tests using classic “Given-When-Then” scenarios that follow the Arrange-Act-Assert pattern. Through group exercises, we will hone our linguistic prowess to write expressive scenarios...
Tuesday, April 29
Web Security Testing: The Basics and More
Web applications are often security critical or serve as front-ends for security critical applications, making web testing for vulnerabilities an essential part of software testing. Unfortunately, most software testers have not been taught how to identify web security issues while testing applications. Join Tom Stiehm as he shares what you need to know to security test web-based applications as part of your overall testing process. Learn about the most common web security vulnerabilities and how they are introduced into web code and exploited by hackers. Explore test techniques for...
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...
Wednesday, April 30
AI/ML SDET: A Title Change or a New Role?
Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Software Development Engineer in Test. What a title! But what does that person even do? Are they using AI/ML to test software? Are they testing AI or ML? This isn’t just a title change for a software tester, this is really a mind shift and tool change. What if you don’t even have a UI in which to test your product? What if you don’t ship a UI or even a product? The world of software is changing with advancements in AI/ML and it is time to make sure we level up our testing abilities to match the revolution. Join Kevin as he walks you through his...
Exploratory Testing Superpowers: Unleashing Your Inner Batman
In this talk, Dan Reiley will touch on a common issue in software testing: scripted tests often miss hidden problems, especially when dealing with fast-changing software. Following rigid checklists limits the ability to uncover deeper bugs. To address this, QA teams the world over turn to exploratory testing, which involves learning, designing, and executing tests at the same time. Drawing from his experience at Sirius XM and with the SiriusXM app, Dan applied three important skills: observation, deduction, and documentation & adaptability. Through careful observation, he discovered...
From Vision to Velocity: Accelerating Agile Testing with Generative AI
In the rapidly evolving landscape of Agile and DevOps, traditional methods of testing business-facing features often struggle to keep pace with the demands for faster and more thorough testing. However, the fusion of traditional testing wisdom with cutting-edge AI presents a unique opportunity to enhance software quality and delivery speed, offering innovative solutions to longstanding challenges. Join Phillip as he examines key test design techniques - such as equivalence partitioning, boundary value analysis, decision table testing, and state transition testing - and explores how...
Enabling a DevOps Culture with Embedded Systems
In today's technology-driven landscape, where software and hardware intertwine seamlessly in embedded systems, adopting a DevOps culture becomes imperative. This talk delves into the dynamic world of embedded systems and explores how organizations can successfully implement and nurture a DevOps culture within this unique domain. DevOps, with its emphasis on collaboration, automation, and continuous improvement, has revolutionized software development. However, adapting these principles to the realm of embedded systems presents distinct challenges and opportunities. The discussion will...
Thursday, May 1
Don’t Just Shift Left—Shimmy: Infusing Quality into the Entire SDLC
In today’s fast-paced software development environments, "shift left" has become a widely adopted practice, encouraging teams to focus on quality earlier in the development lifecycle. While this is a crucial step, it’s not enough to ensure that quality is truly embedded throughout every phase of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). In this session, Amanda will go beyond simply shifting left—exploring how teams can "shimmy," moving fluidly and consistently to infuse quality into every step of the process, from ideation to deployment and beyond. Attendees will learn practical...
Critical Data For Testing
Approximately 80% of the defects that a system has are due to the lack of testing with other types of data. That is why most people see that the system works "as expected" only by testing the happy path, since they only use 1 or 2 different data to test, then have many defects in production. In this talk, you will see some tips on how to do basic data analysis and identify the critical input and output data of a system, select parameters according to time for testing, and select by priority the best scenarios. Finally, this session will outline how to establish an effective testing...
Testing Product Resiliency with Chaos Engineering
PreviewDive into the exhilarating world of Chaos Engineering, where chaos is not a threat, but a catalyst for resilience and innovation of product and security practices. This talk explores the transformative power of Chaos Engineering in navigating the unpredictable landscapes of software testing for product resiliency, which also directly impacts operational security. Organizations are often stuck on the “build it quickly and move on” mindset, leaving opportunities for competitors and security threats to set up their home base. Learn how leading organizations harness controlled chaos to...
Playwright Tips & Tricks—Why Does Microsoft's Framework Perform So Well in Testing?
This session aims to provide a comprehensive overview of Playwright, Microsoft's powerful framework for test automation. Michal will explore its core functionalities and delve into practical tips and tricks to enhance its usage. The session will begin by defining what Playwright is and highlight its key features that set it apart in the testing landscape. The session will then cover advanced usage techniques, including how to effectively utilize the Trace Viewer for generating detailed test reports and implementing concurrency in tests to boost efficiency. Furthermore, Michal will examine...
Stop Listening to the Industry
Making the transition from manual testing to full test automation is hard. Consultants, vendors, speakers and the internet all have their own recommendations about how to get started. The challenge is that sometimes those recommendations do not align to your business’s development strategy or security protocols. So who is right? Do you shirk your company’s best practices that have been developed over time in favor of what the industry says is the ideal configuration? Will the testing rules be the same tomorrow? Maybe it’s time to blaze your own testing trail. In this session, Ingrid Warden...