Tuesday Morning Conference Sessions

Keynote (8:30 - 9:45am) Software Quality in 2001: A Survey of The State of The Art Capers Jones
PSQT				PSTT
Requirement Management	Process Improvement	Process Management	Quality Management	Test Process I	Test Process II	Web Testing	Test Automation
Speaking Process Improvement to your Management:What Do You Do When They Do Not Listen? Ed Weller				Success Through Testing Process (B) Patrick Johnson	A Practical Approach to Testing Software in an Evolutionary Delivery Environment (B)Philip Lones	Testing Dynamic Web Sites (I) Arthur Hicken	Distributed Test Automation – Succeeding With Automation Tools (I) Jamie Mitchell

KEYNOTE SPEAKER (8:30 - 9:45AM)

Achieving software quality has been a weakness of the entire software industry. Even in 2001 major software packages often have significant numbers of defects present at delivery. But in recent years careful measurement of software quality has clarified what works and what does not work. Empirical data has demonstrated that a synergistic combination of defect prevention and defect removal activities can bring software quality up to acceptable levels. A combination of pre-test inspections and a multi-stage testing sequence can eliminate more than 99% of software defects prior to delivery. Since the U.S. average is less than 85% of defects removed at delivery, the best results are far superior to typical results. This presentation includes empirical data derived from more than 500 organizations and 10,000 software projects. The most encouraging observation is that software projects with high levels of quality tend to have shorter development schedules and lower development costs than projects with poor quality.

Capers Jones, Founder of SPR; Chief Scientist, Artemis Management Systems: leading expert, author, and speaker on software productivity and measurement; developer of the SPQR models (Software Productivity, Quality and Reliability estimators); formerly with ITT Programming Technology Center; manager of the “software exploration group” at IBM, chartered with improving the quality and productivity of IBM's commercial software systems; program manager for the Office of the Surgeon General and Crane Company; graduate of the University of Florida; member ACM, and IEEE.

PSQT Featured Presentation (Tuesday 10:00 - 11:00 a.m.)

Speaking Process Improvement to your Management:What Do You Do When They Do Not Listen?
Ed Weller

You’ve just made your latest and greatest proposal for quality improvement to your management, and all you get in return is a grunt or a blank look. Is your boss afflicted with the PHM (Pointy Haired Manager) syndrome? Or has your boss’ PSI (Problem Saturation Index) reached overload? Or horror of horrors is it that you just have not made your case? Drawing from experiences and war stories from others in the quality improvement profession, this presentation will take a look at what happens with different levels of management support and interest in process or quality improvement initiatives. The presentation will also look at strategies and tactics that work effectively at each level of support: Active, Benign Indifference, and Subversion. By taking responsibility for finding a way to make quality improvement happen, success is possible in spite of management support.

·         How to gauge management reaction and support
·         How to react to management’s response
·         What approach should you take to succeed
·         How to avoid the “victim” trap

Edward F. Weller is a Fellow at Bull HN Information Systems in Phoenix, AZ, where he is responsible for the software processes used their mainframe operating systems group. Prior to joining Bull HN, he was a Technical Staff Engineer and manager of the Systems and Software Engineering Process Group at Motorola’s Satellite Communications Division, where he was responsible for developing systems and software processes for the IRIDIUM^® project. He is an authorized Lead Assessor in the SEI Appraiser Program for CMM-Based Appraisals for Internal Process Improvement. He is also affiliated with Software Technology Transition, providing SEI appraisal and inspections and metrics consulting.

PSTT Track Presentations (10:00 - 11:00am)

E-Commerce solutions, third party controls, component based development, leading tools and state of the art tools have been developed to facilitate testing. Is a tool a solution? No! The equation for a solution is a proven tool + people + proper training + METHODOLOGY. A methodology is a process model composed of tasks, work products and roles for consistently and cost-effectively achieving specified objectives. This presentation provides an overview of the process methodology including the entire development life cycle.

·        Incorporating an Effective Test Methodology with the Development Life-Cycle
·        Iterations
·        Test Workflow
·        Developing an Effective Test Plan
·        Design Test
·        Test Modeling
·        Implement Test
·        Execute Test
·        Evaluate Test
·         Synopsis - Success through Process

Learning Objectives:
·        How to develop a test plan incorporating automation
·        How to design modular test procedures and test cases to verify requirements
·        How to develop automated test scripts that are reliable and reusable
·        How to facilitate regression testing to decrease risks and increase coverage
·         How to determine quality based on reporting and analysis

Patrick Johnson has a BSEE and MSEE degree in Engineering and Telecommunications. He is a Certified Software Test Engineer with Quality Assurance Institute (QAI) and Certified Object Oriented Analysis and Design Consultant with Rational Software ©. He has a wealth of professional experience in Quality Assurance and Information Technology that has spanned nearly 14 years. He is currently a senior partner with Godhead Technology LLC, a fast growing company specializing in Providing Quality Solutions in Modeling and Analysis, Automated Software Quality, Automated Component Based Development, Requirements Capture, Configuration Management and Performance Engineering.

This presentation briefly discusses the Evolutionary Delivery (EVO) model and why this development model works well. The presentation then discusses in detail the testing phase of EVO and shows the steps used to create an effective test environment within the EVO paradigm and how those steps can be implemented in most testing environments.

·        Introduction
·         Evolutionary Delivery
·         Key Concepts
·         Evolutionary Testing
·         Conclusion

·         Basic concepts of Evolutionary Delivery
·         The idea of Evolutionary testing
·         How to develop a test strategy within the EVO framework
·         The concepts of test cycles within the EVO framework
·         The concept of a quality factor assessment

Phil Lones has several years’ experience testing mainframe and client server applications and is currently working as the test manager for PC and web based projects with Avaya Inc. He had made presentations at several conferences including Lucent Software Symposium (1998), Quality Week Symposium (1999, 2000), PSQT/PSTT North (2000), as well as local SPIN and ACM chapters. Mr. Lones holds an MS degree in Information Systems Management from the University of Colorado at Denver, a BS degree in Computer Science from Metro State College of Denver and a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington. He is a member of the Association for Computer Machinery, the Rocky Mt. Information Managers Association, and Software Quality Association of Denver.

Development and testing concepts of white-box, black-box, Web-box, and regression testing will be discussed.

Today's dynamic Web sites are sophisticated n-tier software applications with Web interfaces. Because dynamic Web sites involve extensive programming, developers of these Web sites need to apply their standard testing procedures in their Web development. In this session, we will discuss the following techniques for testing Web applications.

Arthur Hicken has been involved in managing ParaSoft's corporate Web site since the inception of the World Wide Web and has developed on-line purchasing and product evaluation capabilities, as well as technology that ties standard databases and data source to Web based applications. Mr. Hicken has also worked on preparing a consumer based Internet site for the wireless Web. He has taught at College of DuPage in Illinois as well as developed and conducted numerous technical training courses at ParaSoft. He has been quoted in Business 2.0, Internet Week, and CNET news.com regarding Web site quality issues.

The problems of using recording as your only test automation strategy are well known. But the other option, full script programming is unattractive to many companies due to its high cost, and relatively long development time. However, there is a strategy that incorporates the best of both worlds that we call Defensive Programming. By starting with a pre-programmed script template, recording the specific test case using any automation tool, and then doing some simple post-processing transforms, you can easily build a robust and effective suite of automated tests. Why defensive programming? If your automation effort has gotten farther than 5 scripts, you already know the reasons. Synchronization problems, fault tolerance, data handling, logging, scalability and more: all of these prevent you from enjoying the automation experience which you thought you were buying. Defensive programming allows you to leverage your automation tool with some relatively simple implementation techniques to create robust test suites.

· Discussion of recording only as a test automation strategy
· Common problems and possible solutions using several popular tool sets

·        Overview of problems with “recording only” strategy
·         How to process a recorded script to add robustness
·         Timing problems and (basic) synchronization strategies
·         Effective logging to diagnose problems quickly at crunch time
·         Building a complexity reducing infrastructure

Biography:

Jamie L. Mitchell is a Senior Test Automation Consultant at BenchmarkQA. in Minneapolis, MN. He is a contributing editor and columnist for “The Journal of Software Test Professionals.” He previously was a Senior Consultant at CornerStone Consulting, and the Lead Automation Engineer for Distributed Integration Testing / Global for American Express Technologies Organization. He has long been involved in test automation as automator, designer, architect, and mentor. He has worked in test automation since the first automation tools were released in Windows 3.0, including stints with Prudential Insurance, IBM AS/400 division, and ShowCase Corporation. He earned the Master of Computer Science degree in 1992 from Lehigh University and is a QAI Certified Software Test Engineer. He resides in Farmington, MN, and is an active member of the Twin Cities Quality Assurance Association.