Agile Testing for “Traditional” Testers and Agile Team Members (Lisa Crispin): The tutorial is set up to create learning experiences for testers in agile projects, both coming from the agile world and from the traditional world of testing. Through creative exercises and practical guidelines and techniques, both groups will learn how to contribute more value to their agile teams.  We’ll discuss the things you need to know about testing in agile projects. Participants will explore the inside project position a tester takes, and the skills, techniques and attitude he needs to do that at a professional level. The session is aimed at “both sides of the fence”; that is for agile developers and customers who want to work on their testing skills, as well for traditional testers who want to work at their agile skills. Traditional testers will learn about the “mindset” that helps them be effective in an agile project. Other agile team members will learn to think like a tester, that is:  problem creating instead of problem solving.  One way to describe a tester is “someone who habitually questions accepted beliefs”.  No matter what your background, this tutorial will teach you testing techniques that provide your team with rapid feedback.

Automated Testing in the .NET Environment: A New Opportunity for Test Professionals (Mary Sweeney):  Testing in the .NET environment has changed radically within only the past few years from a black box approach to today’s full integration of software development and test in the .NET platform itself. Find out what this new approach means to you and to the future of the software testing industry. This talk is not just for Microsoft shops! This new approach may just revolutionize the how both test and development are treated in the software process now and into the future. Will your approach be left in the dust? Learn how the new approach affects your best practices for development and test. How testing in .NET compares to traditional and current practices. Beyond the hype: Find out what the problems and advantages are with this approach and what it can and can't do for you. Learn about the new features in the Team Edition for Testers software that are creating all the buzz. 

Build the Quality Assurance Function Step By Step (Rebecca Staton-Reinstein): In today’s competitive environment, high quality software that can serve both the operational and strategic needs of the organization is a necessity.  Information Technology departments are under extreme pressure to create, maintain, purchase and outsource software that can help distinguish the company in the market place.  IT departments are more business and customer oriented than ever before but many traditional quality techniques have been abandoned without replacing them, resulting in poor software quality, over-extended budgets and disappointed customers.  Learn the basic processes, methods and techniques that assure quality systems.  Learn the quality techniques that set industry leaders apart and create world class IT departments.  Learn to apply internationally recognized standards, techniques, processes and procedures that get the improved results you need to improve your output and demonstrate your value to the organization.

How to Effectively Communicate the State of Testing (Bob Galen): Many QA, Process Improvement and Test engineers feel that the “Business” or “Management” doesn’t understand, effectively support or sufficiently value their contributions.  You know what – they’re probably right!  However, once we get through that hurdle, the next question becomes what is the root cause?    I believe it’s our inability and ineffectiveness at communication and PR, in other words “selling” ourselves, our abilities and our value proposition.  We often times believe that our work should speak for itself. Or, we think folks should inherently understand our “value proposition” and that the metrics and data should speak for themselves. Hogwash! As a discipline, we need to improve our overall salesmanship when it comes to our testing profession.   This presentation focuses on improving Communication & PR skills across your QA, Process and Test teams so that your key partners better understand your role and its importance.

Thinking Like an Automator - Thought Models for Efficient Automation (Jamie Mitchell):  Over the last 15 years, an incredible amount of money has been wasted in an attempt to automate testing.  This is not to say that all projects have failed; some have succeeded and returned good value on the investment made.  A fair analysis, however, would likely show countless more failures than successes. Many failures can be attributed to two common misconceptions: Automation is only testing in a different way or Automation is really just programming. A critical look at unsuccessful automation projects often reveals that one or the other of the above statements was taken at face value, setting the stage for failure. This half-day tutorial will discuss what automation actually is: a synthesis of the two above statements into a new process that critically examines the needs of a development project and applies certain programming techniques to create a solution for those needs.  We will discuss tools, both commercial and home-brew, that can contribute to automation success.  More than tools, however, we will view different models of testing to help determine where we can automate successfully, where we can apply tools, and where we should not.