EuroSTAR Conference

EuroSTAR Conference 2019 – Keynote Speakers And Presentations

May 22, 2019 by Fiona Nic Dhonnacha

The EuroSTAR Conference is home to the best speakers in testing, industry innovators and global change makers. Together with the Programme Committee, we welcome lots of amazing testers and quality assurance professions to the conference each year. In this article, we highlight this year’s four keynote speakers and tell you a little bit about their talks that they will present on the EuroSTAR keynote stage in Prague this November.

Dr. Chris McKillop – CEO/Co-Founder, Turalt

We are very glad to have Chris on board for the 2019 Software Testing Conference. Dr. Chris McKillop is a thought leader on AI, ethics, and empathy. She is CEO/Co-Founder of Turalt. Dr. McKillop has a degree in Artificial Intelligence, an MSc in Human-Centred Computer Systems, and a PhD in Educational Technology which focused on the emotional dimensions of learning. Her research led to over 25 publications and numerous international conference presentations. Her personal mission is to show how AI can help us understand our humanity, and to help make the world a more empathetic place. Chris will be presenting her presentation on Tuesday,

Talk : Developing Your BS Detector: The Hype & Reality of AI
Time & Date: Tuesday, 12th November, 1.45pm

Talk Abstract:

In this talk, we look at popular myths about what AI is, and what AI could be in the future. We look at current examples of AI, how they use deception to appear more ‘intelligent’, and look at lessons we can learn from stories of big AI failures. AI’s unique characteristic is that it accentuates and reflects our humanity. Bias in AI demonstrates this and over-hype and trust in AI’s abilities can have negative implications for individuals, group and society in general. We need to think about the impact of our technology on people, to understand and take responsibility for the social and personal impact it can have. As software testers, developing your BS detector, with an empathetic framework, will enable you to ensure AI systems are valuable, ethical, and successful through your practice.

VIEW TALK

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Fiona Charles – Agile Testing Coach & Software Testing Consultant , Quality Intelligence, Canada

Fiona Charles is an independent consultant, specialising in the human side of software development and projects: teaching organizations to manage their software testing risk, and IT practitioners project skills “beyond process”—hands-on practical skills essential to thrive and excel on any kind of software project. She consults with clients on testing and test management, works as an Agile testing coach, and acts occasionally as a program-level test manager on difficult projects. She speaks and conducts workshops at international conferences and in-house for clients, has recorded many webinars, and published many articles in test-related publications.

Talk Title: Technology’s Feet on Society’s Ground
Time & Date: 09:00 am on Wednesday, 13th November 2019

Talk Abstract:

Technological advances have always trampled and rearranged the ground occupied by society. Each wave of Industrial Revolution has brought massive social disruptions and individual suffering as well as major benefits and social progress. Each has posed ethical challenges too, as people adjusted to new realities. Each had its nay-sayers and prophets of societal doom.

We are now in the midst of change so rapid and profound that the ethical questions have fallen far behind the technological answers. Welcome to the ethical quagmire of the Fourth Industrial Revolution! Which microphones are listening inside your house and uploading your family’s conversations to unknown recipients? Do you know how many cameras are watching you? For whom? Who is profiting? Who should profit? What facial recognition apps are comparing you to which uploaded data and making decisions about you?

Who can access your biometric data and your DNA? Who knows where you are at any given time?

VIEW TALK

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Alexandre Bauduin – Automation Test Engineer, House of Test

Alexandre Bauduin is a 53 year old world traveler. He worked in consulting firms gaining experience in several fields (medical, manufacturing, aerospace, pay TV, data warehouse—to name a few) in different countries (Switzerland, France, Spain, Canada, etc.) His career started in the space industry where he discovered his passion for aerospace, working on both military and civilian projects. He was sometimes steered away from aerospace but his passion pushed him to become an airline pilot, as a way to really understand how those instruments he programmed and integrated were operating in a cockpit.

Talk Title: Flying High – Test Automation in the Boeing 777

Time & Date: Wednesday, 13th Nov at 5pm

Talk Abstract:

Are you confronted with automating tests of large, complex systems? Are there more conditions to test than you can do in a lifetime? Are auditors demanding compliance to a never-ending collection of regulations? Do stakeholders want slick dashboards tracking abstract key process indicators? Join Alexandre Bauduin as he shares his experience leading the complex system testing challenges of a real-time Boeing 777 Flight Simulator.

Alexandre will outline how he overcame the many challenges faced by combining his skills in test design and his expertise as an airline pilot, including the decision-making process used to focus testing and checking of the simulator, constrained by aviation authorities requesting a very detailed simulation with a blend of realistic scenarios and catastrophic failures. You will learn strategies to organize and prioritize automation, develop regression checking suites for very large mission-critical software systems, and report the meaningful information to stakeholders.

VIEW TALK

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Dona Sarkar – Head of the Windows Insider Program, Microsoft

Dona Sarkar wishes she’d been born a cat so she could have had nine lives. Since that didn’t work out, she decided to live nine lives in this one. Dona spends her days running the Windows Insiders program at Microsoft, celebrating diversity in STEM fields as a fashion blogger at Fibonacci Sequins, and launching her first fashion line called Prima Dona Style, this fall. She is the author of six works of fiction and nonfiction, including Scattered Ashes, which was deemed “too controversial” by fifteen publishing imprints! Dona feels very fortunate to have found her life’s calling: to help the next generation of creatives prepare for the technical revolution that’s about to transform everything—again.

Talk Title: Be the Lord of Your OWN Rings: Build Your OWN Insider Testing Program!

Time & Date: Thursday, 14th November at 12:00pm

Talk Abstract:

Once upon a time in a land not too far from here.
Companies used to make products. Test them in-house.

…and throw them over the wall at their users.

It was a dark time.

We all had NSync CDs. AOL dialup was a thing. You used to go home and binge watch Dawson’s Creek (don’t lie, you did too). But those days are GONE. What worked then does not work now.

Today, you can’t just create for your customers. You must co-create with them. But how? Come and hear about how one of the biggest software projects in the world, Windows 10 shifted to this paradigm and attracted a community of 16.5 million global Windows Insiders who we have been co-creating with for 4 years. By the end, you’ll know how to set up your own community and fan club and more important, how to co-create with them. Come learn our 10 step process for how you can do this TOMORROW in your own business.

VIEW TALK

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It’s not too late! Get 15% off tickets to EuroSTAR Software Testing Conference 2019! Offer ends on 14th June.

The Amazing Women at EuroSTAR

March 8, 2019 by Fiona Nic Dhonnacha

The EuroSTAR Community is made up of many amazing people. Over the past 27 years, it is this community of incredible speakers, dedicated programme committee members and fantastic attendees that have helped build EuroSTAR into one of the largest annual gatherings of software testing professionals in the world! We are celebrating International Women’s Day by highlighting some of the women that have been part of EuroSTAR in the last year and together with many others help to make EuroSTAR such a welcoming and unmissable event.

Bojana Lund

Bojana has been working with SW Development for over 10 years and has very broad experience with both SW development, CI, Test and Automation. She has a great passion for test and is currently working hard on establishing a profession group for Technical Testers across several Consultant Houses in Denmark. She strongly believes in continuous learning and creative solutions. She is a hard working mother of two energetic small boys and proud wife of a fellow Technical Tester.

Follow Bojana @BojanaLund

Seretta Gamba

Seretta Gamba has 40 years’ experience in development and fifteen in test automation. After going through all the usual developer roles, in 2001 she was put in charge of test automation for her company. She developed a framework that enabled her company to quickly get excellent results. Having talked about the framework in a couple of conferences she met Dorothy Graham and was invited to write a chapter in the book, Experiences of Test Automation. With Dorothy Graham she has been developing the Test Automation Patterns Wiki and launched a book on Test Automation Patterns with Dot Graham at the 2018 EuroSTAR Conference.

Seretta and Dorothy’s New Wiki is now live at the following location : https://testautomationpatterns.org

Dorothy Graham

Dorothy Graham has been in software testing for over 40 years, and is co-author of 4 books: Software Inspection, Software Test Automation, Foundations of Software Testing and Experiences of Test Automation, and has developed the wiki TestAutomationPatterns.org as well as co-writing Test Automation Patterns book with Seretta Gamba. Dorothy has been on the boards of conferences and publications in software testing, including programme chair for EuroStar (twice). She was a founder member of the ISEB Software Testing Board and helped develop the first ISTQB Foundation Syllabus. She has attended every EuroStar. She was awarded the European Excellence Award in Software Testing in 1999 and the first ISTQB Excellence Award in 2012. You can read more about Dorothy’s session from 2018 here as well as check Dorothy’s website https://www.dorothygraham.co.uk/

Follow Dorothy: @DorothyGraham

Seretta and Dorothy’s New Wiki is now live at the following location : https://testautomationpatterns.org

Franka Buurmeijer

“Throughout my career Franka has been combining science and technology with creative activities such as writing, presenting and creating teaching materials. As an science communicator and astronomer, she started out in the field of astronomy, but I gradually expanded my field of expertise to physics, mathematics and computer science. As a tester, I now combine my knowledge of communication with automated and manual testing to improve the results of software development.” – Read more about Franka’s session from the EuroSTAR Software Testing Conference 2018.

Gitte Oberbossel

She has worked within test management and improvement of test processes for 25 years in different companies. Because of this, she has experience in performing test management for several types of solutions, both application and technical. Her experience with working in test improvement includes all the steps of improvement: Defining and implementing test models, coaching and training, and performing measurements on the quality of running tests. She is now managing a test laboratory, which also includes defining and maintaining ISO27002 requirements for the laboratory house, tests and equipment.

Elena Kolpakova

Elena is a tester and a test coach with >10y of professional experience. Being a daughter of a software developer, you could say she took the path of a software tester as early as her childhood. Currently Elena applies her skills at AKQA GmbH in Berlin. This involves all kinds of testing activities, manual or automated, and helps her stay on track with the latest and pioneering technologies. In addition, she takes part in hiring testers and helps them develop and grow through coaching sessions, tech talks, and workshops.

Follow Elena: @HeleneKolpakova

Elizabeth Zagroba

Elizabeth tests software at Mendix in Rotterdam. She’s tested web apps, mobile apps, APIs, and content management systems. Her article about mind maps became one of the most viewed on Ministry of Testing Dojo in 2017. She’s spoken at conferences in the United States and Europe.

Follow Elizabeth @ezagroba

Sal Freudenberg

Dr. Sallyann Freudenberg is an agile consultant and trainer who assists companies in transitioning to more nimble, customer-centric and human(e) ways of working. She holds a PhD in the Psychology of Collaborative Software Development and since parenting an autistic son has developed an interest in neurodiversity. Through re-assessing her own traits and neurology, and considering the extra-ordinary people with whom she has worked over her 25+ years in tech, Sal is raising awareness of the benefits of having diversity in our organisations, and is helping the industry to begin to understand how to support and nurture every kind of brain.

Follow Sal @SalFreudenberg

Iris Pinkster-O’Riordain

Iris Pinkster-O’Riordain is test advisor at Professional Testing and has experience in testing and test management since 1996. She co-developed Logica’s method for structured testing: TestFrame ®, their test management approach and TestGrip, the method on test policy and test organization. Iris is the co-author of the books published on these topics. She often speaks at (inter) national conferences. In 2007 she won the EuroSTAR award for “Best Tutorial”. In 2017 Iris was Program Chair for the EuroSTAR Conference in Copenhagen.

Follow Iris @PinksterIris

Isa Vilacides

Isa started her career as a developer, but ended up managing Quality Engineering teams which she has continued doing for the last ten years. Since then she has helped different companies to reach continuous delivery by improving their development, testing and release processes through automation and risk analysis: the biggest Spanish social network Tuenti, a Rakuten video-on-demand service, the JIRA Cloud and Infrastructure Services divisions at Atlassian and currently CloudBees. She believes in giving back to the community and is therefore a frequent speaker at testing meet-ups like After Test and Agile Barcelona, and she has also spoken at international conferences such as Jenkins World 2017 (SF), Sevilla Developer Conference 2017, Devops Days Barcelona 2013, itSMF 2014 and expoQA where she has also formed part of the selection

Follow Isa @vilacides

Karen Johnson

Karen N. Johnson is a longtime contributor to the software testing community. She speaks at conferences both in the US and internationally. She is a contributing author to the book, Beautiful Testing by O’Reilly publishers. She has published numerous articles; she blogs and tweets about her experiences. Find her on Twitter as @karennjohnson (note the two n’s) and her website: https://www.karennicolejohnson.com. Karen was previously an independent consultant but is now employed as Director, Jamf Now Development & Delivery at JAMF.

Mais Tawfik Ashkar

Mais Tawfik Ashkar is a Performance Engineering Consultant guiding clients to delivering faster, more scalable and reliable applications. Prior to consulting, Mais was a Performance Engineering Manager and lead with Pearson Learning Technologies representing their Denver and offshore teams and overseeing performance and scale solutions. An organizer of the Workshop on Performance and Reliability [WOPR] and a former SQUAD board member, Mais has over 12 years of experience in the software engineering industry working as a software performance engineer, automation engineer, and consultant. An accomplished speaker, Mais has presented at ExpoQA, QUEST QAI, WOPR and SQuAD conferences. Mais is passionate about the multi-faceted discipline of software quality engineering and data analytics. Mais was also winner of the Best Tutorial at EuroSTAR 2018 as voted by the attendees.

Follow Mais @MaisTawfik

Mia Johansson

Mia worked with test since 2001. I have tested, educated customers in the importance of testing, outlining test strategies and acted as Test Manager in all kinds of areas. The last ten years she has worked in agile projects, adapting processes and ways of working within test and verification for complex systems. Since 2015 Mia is the QA Manager at Data Ductus. Mia is responsible for test and QA strategies both on a project- and company level and work with customer communication to spread the word on QA. I am also a storyteller, engaged in the local storytelling society.

Follow Mia @falamh

Nathalie Rooseboom de Vries van Delft

Nathalie is an energetic, passionate and ambitious software and system test manager, test architect and –adviser. She puts the the question mark behind technological solutions and digital innovations.
Since 2004 she participated in and lead various projects in the financial domain, retail domain and public transport and has gained a solid experience with testing, coordinating and managing test activities within a diverse palette of development and management methods -including Prince2, IAD, SCRUM and SAFe- and types of organization.

Follow Nathalie @FunTESTic

Ioana Chiorean

Ioana is a software engineer that has more than 9 years testing experience with a specialization in mobile apps. Currently located in Romania she is leading a number of teams in a digital innovation leading company, Softvision. These teams are responsible for several mobile apps. Web compatibility and testing IAM and community participation tools. She is the Module Owner for Mozilla Reps – a program that unites volunteers from around the world. As one of Moz Tech Speakers, she takes the stage and talks about different technical topics or community building subjects. In her free time, Ioana contributes to Open Source projects while enjoying a coffee or a good wine.

Follow Ioana @ioana_cis

Gitte Ottosen

Gitte Ottosen is a managing consultant at Capgemini-Sogeti Denmark and has 22 years experience in test engineering and test management, in both traditional and agile contexts. Gitte works with test management, test process improvement and supports projects and companies in their agile transition with her quality perspective. In her current assignment she supports an agile transition within a SAFe framework, ensuring a sufficient and proactive quality perspective. As a self-confessed test evangelist who preaches the need for a structured and committed approach to testing, Gitte is a strong advocate for a context-driven approach, a role requiring profound professional insight, passion, and persistence—qualities that Gitte holds in abundance. Gitte holds a number of certificates within testing as well as agile; ISEB Practitioner, CAT, TMap Test Engineer/Master and Certified SCRUM Master. She is a SAFe Program Consultant and is member of SogetiLabs

Follow Gitte @Godtesen

Isabel Evans

Programme CHair for EuroSTAR 2019, Isabel Evans is an independent quality and testing consultant with more than thirty years of IT experience in the financial, communications, and software sectors. Her work focuses on quality management, software testing and user experience (UX). She encourages IT teams and customers to work together via flexible processes that are designed and tailored by the teams that use them. Isabel authored Achieving Software Quality Through Teamwork and chapters in Agile Testing: How to Succeed in an eXtreme Testing Environment; The Testing Practitioner; and Foundations of Software Testing.

A popular speaker and story-teller at software conferences worldwide, Isabel is a Chartered IT Professional and Fellow of the British Computer Society, Programme Secretary of the BCS SIGiST, and has been a member of software industry improvement working groups for over 20 years. Isabel was also the recipient of the 2017 EuroSTAR Testing Excellence Award.

Follow Isabel @IsabelE_Test

Fiona Charles

Fiona Charles teaches organizations to manage their software testing risk, and IT practitioners project skills “beyond process”—hands-on practical skills essential to thrive and excel on any kind of software project. Fiona’s articles and blog posts appear frequently, and she conducts experiential workshops at international conferences, and in-house for clients. She is the co-founder (with Anne-Marie Charrett), of Speak Easy, a volunteer organization whose goal is to increase gender diversity at tech conferences and help new speakers find their voices. Contact Fiona via her website www.quality-intelligence.com, and follow her on twitter @FionaCCharles.

Anne Mette Hass

Anne Mette Hass has worked in software testing for over 30 years. She is interested in the technical aspect of testing as well as in the human aspect; after all, testers are people, people are different, and differences should be understood and respected. Anne Mette has written the book “Guide to Advanced Software Testing” and taught ISTQB Foundation and Advanced Test Manager and Advanced Analyst numerous times. She has spoken at many conferences over most of the world and is fluent in English even though it is not her mother tongue.

Follow Anne Mette on Twitter: @AnneMetteHass

Fiona Ring Ostensvig & Tone Molyneux

Tone and Fiona from the Norwegian computer society have hosted a special session on women in testing. Tone and Fiona are passionate about teting and see the need to get younger people and especially women into the testing industry. They have been an amazing inspiration to many women, including the female testers at our 2018 EuroSTAR conference in Prague.

Follow Tone on Twitter: @ToneMo

Follow Fiona on Twitter: @Anoifeiram

These amazing women and many, many others help the EuroSTAR Community to grow in unimaginable ways. They inspire other female testers around the world and we will continue to help and encourage female testers to be recognized and given opportunity to develop.

Real Customer Case Study Winner 2018: Xpand IT

January 7, 2019 by Ronan Healy

2018 was the third installment of the vendor-led case study which featured on the 2018 EuroSTAR Software Testing Conference as part of our Real Customer Case Study. This initiative was specifically designed to give EuroSTAR exhibitors an opportunity to feature on the programme and bring them close to the action. This route is a simplified version of the call for speakers and gives an exhibitor a 1/30 chance of being part of the highly sought after 2018 programme.

Xpand IT were the 2018 winners with their test management tool, XRAY. This tool completely changed the dynamics of their customer Swiss Federal Railways (SBB). To find out more check out their session (which turned out to be one of the most popular sessions at EuroSTAR 2018) below:

About The Tool

Xray is a complete Test Management Tool for managing both manual and automated tests and is seamlessly integrated with Jira. It is a full-featured app that does not require any other software n order to run. It supports the entire testing life cycle: test planning, test specification, test organization in flat or hierarchical way, test execution and test reporting. Xray also supports automated tests that can be run with Cucumber and has integration with other test automation frameworks like JUnit, NUnit or Robot.

With over 4.000 customers in 65 countries, Xray is the fastest growing Test Management app for Jira.

Customer Background

SBB is the backbone of the Swiss public transport system, and day-to-day rail operations are the basis of what they do.

Switzerland opened its federal railway system in 1902. Today, more than 33.000 employees in 140 different professions, along with 600 self-developed and several off-the-shelf applications work together to operate an internationally integrated railway network. Despite the size, SBB maintains the world’s most accurate arrival and departure schedule. The Swiss railway system is a model for other railways around the globe.

Customer Challenge

SBB used HP ALM for 12 years. It had more than 100.000 test cases, many more test runs and 1.000+ trained employees helped ensure that operations stay on track. However, users started to boycott the tool due to the lack of integration in SBB’s existing toolchain and because of all the communication problems that arouse around using other terms for the same things.”

Besides the general IT problems of a big company like SBB, software testers were facing the typical challenges of IT departments that grew too fast and were forced to have management overhead for controlling these many employees. Strictly sticking to IEEE829, they first had to write a test plan for that specific project or team, quickly realizing the master test plan or overall test strategy was not helping or even forcing them to spend time in ways that would not benefit neither the project during its run time nor the company on the long run.

The Approach & Solution

Since SBB’s Agile Transformation, several kinds of experiments are allowed without manager approval, as long as you stay within certain constraints, so they started to search for a test management tool that would improve the collaboration within the team and be less expensive.

But before buying a new tool, the stakeholders made their interests clear:

a) Reduce number of floating user licenses in old tool to gain money for the new tool

b) Protect the already existing test cases and test results

c) provide a stable and easy process on how to train users on the new tool and how to support them

So, after calculating business cases and setting up internal online documentation and support contacts, SBB purchased an XRAY unlimited company license.

By using Xray, SBB was able to work with Jira in all their test management processes. The tool allowed testers to manage all their tests and executions as Jira entities with all the power of the customized screens, fields and workflows, not just regarding the manual testing but also the automated testing. It also had an included REST API that would help SBB in their current and future integrations with several testing frameworks used in load tests, Functional Testing, UI Testing, security testing and others, as well a direct integration with CI tools like Jenkins and Bamboo.

Reporting and Requirement Traceability was something very important for SBB and now test managers and project managers are able to check the test coverage status directly from the issue screen in Jira as well as having a dedicated Requirement Traceability Matrix Report.

With more than 100.000 test cases, XRAY offered the ability, not just to organize tests in a flat way for those teams who would like a more agile like approach, but also to organize them in the Test Repository with tree-like organization at the project level. This way users can hierarchically organize Tests within folders and sub-folders, similar to what was found in older tools. Regarding the planning executions, Xray offered the ability to create test plans for tracking a set of tests and planned or ad hoc test executions; all this with the possibility to have consolidated results.

XRAY helped Swiss Federal Railways move 25.000+ test cases from HP ALM in just 6 months, and paid for itself in only 3 months. XRAY has cutting-edge UX and integrations into the rest of the development toolchain. Now, even teams without a prior test management tool come to XRAY.

Takeaways

With the new tool many things came unexpected, but luckily for SBB it went far better than expected.

“Give the teams the tools they need, the tools that enable collaboration, ease human-to-human communication and help decrease misunderstandings. When team members have more transparency, they develop more respect for the work of others and therefore have a better understanding what really drives the other persons in the team”, says Andreas Wieczorek, Senior Test Manager and Team Leader at SBB.

What really impressed SBB the most was that all the different specialists outside the teams, normally refusing to even read test cases, are now eager to catch a test case that is freshly written or even write it by themselves. “Those people love test cases, and what drove them away was a tool lacking every collaboration feature.”

Team members now freely contribute to the growing user number of XRAY: be it translations, finding solutions for issues other teams have or helping them to set it up or even organize calls with the supplier and do internal know how transfer meetings.

“For me personally, the agile movement within SBB plays a big part of it, but the integration of new tools that put collaboration as first priority is equally necessary”, notes Andreas.