Environment Management

Conference Presentations

Growing a Learning Organization from the Bottom Up
Slideshow

Learning organizations seem like a great idea to just about everyone. But how do you actually create them? In many organizations, attempting to promote learning can seem daunting at best and impossible at worst—especially when you don't feel particularly empowered to do so.

Matt Barcomb, odbox
A Year of “Testing” the Cloud for Development and Test
Slideshow

Jim Trentadue describes the first year his organization used the cloud for its non-production needs: development, testing, training, and production support. Jim begins by describing the components of a cloud environment and how it differs from a traditional physical server structure.

Jim Trentadue, New York Life
Decoupled System Interface Testing at FedEx
Slideshow

If you work in a large-scale environment, you know how difficult it is to have all the systems “code complete” and ready for testing at the same time. In order to fully test end-to-end scenarios, you must be able to validate results in numerous systems. But what if all those systems are...

Chris Reites, FedEx Services
Agile Development in a Regulated Environment
Slideshow

There is no doubt that agile is an accepted development methodology. However, if you work in a regulated industry like health care where you have to comply with its standard operating procedures, heaps of paperwork, and frequent audits, don’t these conflict with agile’s core tenets?

Chris Ampenberger, PHT Corporation
An Interview with Woody Zuill: ADC-BSW 2013 Interview Series
Video

Committed to covering the latest tools, trends, and issues regarding software development approaches, plan-driven development methods, and process improvement programs, Agile Development & Better Software Conference West offers their 2013 interview series. 

Woody Zuill, Hunter Industries
STARCANADA 2013 Keynote: Cool! Testing's Getting Fun Again
Video

The last exciting era in testing was the late ‘90s when the web turned technology on its ear, the agile movement overthrew our processes, and the rise of open source gave us accessible and innovative tools. However, since then, Jonathan Kohl finds it has been a lot of the same-old, same-old.

Jonathan Kohl, Kohl Concepts, Inc.
STARCANADA 2013 Keynote: Lighting Strikes the Keynotes
Video

Lightning Talks are a popular part of the STAR conferences. Lightning Talks consists of a series of five-minute talks by different speakers within one presentation period and are an opportunity for speakers to deliver their single biggest bang-for-the-buck idea in a rapid-fire presentation.

Lee Copeland, Software Quality Engineering
Test Automation in a Mixed Software/Firmware Environment

Test automation is an attractive choice for dealing with regression testing, high-volume repetitive testing, data-driven testing, and high risk software that needs its tests to be strictly repeatable. However, the automation tools on the market focus on either software or firmware, so they only offer solutions to pieces of the puzzle. Through a case study from Boston Scientific’s Neuromodulation division (BSN), Christopher Crapo shares the benefits and pitfalls of building an in-house test automation system combining off-the-shelf software components and custom tools. Learn how BSN created a scriptable interface to support simultaneous UI, database, and embedded testing and how that interface fit into their overall testing approach.

Christopher Crapo, Boston Scientific
Integrating a Cloud Solution into Your Test Environment

Cloud computing is THE big buzzword in the computing industry today. At Gerdau, they have chosen a cloud computing solution for their ongoing test environment strategy, employing an outsourced infrastructure vendor. Jim Trentadue explains why it is critical that sound testing environment practices be in place before moving to the cloud. He reviews steps his company took to migrate to a cloud-based environment-starting with a development sandbox, through various testing phases, and finally to the pre-production staging area before deploying to production. Jim reviews how to integrate cloud computing into your test management practices and concludes by highlighting thoughts of how cloud-based test environments can change testing process and procedures. With a cloud test environment, your organization can realize the benefits of strictly segregated code bases for quicker defect resolution.

Jim Trentadue, Gerdau
Virtual Test Labs in the Cloud

In most software engineering organizations, development and test labs continuously demand regular computer, storage, and networking infrastructure upgrades and continuous support. Lab administrators have moved toward server consolidation powered by virtualization platforms from vendors such as Citrix, Microsoft, and VMware, often accompanied by a management layer called virtual lab automation (VLA). Together, virtualization and VLA enable the lab to operate as a private, on-premise cloud. While this solves some problems, there are still other challenges to consider. Some test labs now leverage public cloud infrastructures such as Amazon Web Services. Jacob Ben-David reviews virtual labs enabled in private, public, and hybrid clouds, and explains how they improve development, build, and test processes.

Jacob Ben-David, VMLogix, Inc.

Pages

CMCrossroads is a TechWell community.

Through conferences, training, consulting, and online resources, TechWell helps you develop and deliver great software every day.