STAREAST 2024 - Tutorial | TechWell

STAREAST 2024 - Tutorials

Full- and half-day tutorials are consistently the most popular and highly rated part of STAREAST. Tutorials allow you to take a deeper dive into the topics below so that you can learn more to make improvements to everyday processes in the areas that matter most to you. View the Packages & Pricing page to see to learn more on which passes include Tutorials.

Monday, April 29

MA

BDD for Champions!

Monday, April 29, 2024 - 8:30am to 4:30pm

Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) is a set of pragmatic practices that prioritizes our focus on the behaviors we want to develop. Why? Users get value out of good behaviors. If we focus on developing high-quality features that users want, then everything else falls into place. In the first half of this workshop, we will explore behaviors for an example product using a group activity called Example Mapping. Then, in the second half, we will refine all the scenarios for those behaviors by writing Gherkin "Given-When-Then" scenarios that follow the Arrange-Act-Assert pattern. Through these...

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...

Tariq King
Test IO
MC

Testing from the Inside: Unit Testing Edition

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

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...

Chris Loder
Rogue Automator
MD

Test Automation: How to Start and Succeed

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

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,...

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...

Lisette Zounon
Zsquare Solutions Inc.
MG

Debunking the QA KPI Myths and Make KPI Great Again

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

When it comes to software quality, data and metrics are essential for making informed decisions. However, not all KPI metrics are created equal. In fact, many common KPI metrics can become myths that do more harm than good. In this tutorial, Lisette draws on her experience to debunk the QA KPI myths and share practical strategies for making KPI metrics great again. She will discuss how to determine the purpose of QA KPIs for your organization's needs and how to adapt KPI metrics to your organization's culture—exploring practical QA KPI metrics that bring value to everyone in the...

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...

Adam_Auerbach
EPAM Systems
ML

Instill a DevOps Testing Culture in Your Team and Organization

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

The DevOps movement is here. Companies across many industries are breaking down siloed IT departments and federating them into product development teams. Testing and its practices are at the heart of these changes. Traditionally, IT organizations have been staffed with mostly manual testers and a limited number of automation and performance engineers. To keep pace with development in the new “you build it, you own it” environment, testing teams and individuals must develop new technical skills and even embrace coding to stay relevant and add greater value to the business. DevOps really...

Chris Loder
Rogue Automator
MM

Automation Framework Essentials

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

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...

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...

Tariq King
Test IO
TC

A Quality Engineering Introduction to AI and Machine Learning

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

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,...

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...

Jeff Pierce
Coveros
TE

Quality and Testing Measures and Metrics

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

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 Jeff Pierce as he...

Tom-Stiehm
Coveros
TF

Web Security Testing: The Basics and More

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

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...

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...

Mike_Sowers
Coveros
TK

Agile Test & Transformation Leadership in Action

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

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...

Jeff Payne
Coveros
TL

Integrating Automated Testing into DevOps

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

In many organizations, agile development processes are driving the pursuit of faster software releases, which has spawned a set of new practices—DevOps. DevOps stresses communications and integration between development and operations, including rapid deployment, continuous integration, and continuous delivery. Because DevOps practices require confidence that changes made to the code base will function as expected, automated testing is essential. Join Jeffery Payne as he discusses the unique challenges associated with integrating automated testing into continuous integration/continuous...

TM

Holistic Performance Testing for Modern Applications

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

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...

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-...

Melissa Benua
mParticle
TO

Test Smarter, Not Harder: How to Design Test Suites for Continuous Delivery

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

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...

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.