Tutorials: Series M

Six concurrent tutorials taught by nationally recognized quality experts. Each tutorial is a one full day of an in-depth instruction in a specific software quality topic.

M1	Principles of Software Testing (Basic) (CSTP, #1)	Dr. Magdy Hanna
M2	Performance Testing for Web and Client/Server Applications (Advanced)(CSTP, Elective)	Dr. Subraya BM
M3	Testing Business Requirements (Basic) (CSTP, #5)	Robin F. Goldsmith JD
M4	Effective Test Management (Basic) (CSTP,#3&4)	Elfriede Dustin
M5	Rapid Business Driven Testing (Basic) (CSTP, Elective)	Clyneice Chaney
M6	Managing Risks in Software Projects (Basic)(CSTP, Elective)	Denis Meredith

Tutorial #M1 (Monday 8:30 - 4:30 p.m.)

This course is essential for every one who performs software testing on a day to day basis. Even if you have been doing it for a couple of years, you will get a clear understanding of the "good" and disciplined software testing practices. This course will also cover the different levels of software testing and how to effectively perform them. Topics to be covered include the full testing lifecycle, tracking test cases and test conditions to requirements, usability and user interface testing, unit, integration, system and regression testing.

Dr. Magdy Hanna is a recognized educator, speaker and consultant in several related areas of software engineering. He is the President of Software Dimensions Consulting and Training, and Chairman of the International Institute for Software Testing and brings over 20 years of experience with building and maintaining software systems. As an associate professor at the University of St. Thomas, he teaches graduate courses on several software engineering topics.

Tutorial #M2 (Monday 8:30 - 4:30 p.m.)

This one day course is targeted for business and system analyst, Quality test engineers, Test analyst, performance analysts and those who have involved in preparing performance test strategy, analyzing performance requirements, conducting performance testing and analyzing performance results on both Client/Server and Web based medium to large applications. It mainly covers how to prepare for performance testing including benchmarking and workload, issues involved in conducting testing. The course also discusses on design for performance.

How to build a Strategy for Performance testing of both C/S and Web applications

Dr. Subraya B.M. currently working as Senior Technical Consultant to Education and Research Department of Infosys Technologies Limited, Bangalore, India. Before he comes to Infosys, he was working as a Professor and head of Computer Center, at S.J. College of Engineering, an affiliated college of University of Mysore, a reputed engineering college in southern part of India, since more than 20 years.

Dr. Subraya holds Ph.D from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi from Computer Science & Engineering Department, in the area of hardware verification. He has guided many projects at graduate and under graduate level. His area of interest includes Software testing, Operating System and distributed databases.

He is currently responsible for managing the Web Performance Testing Center of the Organization. He has offered tutorials in Web Performance Testing in many pre-conference Tutorials including QAI and SEPG international Conference. He has published many papers in international conferences in the area of Performance Testing of Web applications.

Tutorial #M3 (Monday 8:30 - 4:30 p.m.)

Poorly defined requirements cause up to two-thirds of software errors, yet few organizations know effective methods to assure requirements are accurate and complete. At most, they use one or two weak methods and don’t recognize the weakness. This interactive session introduces 21 methods with increasing power. Following the CAT-Scan approach, participants apply the techniques successively to a real case and discover how each different method reveals additional, otherwise-overlooked defects when they are easiest and least expensive to fix. Participants learn ways to find previously overlooked requirements, increase meaningful customer/user involvement, enhance communications and understanding, and truly test the adequacy of requirements definitions.

This course shows ways to test requirements after they have been collected.

It is not intended to teach how to collect requirements,

although the testing methods suggest collection methods which would be helpful.

Our companion course, Defining and Managing User Requirements,

does concentrate on teaching how to collect, analyze, and document requirements.

Participants will learn:

21 ways to test that business/user requirements are accurate and complete.
Finding previously overlooked problems when they are easiest and least expensive to fix.

Recognizing, communicating, and gaining commitment to the importance of adequate requirements.

Evaluating the levels of quality embodied within the requirements.
Testing techniques that enhance customers' involvement and communication with management.
Allocating testing resources economically.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND: This course has been designed for systems and business managers, project leaders, analysts, programmer analysts, quality/testing professionals, and auditors responsible for assuring the accuracy and completeness of business/customer requirements.

        Overcoming obstacles to improvement
        Role of requirements in system problems
        Big economic payoff of better requirements
        Proactive testing Life Cycle Model
        Survey on improving requirements quality
        Keys to effective testing
        Why up-front testing usually is so weak
        CAT-Scan approach secret to quality

        The “Regular Way” we review requirements
        Hidden weaknesses of traditional methods
        Adding strength to subjective evaluations
        Formal technical review
        Inspection topics and standards
        Making sure they are requirements
        Assessing reviewability
        Determining deliverability
        Demonstrating testability
        Testing structural completeness and clarity
        Format for requirements deliverables

        What we mean by system quality
        Identifying all the stakeholders
        Detecting all three Quality Dimensions
        Design, Performance, Conformance needed
        Addressing relevant quality factors
        Candidate quality factor requirements
        Commonly overlooked deliverables

        Checking importance and criticality
        Finding Engineered Deliverable quality
        Guidelines and conventions vs. IT standards
        Engineering standards to do a job well
        Ascertaining trade-off balances
       Simulation and prototyping
        Walking through requirements
        Joint Application Development (JAD)
        Defining acceptance criteria
        Matching to independent definitions
        Independent/expert validation
        Measuring the "proof of the pudding"

Robin Goldsmith JD is internationally recognized as an authority on business engineering and software acquisition/development quality, testing, and productivity. He is a frequent speaker at leading conferences and formerly International Vice President of the Association for Systems Management.

This tutorial is based on the book “Effective Software Testing,” authored by the presenter (published by
Addison Wesley, Winter 2002)

Test professionals are working under continuous pressure to complete testing tasks with minimal time-frames,
little resources, and inadequate budgets. However, the responsibility of the testing team cannot be understated,
since the delivery of troublesome or error-prone systems can result in disgruntled customers, loss of revenue,
and loss of market share. Customers are seeking systems that serve them in a reliable fashion, that are secure
and usable, and that provide quick and easy service.

Given that testing resources are scarce, it is important that the testing program is implemented and managed as
effectively and efficiently as possible. Often overlooked are the many necessary aspects that make up a successful
test program, such as requirements verification, test team responsibilities and roles, automated tools, and nonfunctional testing.

The tutorial presents these key concepts and practices that can be used by most organizations to implement a
successful and efficient testing program. Effective Test Management is implemented along the software
development life-cycle. The tutorial is therefore broken down into the following phases:

� Requirement considerations for the testing effort. It is important in the requirements phase for all stakeholders,
including the testing team, to be involved and informed of all requirements and changes. In addition, basing test
cases on requirements is an important concept for any large project.

� Test-planning activities, including the strategy for creating test cases, the goal of the testing effort, and
considerations related to data, environments, and the software itself.

� Testing team make-up. A successful testing team will have a mixture of technical and domain knowledge,
as well as a structured and concise division of roles and responsibilities.

� Effective development of test procedures, including considerations for the creation and documentation of
tests, as well as testing techniques. This includes a discussion on the use of developer unit testing in the overall
testing strategy. Unit testing in the implementation phase can result in significant gains in software quality.

� Automated testing tool issues, including the proper types of tools to use on a project, the build vs. buy decision,
and concerns for deciding on the right tool for the organization. This includes a discussion on selected best practices
for automated testing. The proper use of capture/playback, test harnesses, and regression tests are discussed.

� Non-functional test considerations for a software application. Items discussed include performance, security,
usability, compatibility, and concurrency testing.

� A strategy for managing the execution of tests, including the appropriate way to track test procedures, defects,
and gather metrics.

Elfriede Dustin is the QA Director for BNA Software (www.bnasoftware.com) in Washington,
DC. Elfriede Dustin is the lead author of Automated Software Testing (Addison-Wesley, 1999),
and Quality Web Systems (Addison-Wesley, 2001). An acknowledged expert in software
engineering and testing practices, she has assisted numerous companies in the definition and
implementation of QA and Testing processes. For more information, please see her website at
www.qualitywebsys.com.

Tutorial #M5 (Monday 8:30 - 4:30 p.m.)

M5: Rapid Business Driven Testing
(Basic)(CSTP, Elective)
Clyneice Chaney

“We’re time-to-market driven, so the end date is everything.”

“If I automate this, how many analysts can I fire?”

“Is it possible for you to start test execution at the same time the Developers start coding?”

“We’re using an ‘Adaptive Process’ so we might do this differently on every project.”

“This is our most critical system. We don’t have time for all these testing milestones.”

“We need to focus on the people, not the process.”

Many factors work together to constrain testing capabilities in technology environments, and it seems like the list grows longer every year. Time-to-market pressures, lessening control over user environments, economic pressures and adaptive processes are all contributors to today's rapidly narrowing window of success for testing.

In the software development world, time to market has become even more critical. Using a four-phased risk-based approach, Spherion helps ensure that the most critical business functions are tested within the time constraints imposed by market conditions and user expectations.

This approach primarily addresses the challenges of testing in the rapid development environment and the critical testing tasks required to meet the business needs and constraints of these projects. Rapid Business Driven Testing streamlines techniques and methods, using templates and list of activities from Spherion’s Rapid Business Driven Testing methodology that, when performed, will increase product quality in rapid development projects.

Clyneice Chaney, a Managing Consultant with Spherion Technology Architects brings over 15 years of testing, quality assurance and process improvement experience. Clyneice is a Certified Quality Manager and Analyst. Focusing on process improvement and procedure development in the software testing and quality assurance areas, Clyneice has successfully lead process improvement, methodology development, and reengineering projects for organizations wishing to improve their software development, testing processes, and tool implementation. Clyneice has presented at the Software Engineering Institute: SEPG Conference, American Society for Quality: Quality Manager’s conference, and Quality Assurance Institute: International Software Testing Conferences.

Lead the initiative to create a formal testing organization and managing testing for a high visibility, time–constrained project. Activities included organizational change management plan, process improvement implementation, and project management. Initiative resulted in greater than 75% improvement in defect quality.

Lead the imitative to develop a new software development methodology in response to client requirements for a rapid approach to testing for time-compressed projects. Initiative became the key offering for corporate strategic realignment.

Lead process improvement effort for a Distributed Data Processing Organization to create a customized software development methodology, which resulted in a 50% improvement in time-to market for software development products. Reengineered business processes for sales and marketing department.

Served as the senior technical staff member for research on best commercial practices that influence the success of large-scale software-intensive projects. Coordinated with industry and government experts for the review and selection of commercial “best practices”, wrote a series of books, training guides and instructional courses on “Best Practices for Software Development Projects”.

Tutorial #M6 (Monday 8:30 - 4:30 p.m.)

About the Instructor:

Denis Meredith is an independent consultant, concentrating in the areas of Software Testing and Quality Assurance; Tools Selection and Implementation; and Project Selection, Scheduling, and Management. He has often been asked to speak on these and other software engineering topics for various groups such as the DPMA, QAI, ACM, ASM, CIPS, STSC, and EDPAA chapters
and conferences. Mr. Meredith has conducted testing, project management, metrics, and estimation seminars throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe, and Australia.

Denis has served in several different organizations since entering the software field in 1969. He has performed a variety of work, beginning as a programmer and moving through a number of assignments of increasing responsibility, including managing teams of developers, all development, managing an organization’s data center, and information systems manager. Denis was employed by a software vendor and functioned as product manager, product support manager, and finally as regional general manager.

Mr. Meredith has been a member of IEEE Unit Test Standard, Life Cycle Process Standard, Software Productivity Metrics Standard, and CASE Tool Evaluation and Selection Standard working groups. He holds CCP, CSTE, and CQA certificates. Denis has had articles published in Data Management, Systems Development, System Builder ,and Software Quality Professional
magazines and has written articles for Auerbach’s Data Processing Management series.

Tutorials: Series M
Monday, September 9, 2002

Tutorial #M1 (Monday 8:30 - 4:30 p.m.)

Tutorial #M2 (Monday 8:30 - 4:30 p.m.)

Tutorial #M3 (Monday 8:30 - 4:30 p.m.)

Tutorial #M4 (Monday 8:30 - 4:30 p.m.)

Tutorial #M5 (Monday 8:30 - 4:30 p.m.)

Tutorial #M6 (Monday 8:30 - 4:30 p.m.)