Conference Presentations

Test Improvement for Highly Reliable NYSE Trading Systems

With billions of dollars changing hands every day, financial trading systems demand extremely high accuracy and reliability. So, how do you improve test process performance in the areas of time to market and efficiency and at the same time reduce failures? Over the last three years, using process and project measurement data as a guide, SIAC has focused on doing exactly that. Steve Boycan highlights the key elements of the process changes that have led to SIAC's current performance: the use of a rigorous requirements engineering process; controlled parallel and iterative work flows; changes to the level of abstraction in test documentation; emphasis on test planning, analysis, and design; causal analysis; and improving the test team's skills.

Steve Boycan, SIAC
Lightweight .NET User Interface Testing

The .NET environment provides a surprising but little known way to create user interface (UI) test automation scripts. By employing objects in the System.Threading and System.Reflection namespaces, test engineers can write ad hoc automated UI test scenarios in minutes. James McCaffrey presents an example of a Windows-based application and creates a test program written in C# that verifies UI functionality by simulating user typing and clicking. James explains the code in detail so you can modify and extend the program to meet your own needs. Learn how to write ad hoc UI test automation for .NET-based Windows applications.

  • How to use System.Threading for test harness communications in .NET
  • Simulate .NET user interactions with System.Reflection
  • A look ahead to Avalon and its effect on user interface test automation
James McCaffrey, Volt Information Sciences, Inc.
Fault Injection to Stress Test Windows Applications

Testing an application's robustness and tolerance for failures in its natural environment can be difficult or impossible. Developers and testers buy tool suites to simulate load, write programs that fill memory, and create large files on disk, all to determine the behavior of their application under test in a hostile and unpredictable environment. Herbert Thompson describes and demonstrates new, cutting edge methods for simulating stress that are more efficient and reliable than current industry practices. Using Windows Media Player and Winamp as examples, he demonstrates how new methods of fault injection can be used to simulate stress on Windows applications.

  • Runtime fault injection as a testing and assessment tool
  • Cutting edge stress-testing techniques
  • An in-depth case study on runtime fault injection
Herbert Thompson, Security Innovation
Testing "Best Practices": From Microsoft's Context to Yours

Testing is a never-ending series of trade-off decisions, what to test and what not to test; when to stop testing and release the product; how to budget your testing resources for automated vs. manual testing; how much code coverage is good enough; and much more. To make these difficult judgement calls, we often turn to the "best practices" recommended by testing experts and others who have encountered similar problems. The key to successful implementation is matching their "best practices" to your own context (team make-up, company culture, market
environment, etc.). Barry Preppernau shares his insights gathered from over 20 years of testing experience at Microsoft. You'll learn about the tools and processes that have been successful within Microsoft and ways for you to identify, adapt, and implement successful test improvement
initiatives within your organization.

Barry Preppernau, Microsoft Corporation
Paradigms Lost, Paradigms Tossed: New Perspectives for Test Management

A paradigm is a set of rules and regulations that does two things: it establishes or defines boundaries; and it tells you how to be successful inside the boundaries. This paper discusses why paradigms are important and how they relate to test management.

Harry Robinson, Microsoft Corporation
Testing for Section 508 Accessibility Compliance

Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act is a key issue affecting testing for more and more companies. Section 508 requirements include a set of Web design guidelines that allow users with various disabilities to more easily access information from the Web. Adoption language by the federal government in June 2001 stated that all federal agency Web sites must be 508 compliant-but the push for accessibility is spreading to state government and the private sector as well. Bill Chandler covers who's expected to become compliant, when you'll need to be compliant, and how to find out your current level of accessibility. Learn to leverage existing tools and processes to test the accessibility of your Web site and make the necessary changes. Plus, figure out how Section 508 will affect your future development processes.

Bill Chandler, Rational Software
Compressing Test Execution Time to a 24-Hour Cycle

Software development projects face a growing trend of tighter schedules, more complex environments, and increased time-to-market pressures. Thomas Poirier presents a composite case study that explores how frequently encountered situations can severely impact the duration of the Test Execution Cycle (TEC). Learn strategies and tactics to shorten the TEC to within a 24-hour cycle without sacrificing test coverage.

Thomas Poirier, Conduciv inc.
Testing Component-Based Software

Today component engineering is gaining substantial interest in the software engineering community. Jerry Gao provides insight and observations on component testability and proposes a new model to represent and measure the maturity levels of a component testing process. In this presentation, you will identify, classify, and discuss new issues in testing component-based software.

Jerry Gao, San Jose State University
Usability and Risk Management in a Multi-Developer Context

Driving usability improvement in an organization with more than 100 different software suppliers presents specific Quality Assurance challenges. This presentation describes the steps taken by one organization to meet this challenge. Learn how this approach resulted in a one hundred percent increase in customer satisfaction, a reduction in customer-reported usability problems, and order-of-magnitude reductions in testing time and cost.

Marilyn Valentino, EPRI
Get Real! Creating Realistic, Actionable Project Schedules

The preparation of a realistic, practical project schedule is an essential management function for obtaining stakeholder commitment, setting expectations, and communicating within the team and organization what is achievable. Doing this preparation well is another challenge-one that must be conquered. Rex Black helps participants see the bigger project scheduling picture by focusing on issues such as constituent tasks, the underlying dependencies between them, and the risks attached to the completion of those tasks.

Rex Black, Rex Black Consulting Services, Inc.

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