STAREAST 2025 - Test Management

Do you want to take your testing and/or development skills to the next level? Are you working in an agile team where you are trying to shift-left so that your organization can reap the full benefits of testing earlier? In software testing, you're generally taught to think outside the box, from a user's perspective. However, sometimes great ideas can be sparked from inside the box, by looking at the underlying code and using that knowledge to identify various ways to break the software. Join Tariq King as he walks through the fundamentals of program-based testing so that you can find bugs...

Ever struggled to communicate test progress or persuade a stakeholder on the quality improvement initiative you have? Do you struggle getting developers to appreciate the need to build testing into the lifecycle? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then this session is for you. Julie Gardiner shares key ingredients for getting your message across more effectively. She shares a communication model she has used for nearly 20 years in her career to get her message across and, more recently, how the science of timing can play a major part of how communication is received. Through...

Imagine: as soon as any developed functionality is submitted into the code repository, it is automatically subjected to the appropriate battery of tests and then released straight into the wild. Setting up the pipeline to do just that has become commonplace, but most organizations hit the same stumbling block: just what IS the appropriate battery of tests? Automated build pipelines don't always lend themselves well to the traditional stages of testing. In this hands-on tutorial, Melissa will introduce testers to the key principles of test case and test suite design that apply to...

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...

AI has been rapidly changing the way we approach software testing. Traditional test automation is time-consuming to create and breaks down easily in the presence of change. Thankfully, AI is helping testing teams create less procedural, more resilient tests that are able to self-heal in the presence of modern, rapidly changing, highly dynamic production systems. This sounds great, but you may be asking yourself: How do I get started? What additional skills do I need to learn? What tools are available for me to start using, right now? Join Dionny Santiago as he breaks down different AI...

Although there are several controversies and misunderstandings surrounding AI and machine learning, one thing is apparent — people have quality concerns about the safety, reliability, and trustworthiness of these types of systems. Not only are ML-based systems shrouded in mystery due to their largely black-box nature, they also tend to be unpredictable since they can adapt and learn new things at runtime. Validating ML systems is challenging and requires a cross-section of knowledge, skills, and experience from areas such as mathematics, data science, software engineering, cyber-security,...

With the advent of frameworks like Angular, React, and Vue, the landscape of application performance has changed significantly in terms of testing and measurement. Gone are the days of measuring response time as a single value based on back-end performance. In modern web and mobile applications, additional layers need to be peeled apart at the front end to truly understand its performance characteristics. Traditional approaches to performance testing are no longer sufficient to provide a delightfully responsive user experience. Join Kaushal Dalvi as he details new developments in the...

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...

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-...

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...

In today’s microservices-driven landscape, ensuring seamless communication between services is critical. Traditional testing methods often fall short when it comes to detecting integration issues early in the development cycle, leading to unexpected failures in production. Contract testing is emerging as a powerful solution to this challenge, providing a way to verify that services meet agreed-upon expectations without relying on full end-to-end testing. This session will delve into the fundamentals of contract testing and how it enhances API quality assurance by detecting inconsistencies...

Generative AI allows us to create test automation scripts really fast, but how can we be sure the outcome is truly complete? In this talk, Julio will discuss the critical process of how to define your prompts and evaluate if the results from AI-driven test automation creation cover all the necessary bases. He will bring a playbook for GenAI in test automation created based on the results of research that collected advice and feedback from dozens of test automation engineers. In the session, Julio will discuss practical examples of the mindset, a set of steps to be followed when using...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Dive 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 uncover...

In an era where "doing more with less" has become a corporate mantra, executives are increasingly turning to Artificial Intelligence (AI) to boost efficiency and productivity. This shift places significant pressure on testing teams to rapidly adopt AI solutions without compromising quality. In this engaging presentation, a C-suite executive and a testing expert offer a unique "fly on the wall" perspective into the dynamic between leadership expectations and the realities faced by testers. The session will delve into the challenges testers encounter under executive mandates, explore...

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,...