STAREAST 2024 - Tester | TechWell

STAREAST 2024 - Tester

Monday, April 29

MB

Getting Started with AI-Driven Automation

Monday, April 29, 2024 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

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...

EPAM Systems
ME

The How and When of Communication

Monday, April 29, 2024 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

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...

Grafana k6
MF

Ramping Up Modern Performance

Monday, April 29, 2024 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

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...

Janna_Loeffler
mParticle
MH

Test Automation Strategies: Navigating DevOps, Agile, and Complex Technologies

New
Monday, April 29, 2024 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

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...

Adam Satterfield
Qualifacts
Janna_Loeffler
mParticle
MI

Test Strategies for a Modern World

Monday, April 29, 2024 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

With the advent of DevOps, Agile, and ever-increasing complex technologies under test, the classic, the bloated test strategy document has quickly become outdated. Many testers struggle to understand how to convey complex testing tasks concisely. However, there is hope! There is a way to create a concise, actionable, and useful test strategy for Agile, DevOps, and even the dreaded Waterfall! Janna and Adam will leverage real-world test strategies that they have used and will break down the critical components and detail out how to create a test strategy, no matter what development style...

Tariq King
Test IO
MJ

Full-Stack Testing for Microservices Architectures

Monday, April 29, 2024 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

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...

EPAM Systems
MK

Smarter Test Design with Classification Trees and Pairwise Techniques

Monday, April 29, 2024 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

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...

Péter Földházi
EPAM Systems
MN

Become Your Company's Quality Consultant

Monday, April 29, 2024 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

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...

MO

Towards Healthier Apps Through Observability

Monday, April 29, 2024 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

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...

Tuesday, April 30

Kristoffer Nordström
Northern Test Consulting AB
TA

Testing in the Cloud From All Four Corners of the World!

Tuesday, April 30, 2024 - 8:30am to 4:30pm

This is a workshop for those of you that have done some sort of scripting or automation before. It’s a workshop where we’ll write a simple test agent using Python for sending traffic to a centralized REST API. You’ll follow up by creating 10,000 items of random test objects for offline test data. You’ll spin up server instances in the AWS cloud using Python. And finally, to top it all off, you’ll deploy your test agent and test data in cloud instances spread out over the four corners of the world, all of them generating simultaneous test traffic toward a single REST API where you’ll all...

Dalton Forbes
Coveros
Phil LaFrance
Coveros
TB

Supercharge Your Workflow: To GitHub and Beyond

New
Tuesday, April 30, 2024 - 8:30am to 4:30pm

Whether you are new or experienced with GitHub this class is for you! Supercharging your workflow caters to anyone who wants to enhance their Agile and DevOps process with the capabilities of GitHub. GitHub has long been the premier site for open-source projects and is now turning a pivotal corner into becoming the predominant platform for all aspects of the development lifecycle. Some examples of this include; protecting company code through various GitHub Products or curating marketplace actions and workflows prior to use. This tutorial will look at how to leverage GitHub Actions (CI/CD...

Jeff Payne
Coveros
TD

Getting Smart on API Testing & Automation

Tuesday, April 30, 2024 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

API testing has become more and more popular as service-oriented architectures have become common. In addition, testing at the API level can be effectively automated to provide maintainable regression tests that work well in a DevOps process. In this tutorial, Jeffery Payne discusses what API testing is all about and how it is effectively done. Techniques and tools are discussed that highlight where in the testing process API testing makes the most sense to perform. Various open source and commercial tools will be demonstrated and the pros and cons of various solutions discussed. Effective...

Rob_Sabourin
AmiBug.Com, Inc.
TG

Exploratory Testing in the Heat of the Sprint

Tuesday, April 30, 2024 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

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...

Realtor.com
TH

Confident Communication Drives Powerful Quality Leadership

Preview
Tuesday, April 30, 2024 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

Driving a culture of quality starts with effective communication. Join Stacy Kirk and Erika Chestnut to unlock your communication superpowers! Imagine a cheat code that helps us boost productivity and team vibes by 10x. We will leverage behavior self-assessments to help discover your unique strengths, communication styles, and reactions to challenges. Stacy and Erika will help you learn to communicate effectively with your team, management, and cross-functional teams to build a culture of quality. You will learn to assess how others best receive and process information and how to...

Andrew Knight
Cycle Labs
TI

Modern Web Testing with Playwright

New
Tuesday, April 30, 2024 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

Everybody gets frustrated when web apps are broken, but testing them thoroughly doesn’t need to be a chore. Playwright, a new open-source browser automation tool from Microsoft, makes testing web apps fun! Playwright offers a slew of nifty features like automatic waiting, mobile emulation, and network interception. Plus, with isolated browser contexts, Playwright tests can set up much faster than traditional Web UI tests. In this session, we will automate concise yet robust web app tests for a Kanban board web app with Playwright in TypeScript. You'll learn to test modern web apps of any...

Tariq King
Test IO
TJ

Prompt Engineering for Software Quality Professionals

Tuesday, April 30, 2024 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

With the sudden rise of ChatGPT and large language models (LLMs), professionals have been attempting to use these types of tools to improve productivity. Building off prior momentum in AI for testing, software quality professionals are leveraging LLMs for creating tests, generating test scripts, automatically analyzing test results, and more. However, if LLM's are not fed good prompts describing the task that the AI is supposed to perform, their responses can be inaccurate and unreliable, thereby diminishing productivity gains. Join Tariq King as he teaches you how to craft high-quality AI...

Rob_Sabourin
AmiBug.Com, Inc.
TN

The Influential Tester in Agile Development

Tuesday, April 30, 2024 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

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-...

Filip-Hric
Replay.io
TP

Modern Web Testing with Cypress

New
Tuesday, April 30, 2024 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

The web has evolved. Finally, testing has too. Cypress is a modern testing tool that answers the testing needs of modern web applications. It has been gaining a lot of traction in the last couple of years, gaining worldwide popularity. If you have been waiting to learn Cypress, wait no more! Filip Hric will guide you through the first steps on how to start using Cypress and set up a project on your own. The good news is, learning Cypress is incredibly easy. You’ll write your first test in no time, and then you’ll discover how to write a full end-to-end test for a modern web application.

Wednesday, May 1

Stacy Kirk
QualityWorks Consulting
K1

Fast Not Furious: The Next Era of Test Productivity

Wednesday, May 1, 2024 - 8:30am to 9:45am

The next era of testing is here, and it's crazy fast. So fast, it would no doubt infuriate those who are not ready for it. In this talk, Stacy will discuss how testing professionals should build a responsive culture without sacrificing quality or customer experience to speed. She will detail how automation and AI must be incorporated into the new industry standard. Stacy will address how expanding our impact to areas like Data Quality, FinOps, and Ethics will usher in faster advances for business value. She will define how productivity has been and should be measured so that teams...

Péter Földházi
EPAM Systems
K2

Bridging Gaps, Building Connections: A Hungarian Testing Story

Wednesday, May 1, 2024 - 10:00am to 11:00am

The beautiful Hungarian city of Budapest seems to be characterized by bridging gaps and building connections. Two diverse parts of the city, Buda and Pest, are separated by the Danube river, which gave them the opportunity to be connected by the iconic Chain Bridge. Budapest is also the birthplace of one of the most brilliant and influential scientists of the 20th century, John von Neumann. Neumann made significant contributions that “bridged” multiple areas including mathematics, physics, economics and computer science. In the software world, you may have already heard the name “Földházi...

Kevin Pyles
O.C. Tanner
W1

An AI-Partnered Testing Future—It’s Here!

Wednesday, May 1, 2024 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Let’s be real, we are quite a ways out from AI taking over the world. AI doomsday apologists stay home! On the other hand, AI is changing everything about software creation. In this presentation, Kevin Pyles will take you on a walk down memory lane through waterfall, agile and DevOps practices, and will then introduce you to the future of software creation known as AI-Partnered Development. Let’s get practical with real-world examples of AI assisting designers, solving coding challenges and testing software right next to human testers. We will explore how AI is also involved today in...

Perficient Inc
W3

API Testing Automation and CI/CD Integration

Wednesday, May 1, 2024 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

API Testing is a critical component of modern software development, ensuring the reliability and functionality of applications programing interfaces. However, integrating API testing into a robust CI/CD pipeline poses unique challenges with maintaining consistency and accuracy in test results across various environments and versions of the API. Changes in API endpoints, data formats, or authentication methods often result in test failures that will be difficult to trace and troubleshoot. To address these challenges, API versioning and automated API testing needs to be implemented. This...

Chris Loder
Rogue Automator
W6

Automation Face-Off

Wednesday, May 1, 2024 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

What do you think about when you hear the words "test automation"? Are you considering developing your own tools to help you probe the product deeply, or will you apply a commercial tool for automated checking? Are you excited by new, powerful, enabling technologies, or do you worry that a robot will replace you? One thing is for sure: when we apply tools, we fundamentally change the context and the nature of the work we do.Our panelists are software testing experts who will discuss all this and more with you! Together, we'll probe what people mean by automation, the power that tools can...

Filip-Hric
Replay.io
W11

Test Like a Developer, Develop Like a Tester

Wednesday, May 1, 2024 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

Developers and testers seem to be pulling against each other sometimes and yet, both try to reach the same goal—great software. Their focus is on different parts of the development process, but there are actually quite a few things they can learn from each other! Filip will shed some light into how developers can apply a testing mindset in order to write better code and what can testers learn from developers to enhance their process. He will cover why it’s important that testers get a basic understanding of the app they are testing and why developers should care about flakiness. Learn...

Grafana k6
W12

Performance Assurance and SRE - Panel

Wednesday, May 1, 2024 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

Delivering performance applications is a multi-layered challenge these days. Teams must assure that the application performs on multiple fronts. Each new function must have quick responses and be as slim as possible from the coding moment. It must be quick and light for a single request, handle concurrency, and coexist with multiple other processes even in micro-serviced applications spread all over the place. Not to mention, it must handle lots of loads once in production. It must stay performant and available within the agreed thresholds. The impressive amount of tasks to tackle and co-...

Dmitriy Gumeniuk
EPAM Systems
W13

Unlocking the Future: Real-World Applications of 3 Open-Sourced ML Powered Tools for Test Automation

Wednesday, May 1, 2024 - 2:45pm to 3:45pm

In an era where Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing various industries, the field of test automation is no exception. This talk aims to shed light on how ML can be practically applied in test automation using open-source tools that are readily available for implementation. Join Dmitry as he explores three popular tools—Healenium, ReportPortal and Visual Regression Tracker—that leverage ML to offer innovative solutions in self-healing capabilities, testing results analysis and visual testing, respectively. You will learn about the rise of AI and ML in...

W15

Automated Mobile App Testing on Various Physical and Virtual Devices

Wednesday, May 1, 2024 - 2:45pm to 3:45pm

Many organizations face the issue today whereby their customers have a wide range of mobile devices upon which their application runs making it challenging to find all potential defects. To accomplish testing of various devices would require an organization to purchase many physical devices and maintain them. Join Alanzo as he walks you through how his team validated the functionality and compatibility of their mobile app in various environments and on various mobile devices through use of a robust test environment. He will outline how developing automated scripts, implementing a...

TechWell Corp.
K3

Lightning Strikes the Keynotes

Wednesday, May 1, 2024 - 4:15pm to 5:15pm

Throughout the years, Lightning Talks have been a popular part of the STAR conferences. If you’re not familiar with the concept, Lightning Talks consists of a series of five-minute talks by different speakers within one presentation period. Lightning Talks are the opportunity for speakers to deliver their single biggest bang-for-the-buck idea in a rapid-fire presentation. And now, lightning has struck the STAR keynotes. Some of the best-known experts in testing will step up to the podium and give you their best shot of lightning. Get multiple keynote presentations for the price of one—and...

Thursday, May 2

K4

The Art of Testing Cars and Delighting Drivers

Thursday, May 2, 2024 - 8:30am to 9:30am

Welcome to the era of rolling autonomous death machines, also known as the era of the software-defined autonomous vehicle. As companies like Tesla have proven, modern car buyers value software driven experiences at a growing rate. No longer are cars just about horsepower but are now really about personalization, entertainment, and comfort. They are also all becoming at least semi-autonomous with level 4 autonomy coming within the decade. In this new world, continuous deployment and deep learning AI will change the user's experience with the modern vehicle. Even today, all modern cars...

Auction Edge
T2

Small QA Team Survival Strategies

Thursday, May 2, 2024 - 9:45am to 10:45am

Are you and your team having trouble managing your workload? Is your Dev to QA ratio completely out of whack? Do you need help convincing management that one or two extra hands would make a difference? Amanda will draw from her experience on teams of various sizes to provide examples of how to organize the QA workload into manageable pieces without losing your sanity. She will also give advice on how to outsource to other non-QA team members that can assist with getting stories to done and avoid potential bottlenecks. We’ll also discuss ways to get developer assistance with unit and...

Tariq King
Test IO
T6

AI in Testing: A Moderated Panel Discussion

Thursday, May 2, 2024 - 9:45am to 10:45am

Artificial intelligence is the newest trend in software testing. But what is it, and how will it impact the tester's role, both today and in the future? What do you need to do to embrace this emerging technology? Tariq King will moderate this panel discussion to give you an opportunity to hear the opinions of industry leaders about AI in testing. You will have a chance to drive the debate, so come prepared with all your AI questions.

Teaching Strategies
T8

Was I Supposed to Use a Teaspoon or a Tablespoon? Creating Your Leadership Recipe

Thursday, May 2, 2024 - 11:15am to 12:15pm

Wouldn't it be great if leadership was an easy recipe with clear and concise instructions? 1-part hard work, 1-part knowledge, a dash of self-confidence, sprinkle with humility and grace, and bake for the duration of your career. Perfection! Unfortunately, leadership is a complex recipe, and the measurements can be extremely tricky to get right. Even worse, if the ingredients in your recipe are slightly altered, it might seem like the recipe wasn't a success. But cooking is an artistic endeavor; recipes can be adapted and so can your leadership journey. Join Christine as she helps you...

Appdome
T13

Streamline Cloud Testing of Cybersecurity Features in Mobile Apps

Preview
Thursday, May 2, 2024 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

In CI/CD pipelines, automated testing services validate functionality of apps across hundreds of real-world mobile devices and OS versions. However, automated testing services can also leverage methods and tools that violate cybersecurity policies or that cybersecurity professionals find problematic and dangerous including: emulators, virtualization, resigning, debugging, dual spaces, Magisk and more. Once protections are added to a mobile app, security features detect these methods and tools and the resulting cyber defense may prevent testers from using parts of these testing...

Deepika Kale
Guardant Health
T17

Kafka and Kafka Testing: Streamlining Real-time Data Processing

Preview
Thursday, May 2, 2024 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

In today's data-driven landscape, real-time data processing is the backbone of modern applications. Kafka, a distributed event streaming platform, has emerged as a critical component in building data-intensive systems. This presentation provides an in-depth exploration of Kafka and the essential practice of Kafka testing, offering attendees valuable insights into harnessing the power of real-time data streams while ensuring robust system reliability. You will be introduced to Kafka and to understanding Kafka's architecture and core components, as well as the importance of Kafka...

Dorothea Bozicolona-Volpe
Social Espionage
T20

How To Become A QA Influencer—6 Steps Toward Building A Stronger Digital You!

Thursday, May 2, 2024 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm

Today IT leadership & QA executives of the world’s top brands all have strong, significant & differentiating personal brands to differentiate them in their industry. Whether you are an associate, executive, sales person, business leader, or human resources professional in an organization, who you are matters as much as how you communicate it. Now more than ever it is important to get your voice heard and establish your reputation on and off line. Learn the tips and tricks for building your personal brand from the expert that taught several IT & C-Suite executives, business...

Insider Intelligence
T21

Crafting Excellence: Optimizing Test Case Design with Domain Analysis

Thursday, May 2, 2024 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm

In today's fast-paced software development landscape, the pressure to deliver code rapidly is unrelenting. However, this doesn't mean that our applications are becoming simpler or that testing is less critical. On the contrary, the software environment has grown more diverse, and applications are constructed in increasingly intricate ways to meet evolving business demands. In this session, we draw inspiration from the craftsmanship of master swordsmiths who meticulously forged swords to perfection. Quality, in their world, meant the difference between life and death. Similarly, in software...

Discover Financial Services
T22

From Raw Data to Actionable Insights: Mastering Testing Metrics for Effective Decision Making

Preview
Thursday, May 2, 2024 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm

In today's rapidly evolving engineering landscape, metrics play a crucial role in assessing performance, making data-driven decisions, and driving successful project outcomes. Engineers who can effectively create, interpret, and present impactful data metrics have a distinct advantage in driving innovation and driving organizational success. This presentation dives deep into the essential skills and techniques necessary for engineers to excel in the realm of testing metrics. Join Cholette to delve into the different types of testing metrics. Explore how engineers can set clear...

Lisette Zounon
Zsquare Solutions Inc.
K5

Supercharge Your Confidence As a Tester in the DevOps and AI Era

Thursday, May 2, 2024 - 4:15pm to 5:15pm

In software development, particularly in the DevOps and AI era, the role of a tester is both crucial and challenging. WE need to aim to empower testers with strategies to excel in this environment, ensuring they deliver the highest quality applications. In this keynote, you will learn how to manage expectations and instill confidence in your team along the software delivery process. Join Lisette to explore effective communication techniques with stakeholders, establishing trust and demonstrating value from the project's inception. Discover how to continuously leverage key performance...