Conference Presentations

Becoming a Trusted Advisor to Senior Management

How can Test Managers present information about test results so that the correct message is received by decision-makers? Testing generates a huge amount of raw data, which must be analyzed, processed, summarized, and presented to management so the best decisions can be made quickly. Lloyd Roden shares his experiences as a test manager and as a consultant about communicating with and disseminating information to various levels of senior management. Develop your skills to become a "trusted advisor" to senior management rather than the "bearer of bad news". Find out innovative ways to keep the information flowing to and from management and avoid losing control of the test process, particularly near the delivery date. Learn the seven monitoring techniques Lloyd recommends for reporting on different aspects of the system under test.

Lloyd Roden, Grove Consultants
Quick Start to Quality - Five Important Test Support Practices

As testers, we understand the virtues of clear equirements, effective configuration management, software inspections and reviews, project planning, and project tracking. But how does your test group influence the organization to improve in these areas? Sometimes the test group has to use shortcuts, partial implementations, and even a clandestine approach to get things done. Louise Tamres describes the practical strategies she has used to help software organizations quickly improve product quality by addressing these five critical development practices.

  • Use system test cases to identify missing and ambiguous requirements
  • Help people focus on defect detection, even when they do not practice formal reviews and inspections
  • Shortcuts to jumpstart process improvement in an immature organization
Louise Tamres, The Tamres Group
A Day in the Life of a Test Manager

During every project, test managers face many issues and challenges and often have to make difficult judgement calls. From his thirteen years of experience in testing and management at a large bank and the past seven years as a consultant to test managers, Clive Bates shares the five key areas he believes are the cornerstones for success. Learn how to promote the value of testing, develop and use practical estimation techniques, build your team while working with others in your organization, use simple metrics to monitor testing, and conduct post-project reviews as the foundation for process improvement.

  • Key areas for success as a test manager
  • Tips for introducing changes in these key areas
  • How to make the case for these practices to management and your peers
Clive Bates, Grove Consultants
From Zero to Production

It is a daunting task to create a test organization from scratch. You have to obtain buy-in from key stakeholders, recruit the test team, develop their skills, build trust with the project members, and show the value of testing. George Toney shares his challenges and successes as he went through this difficult but rewarding experience at LexisNexis Group. From a mission statement at the beginning to post-implementation follow-up, discover how to build your new test team or improve the one you have.

George Toney, LexisNexis
Increase the value of your testing with Business-oriented metrics

Business-oriented metrics can bridge the gap between the activities your testing organization perform and the business value your testing produces. Claude Fenner presents real-world examples to motivate and show you how to successfully communicate the strategic value of what you do in your test organization. Learn how the Test Asset Trajectory metric shows testing's fit-to-business demand and whether or not your testing assets are healthy. With the Test Asset Leverage metric, you can better communicate the total cost of ownership and efficiency of your testing assets. Use this information within your own test group to benchmark the current status and map out ways to progress to the next level.

Claude Fenner, Arsin Corporation
Survival Skills for Today's Test Managers and Test Teams

Build and keep a strong QA/testing team valued by upper management while successfully competing for limited IT budgets. William Ginn shares his success at strengthening his team in a chaotic and changing development environment. Use the tools at your disposal (scheduling, bug tracking, version management, test case management, and test automation) to build reliability and structure, and to expose QA’s value and contribution to the organization through defined measurements. Learn to implement new, agile development methodologies while continuing to create and demonstrate value.

Bill Ginn, Onvia.com
The Process And Politics of Implementing Change: Moving To Formal Testing

Organizing test artifacts and having an automated process to manage them is critical to the success of test groups in complex application development lifecycles. Managing test cases in MS-Word or a spreadsheet no longer work. From the initial business case for upper management and achieving buy-in within the test team to tool acquisition and implementation, learn how to deploy a structured testing management system in your organization. Vivek Bhatia shares the challenges and his insights from Wells Fargo's successful transition to a structured testing model.

Vivek Bhatia and Jon Harader, Wells Fargo
Combating the Test Schedule Killers

By focusing on three simple but often overlooked methods, David Petrella’s test team consistently stays on schedule and delivers the testing results his projects expect. Learn how to develop and employ Risk Assessment documents to define the scope of testing and identify areas that cannot be tested with available resources. Publish an Entrance Criteria document that defines what resources (hardware, software, data, etc.) are needed for a successful test project. Then, use the Code Freeze concept to ensure that the software is not constantly changing until the day of delivery. Take away specific examples and helpful templates based on David’s experience using these methods in numerous projects.

David Petrella, SysTest Labs
Managing the Management Balancing Act

Great test managers wear many hats and must know how to balance the company's demands for returns against the need to build capacity and skills within their team-all without breaking a sweat. Test groups are often under-funded and test managers run themselves ragged trying to be all things to all people. From her many years of contact with both senior management and test managers, Johanna Rothman discusses ways to navigate through typical test management traps, such as: how to effectively move people from area to area or project to project; when to say "No;" when to let a project go; and how to speak to management in language they understand. Johanna offers techniques you can use to succeed at the test management balancing act.

Johanna Rothman, Rothman Consulting Group, Inc.
Square Peg, Round Hole: Matching Testing with Business Needs

There are many types of software testing methods, ranging from exploratory to a full CMM Level 5 compliance. Choosing the wrong style of testing methodology can jeopardize your company’s software success. In this presentation, Patrick Callahan discusses his real-world experience at ePeople and other Silicon Valley startup companies and outlines some proven strategies selecting and implementing the right one for you. Learn about the four stages of test evolution from chaos to a continuous improvement process.

Patrick Callahan, ePeople Inc

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