STAREAST 2025 - Project Manager
Customize your STAREAST 2025 experience with sessions covering project management.
Sunday, April 27
Fundamentals of AI—ICAgile Certification (ICP-FAI)
Monday, April 28
Facilitating Team Decisions
One of the agile manifesto principles is “Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.” Tricia Broderick wishes this principle was written to say, motivated teams. Because leaders giving the environment and support for individuals to make team decisions is anything but trivial. Achieving effective decisions goes beyond bringing people together for consensus. This approach may lead to groupthink or repeating decision meetings. Instead, leaders facilitate collaboration by building and tapping into the co-...
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...
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...
Become Your Company's Quality Consultant
Companies of all sizes face difficulties in achieving higher quality standards within their organization. As quality engineering includes various roles and activities, it is also challenging to find the right people to analyze the current state from a wide perspective and provide the recommendations that will allow these organizations to mature their teams, improving their DevOps culture in the process. Join Péter Földházi as he illustrates the knowledge and skills necessary to become your company's quality consultant. Péter's goal is to involve engineers from beginner to advanced levels...
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...
Leading Change
Leading change requires something other than issuing directives and using checklists to validate execution. As much as I love a checkmark, no one wants the role of "did you do it?" over and over. Leaders have significant influence on whether a change is understood, embraced and retained within the organization. In this deep dive session, discover and examine the aspects necessary for creating and building a culture of change and resilience. Expect to walk away with practical alternatives to the dreaded "trust but verify" implementation approaches.
The Craft of Highly Effective Agile Leadership
Based on the learning objectives from the iCAgile, Leading with Agility workshop, this ½ day version will explore the craft of agile leadership in guiding your journey to becoming a catalyst leader. Along the way, we'll explore the why of leading with agility, how to develop and grow your personal agility, tactics for developing and deepening your organizational relationships, and approaches for leading cultural and organizational transformation. Critical topics include your responsibility in shaping a culture that is inclusive, safe, empowered, aligned, and results/impact-focused. We also...
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
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
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...
Treat Your Test Tools Like a Real Product
Have you ever had a QA tool fail to gain momentum? Ever had a splintered array of test automation frameworks that does the exact same thing across your quality engineering organization? Ever have a hard time getting leadership to sign off for tools that you know could easily boost testing productivity? If you answered yes to any of these, come join Albrecht in this crash course in building your quality engineering roadmap. In this session, Albrecht will go over how to build a product roadmap that aligns with your organization's goals and identify key milestones, to ensure your toolset is...
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...