Targeting Quality 2019: Full Schedule

8:00am EDT

Breakfast and Registration

Arrive, sign in and grab some breakfast before the Workshops begin at 9:00am!

Monday September 23, 2019 8:00am - 9:00am EDT

9:00am EDT

(SOLD OUT) Python (not only) for testers (SOLD OUT)

ATTENTION: THIS WORKSHOP IS NOW SOLD OUT

NOTE: You will be added by the KWSQA to the workshop you chose during registration at https://targetingquality.ca

Based on 2018 data Python the fastest growing programming language in the world. It doesn’t matter if you look at number of contributors, stack-overflow threads or opened job positions – Python is always at the top. What’s very important, it’s also fastest growing language for test automation purposes.

I will teach you what he learnt during his professional (but not only!) career. He will pass you the knowledge of all good practices as well as all tips & tricks to build your delightful test automation environment.

During the workshop you will understand everything needed to start your Pythonic adventure from the scratch. You’ll see how to use PyCharm IDE in an easy and comfortable way, how to build and maintain development environments and handle packages and libraries. After that smooth start, you’ll be solving simple programming problems to learn Python basics, including functions, conditions, loops, classes, collections and exceptions.

After we pass that part, you’ll be involved in what the testers like the most: finding bugs by writing code! Balancing between REST API and Web testing you will discover your favorite part of automation. As a last step, you will have a chance to wear business hat and use human-friendly Gherkin syntax to write (and execute) automated test cases.

Just join and enjoy Python!

Key learnings:
– Learning how to set-up environment and navigate in PyCharm IDE
– Understanding Python project structure and dependencies
– Know-how about Python basics (functions, classes, methods, collections and exceptions)
– Writing and debugging tests using Python modules (py.test/unittest)
– Understanding value of good practices for API and UI testing

Pre-Requisites:
- Bring a laptop and power cable!
- PyCharm
- Python 3.7

Speakers

Dawid Pacia

Engineering Manager, QA, Taskrabbit

Who I am1/3 QA, 1/3 Python, 1/3 Lead. Tech freak following all the newest technologies (and implementing them on his own). Fan of the Agile approach to project management and products.What I doLeading and supporting the best and the happiest QA team! Actively speaking (and traveling... Read More →

Monday September 23, 2019 9:00am - 5:00pm EDT
Norfolk Room

Workshop

9:00am EDT

Anchoring Quality in a Sea of Change

NOTE: You will be added by the KWSQA to the workshop you chose during registration at https://targetingquality.ca

Change. Everyone has to deal with it at some point. Many people don’t like it. What do you do when your VP comes in on a Tuesday morning and says “we’re going to do Agile, starting today” or “welcome to your new org structure”? What if your director gets let go, out of the blue? Or your entire team (leaving you on a quality island)? What if you are brought in to inflict help (change) on others? How do you maintain, or improve your products quality when the world around you seems to be spiraling out of control?

In this workshop, we will talk about change. We will talk about some of the changes we have encountered, how those changes have affected us, and what we did to make sure our products didn’t fall over in the middle of everything else going on around us. Through facilitated interactions, and exercises, we hope to show you some ways for handling change well (and some ways to NOT handle it well). Let’s work on handling change together, from Identifying the real issue in a situation to ways you can be a champion of quality through a changing organizational landscape.

Key Learnings:
Strategies for identifying what changes are happening in your organization and how it actually impacts you
Strategies for advocating concerns
Ways to be an agent of change

Prerequisites:
Bring your stories of change, and your willingness to learn from others
Laptop/Notebook for notes

Target Audience:
Anyone new to testing, new to organizational change, or anyone who wants to learn how others deal with change

Speakers

Erik Davis

IT QA Analyst Lead, Progressive Insurance

Erik is an accomplished tester and leader, with over 19 years of experience. He has been attending and speaking at conferences and meetups for over 7 years, sharing what he has learned, and helping to show testers how awesome they really are.

Bailey Hanna

Software Test Specialist, Roadmunk

Bailey Hanna is a software test specialist at Roadmunk based out of Kitchener, Ontario. She has been an active member of testing the community for about 3 years, working to expand her knowledge through conferences, testing meet-ups, and reading. Her primary areas of passion and experience... Read More →

Monday September 23, 2019 9:00am - 5:00pm EDT
Yorkshire Room

Workshop

9:00am EDT

Ensure Your Users Experience - A Trip Around User Validation Tools

NOTE: You will be added by the KWSQA to the workshop you chose during registration at https://targetingquality.ca

In today’s fast feedback world, getting our product in front of users often is incredibly important. But how do we know our product is ready to go in front of our users. Sure, we have 1,000’s of unit and integration tests on each of our microservices, but what happens when we put them all together. Ensuring our expectations of how our product works when all of the pieces are together is the final piece of the puzzle to give us full confidence we are ready to release and ensure our users are having a consistent experience.

In this workshop, we will discuss the different methods we can use to give us the confidence in our product. The main focus is on the different tools available to automate our validations. We will spend time getting to know three open source tools, Selenium (and some of the solutions built to use with WebDriver like Protractor and Cucumber) , Cypress.io and TestCafe. We’ll discuss best practices for each of the tools as well some ways that we can make our product more testable. We will also look at how these tools can help share knowledge of our how our product works as well as our products codebase. And while using these tools is a great way to know if we are ready to ship it off, we’ll look at some things you can do in production to ensure that you know of issues your customers are having prior to them even calling you.

The hope is after this workshop, you have the knowledge of all of the tools we discuss and the confidence to pick a path forward for you to build your organization’s confidence in your ability to release to production. Using one, some or all of these tools will open up a new world for areas of your product to worry about and give you more confidence that your users are having the experience they desire and you imagine them having.

Pre-requisite: Bring your laptop with the latest stable version of NPM. Also have docker installed, selenium chrome node pulled down "docker pull selenium/standalone-chrome-debug" and vnc viewer installed https://www.realvnc.com/en/connect/download/viewer/.

Speakers

Rick Clymer

Automation Engineer, Kalibrate

Rick is a test automation engineer at Kalibrate Technologies in Cleveland, Ohio. He started his career in QA 6.5 years ago with just a hunch of where he would end up. He has found a true passion in test automation and ensuring the product that his customers are using has as much... Read More →

Monday September 23, 2019 9:00am - 5:00pm EDT
Dorset Room

Workshop

9:00am EDT

The Hidden Requirements: Exploring Emotions with Placebos

NOTE: You will be added by the KWSQA to the workshop you chose during registration at https://targetingquality.ca

The way we feel is important!

All that we think, do, or say is influenced, to some degree, by emotions. Many successful businesses and people recognize the importance of emotional considerations.

The way we feel is important and should be considered!

All software is intended to help solve some problem, and both problems and solutions evoke emotions. Software requirements are simply wants or needs, which often stem from core emotions. Research shows that emotions can affect the acceptance or rejection of software.

The way we feel about software is important and should be considered!

A placebo is designed and used primarily to evoke emotions. Things like sugar pills, false elevator door close buttons, and fake office thermostats aim “to please”, rather than have any other physical effects. Placebo requirements focus on emotions. And so, considering software through the lens of a placebo can help emphasize emotional considerations, and provide a valuable perspective on bugs, ethical design, and much more.

In this session, I support the claims above, suggest some methods to elicit and test emotional requirements, and finally, use placebos as a lens to view software design and testing. Using presentations, demonstrations, and interactive discussions and exercises, we collaboratively explore why “The way we feel about software is important and should be considered!”.

Speakers

Damian Synadinos

For more than 25 years, Damian Synadinos has been helping “build better software and build software better” through testing. Now, through his company Ineffable Solutions, Damian offers talks and training that are focused on fundamental topics and people-skills, based on real-world... Read More →

Monday September 23, 2019 9:00am - 5:00pm EDT
Essex Room

Workshop

8:00am EDT

Breakfast and Registration

Arrive, sign in and grab some breakfast before the Opening Remarks at 9:00am!

Tuesday September 24, 2019 8:00am - 9:00am EDT
Sussex Ballroom 700 Hespeler Rd, Cambridge, ON N3H 5L8, Canada

Networking

9:00am EDT

Opening Remarks

Welcome to Targeting Quality 2019!

Tuesday September 24, 2019 9:00am - 9:30am EDT
Sussex Ballroom 700 Hespeler Rd, Cambridge, ON N3H 5L8, Canada

9:30am EDT

Q&A/Networking/Session Travel

Use this 15 minutes for 1:1 questions with the presenter, networking and travelling to your next session!

Tuesday September 24, 2019 9:30am - 9:45am EDT
Sussex Ballroom 700 Hespeler Rd, Cambridge, ON N3H 5L8, Canada

Networking

9:45am EDT

Lean Coffee Facilitators Training

Lean Coffee is a meeting format focused on solving problems. Use it for retrospectives, team meetings, project meetings, or ice breakers. Want to use it as effectively as possible? Come learn the method, or go deeper into it, with one of the midwest's premier Lean Coffee-ists. (That's a thing, right?)

Speakers

Matthew Heusser

Matt Heusser is the Managing Director at Excelon Development. The lead organizer of TestRetreat, a former board member of the Association for Software Testing, co-author of "Save Our Scrum", Senior Editor for "How To Reduce The Cost Of Software Testing", winner of the Most Influential... Read More →

Tuesday September 24, 2019 9:45am - 10:30am EDT
Norfolk Room

Leadership and Communication, Presentation

9:45am EDT

You want me to TEST?!

There’s a lot of discussion going on the software development world today about the incredible benefits of tester’s getting comfortable with code (reading it and writing it!) and about developers getting more comfortable with testing; but what is it really like to make that last shift within an organization and what does it really mean?

This talk will walk through how my team was able to shift testing in a way that the whole team was empowered to, and felt comfortable to, pick up QA tasks to increase our efficiency. We’ll go through how we identified the need for this shift, how we got the whole team on board, the process we took, and the outcomes we saw. I’ll also walk you through the challenges we faced and the lessons we learned along the way.

Key Takeaways:
- Understanding what it means and looks like for a whole team to be empowered to test
- Ways to get buy in (on your team and in your org) for non-testers to test
- Lessons learned by my team and advice for empowering your whole team to test

Speakers

Bailey Hanna

Software Test Specialist, Roadmunk

Tuesday September 24, 2019 9:45am - 10:30am EDT
Yorkshire Room

Lightning Plus, Presentation

9:45am EDT

Embracing Audience-First Testing at the CBC

What kind of testing can you do in the park on a sunny summer afternoon or while talking to strangers in the food court? How does an afternoon of drawing stick figures help you understand your product better?

Traditionally, testers have occupied themselves with analyzing requirements and finding bugs, but Agile thinking emphasizes the importance of delivering value early and often to our customers. On modern teams, testers provide the most value when they understand the needs of the business. At the CBC, that means our testing strategy has to orient itself around what matters to our audience and to Canadians at large.

I will share my experience in starting to adopt an audience-first mindset towards testing at the CBC, including practical steps we’ve taken while testing some of CBC’s digital products, how it changes my day-to-day work as a tester on a development team, and challenges we still face.

Attendees can expect to learn
- Why we should embrace UX and design as essential tools in our testing skillset,
- User research concepts and practices that can be incorporated into your testing strategy,
- Specific examples of activities you can try and lessons we’ve learned from them along the way.

Speakers

Gregory Paciga

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Gregory Paciga is a test automation developer for CBC Digital Products in Toronto, working on apps and websites that millions of Canadians use daily for their news and entertainment. He came to software testing somewhat accidentally after a research career in astrophysics, where he... Read More →

Tuesday September 24, 2019 9:45am - 10:30am EDT
Essex Room

Specialization, Presentation

9:45am EDT

Creating a Continuous Delivery Pipeline with Automated Testing

In this presentation you will learn about the importance of automated testing in a continuous development/deployment process. You will also learn how to set up a continuous deployment pipeline to incorporate testing in isolation/branch testing, as well as understanding how to design efficient tests and test suites for testing in isolation.

Prerequisites

Attendees should have some background in software development processes and basic tools such as version control systems, IDEs, etc.
Attendees should have some experience with automated testing and creating automated test scripts, as well as using testing frameworks for parallel test execution.

Primary Learning Objectives

Understand the importance of automated testing in a continuous development/deployment process.
Understand how to set up a continuous deployment pipeline to incorporate testing in isolation/branch testing.
Understand how to design efficient tests and test suites for testing in isolation.

Speakers

Josh Grant

I'm a solution architect at Sauce Labs, helping customers succeed with their test automation. I've been working up and down the test automation pyramid for 10 years, building unit, API and UI test frameworks on a variety of projects.

Tuesday September 24, 2019 9:45am - 10:30am EDT
Dorset Room

Tools, Presentation | Infrastructure and Automation, Presentation

10:30am EDT

Q&A/Networking/Session Travel

Use this 15 minutes for 1:1 questions with the presenter, networking and travelling to your next session!

Tuesday September 24, 2019 10:30am - 10:45am EDT
Sussex Ballroom 700 Hespeler Rd, Cambridge, ON N3H 5L8, Canada

Networking

10:45am EDT

How Do You Start From Nothing?

When you move to a new job, a new project, or just need to step back and look at everything from the beginning where do you start? Do you start with automation? Manual tests? Should you always consider both? What about working with developers, can they help? After attending this talk you will walk away with guidelines to steer you on starting (or restarting) your test plan, for not only testers, but developers and management as well.

Speakers

Mike Roznik

Mike started his career as a developer, spending over 15 years working in multiple languages and at various points as a front end dev, back end dev, security consultant, DBA, and even a run as a UI/UX designer. At some point he became the 'testing developer' and that started him down... Read More →

Tuesday September 24, 2019 10:45am - 11:30am EDT
Norfolk Room

Leadership and Communication, Presentation

10:45am EDT

Getting Started with API Testing

In many ways APIs are the glue of the internet. The modern internet is increasingly built on distributed architectures and companies that want to make their platforms extensible. APIs are a crucial part of these kind of business strategies. They are also challenging to design and test. By their very nature they are meant to be accessed programmatically and to expose underlying constructs in ways that are simple to use and understand. You might be comfortable with how to test manually or even with various types of test automation, but still not really know and understand how to effectively test an API.

In this talk I will introduce you to some API terminology and dive into some practical approaches and strategies that you can use as you get into API testing. We will look at a few actual examples and you will leave this talk with the grounding you need so that you can take the next steps in your API testing journey.

Speakers

David Westerveld

Senior Test Engineer, D2L

Dave Westerveld is an experience test developer and has been involved in the testing of many different projects ranging from well-established products, to helping with the early stages of major new initiatives. He is experienced in test automation at various levels of the product... Read More →

Tuesday September 24, 2019 10:45am - 11:30am EDT
Yorkshire Room

Lightning Plus

10:45am EDT

Distributed WorkLoad Testing with Opensource Solutions

In DellEMC Enterprise Servers Validation Organization, we perform Load testing using different workloads (Web, FTP, Database, Mail, etc.) on Servers to identify the performance of the servers under heavy load. Knowing how DellEMC Enterprise Servers perform under heavy load (% CPU, % Memory, % Network, % Disk) is extremely valuable and critical. This is achieved with the help of a Load Testing Tools. Load testing tools available in market comes with its own challenges like Cost, Learning Curve and Workloads Support. Here in this talk we are going to demonstrate how we have built JAAS (JMeter As A Service) Distributed WorkLoad Testing solution using Containers and opensource tools and how this solution playing a crucial role in Delivering Servers Validation efforts.

Speakers

VISHNU MURTY

Tester, DellEMC

Automation Technologist at DellEMC, is a Masters in Software Systems with 13+ years’ experience in Automation Development efforts. The domains I have worked on include Server, Storage and System Management Software. Responsible of Delivering Zeno - Continues Test Automation framework... Read More →

Tuesday September 24, 2019 10:45am - 11:30am EDT
Essex Room

Specialization, Presentation

10:45am EDT

The What, When and How of Test Automation in Agile

Agile means pace and agile means change. With frequent time boxed releases and flexible requirements, test automation faces numerous challenges. Haven’t we all asked what to automate and how to go about the daily tasks with the automation cloud looming over our heads. Here we’ll discuss answers to some of these questions and try to outline a number of approaches that agile teams can take in their selection of what to automate, how to go about their automation and whom to involve, and when to schedule these tasks so that the releases are debt free and of best quality.

Speakers

Nishi Grover Garg

Evaneglist & Head of Trainings, Sahi Pro

Nishi is a corporate trainer, an agile enthusiast and a tester at heart! With 12+years of industry experience, she currently works with Sahi Pro software as anEvangelist and Trainings Head. She is passionate about training, organizing testingcommunity events and meetups, and has been... Read More →

Tuesday September 24, 2019 10:45am - 11:30am EDT
Dorset Room

Tools, Presentation | Infrastructure and Automation, Presentation

11:30am EDT

Lunch

Tuesday September 24, 2019 11:30am - 12:30pm EDT
Sussex Ballroom 700 Hespeler Rd, Cambridge, ON N3H 5L8, Canada

Networking

12:30pm EDT

Digital Transformation at a Co-operative Insurance company (leanings, pitfalls and successes)

Digital is NOT a add on to existing technology stack or process. It forces to rethink the business model. In the presentation I like to challenge the embedded maturity levels ( such as CMMi) etc where we intend to achieve a level of maturity. However in digital world this means constantly "Maturing" versus Matured or maturity.

Digital maturity is a continuous process of adapting to the changing digital landscape. Technology is used not just to digitize the business model/process but exploited to do much more than the current business model allows. Digitally maturing organizations rely less on hierarchical management structure to make decisions. They build cross functional teams that collaborate more and are empowered.

I will present some challenges we faced while introducing this concept in our Digital Transformation program including roll out of “progressive automation” i.e. automate testing as it is being developed and the CI/CD which helped us successfully rollout Digital Transformation.

Speakers

Venkat Reddy

Sr.IT Manager ( Digital Program), The Co-operators

Venkat Reddy Kondam Profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/venkat-reddy-kondam-145970a/I have been in IT over 18 yrs in Canada in Financial Services ( banking, insurance) sector delivering complex projects and initiatives over the years by involving in multiple disciplines, cross functional... Read More →

Tuesday September 24, 2019 12:30pm - 12:50pm EDT
Yorkshire Room

Lightning Plus, Presentation

12:30pm EDT

Providing Value as a Leader - More Than Just 'Being the Boss'

Being a Test Manager is more than just ‘being the Boss’. Sure, there is direction to set, issues to address, hiring, performance reviews, status updates, and the list goes on. Managers want to empower their team members to make good decisions and execute well, but does that mean there’s nothing for a manager to do? How does one provide value when specific testing tasks are done by others? How does a manager go beyond ’being the Boss’ to actually helping their staff to do amazing work? Join Jeff Abshoff as he shares his experience working with new and seasoned testers, hear some of the struggles he has faced and gain some practical ideas for one-on-ones, team meetings, collaboration and growth challenges that you can bring back to your team in order to provide value.

Speakers

Jeff Abshoff

Testing Manager, Ansys

Jeff Abshoff is a Testing Manager at ANSYS Inc., a global developer of engineering simulation software. Jeff has been with ANSYS for over 14 years and has worked in a number of different areas, from established products developing incremental features, to new product launches looking... Read More →

Tuesday September 24, 2019 12:30pm - 1:15pm EDT
Norfolk Room

Leadership and Communication, Presentation

12:30pm EDT

Know Your Barriers: Lessons Learned in Accessibility Testing

Digital accessibility promotes making any software usable by the widest possible audience. In the USA and Canada there are also laws that mandate treating accessibility as one of human rights.

Implementation of Web accessibility is often spoken about in terms of design and coding tricks, but there are also personal difficulties for the teams involved. The talk addresses such cases of struggles and challenges, and provides a few practical ideas on how to successfully overcome them.

Workshop style of the talk, with content rich with examples and micro-exercises engaging the audience, is aimed to create an immersive experience for the participants and let them draw their own "lessons learned."

Speakers

Albert Gareev

Practice Lead, Software Testing, Agidale Consulting, Inc.

Albert Gareev is a software testing craftsman and practice lead. With over 20 years of diverse industry experience, Albert spearheaded testing for complex and challenging projects. Key expertise areas include Agile testing, Automation, and Accessibility. Visit Albert's blog at http://automation-beyond.com... Read More →

Tuesday September 24, 2019 12:30pm - 1:15pm EDT
Essex Room

Specialization, Presentation

12:30pm EDT

Stress Driven Development, and How to Avoid It

Please Note: This is a virtual presentation where we will be testing out the logistics of remote presentations and participant interactions, we look forward to your feedback on this!

When was the last time you took a day off? How many times this week have you worked overtime? These questions are related to one thing we all experience on a daily basis - stress. Employees who are trapped by their routine to "deliver business value at all cost", often forget to take care of themselves. Unfortunately, this work-related stress affects our loved ones too, because work-life balance that we all hear about, usually means work-life stress.

What if I were to say that it does not have to be this way? In this talk, we discuss ways how to relax and avoid "Stress Driven Development." We deep dive into common stressors, and draft a comprehensive guide to removing stress at work and in our personal lives.

Speakers

Dmitry Vinnik

Open Source Developer Advocate at Facebook, Facebook

Dmitry is an Open Source Developer Advocate at Facebook, where he focuses on projects in the mobile space. His goal is to help developers be more productive through open source. Dmitry continues being a developer-first, so he applies the same mindset and passion when working on open... Read More →

Tuesday September 24, 2019 12:30pm - 1:15pm EDT
Dorset Room

Tools, Presentation | Infrastructure and Automation, Presentation

12:55pm EDT

What Re-Watching 'The Matrix' can Teach us About Software Testing

When building a perfect tester mindset, both in ourselves and in future software testers, we often focus on technical skills. We emphasize these skills because they are critical to what helps us write and execute tests, write defects, etc. But, shouldn’t we also consider the curious, creative, and adventurous traits that lie at the heart of testing? What are we doing to make sure those don't get lost or overlooked as we grow and develop our testing mindset?
In the 1999 film The Matrix, Morpheus says, “Good adaptation and improvisation. But your weakness is not your technique.” When I heard this line, I thought that perhaps this film gets to the heart of these questions. Morpheus, the mentor figure of the movie, focuses on teaching Neo, the protagonist, to re-assess his assumptions of how the system within which they are living should work, to see how it does work. Through the empowerment of his creative and curious traits, Neo is given the tools to find the weak points of the program and the confidence to break the system. Using the film as our contextual guide to give our concepts a relatable frame of reference, we will explore what the movie can show us about teaching new testers, and about growing ourselves as testers. We will explore what skills we can focus on to build fearlessness into the testing mindset. With a fearless testing mindset, we can become The One – A Software Tester.

Speakers

Danielle Gulliver

Danielle Gulliver is a software tester at PQA Testing and is currently embracing all of the exciting avenues software testing has to offer. Her interests and career experience so far have spanned from performance testing, automation, and manual testing, to content QA and now occasionally... Read More →

Tuesday September 24, 2019 12:55pm - 1:15pm EDT
Yorkshire Room

Lightning Plus, Presentation

1:15pm EDT

Q&A/Networking/Session Travel

Use this 15 minutes for 1:1 questions with the presenter, networking and travelling to your next session!

Tuesday September 24, 2019 1:15pm - 1:30pm EDT
Sussex Ballroom 700 Hespeler Rd, Cambridge, ON N3H 5L8, Canada

Networking

1:30pm EDT

Implementing an Agile QA Guild into an Organization

In 2018, Element Fleet Management committed to implementing "True Agile" into their entire software development organization. With the assistance of Boston Consulting Group, they embraced the "Spotify Model" of Agile which includes organizing Guilds for each role on the Squad. In early 2019, Richard Strang was hired as the QA Guild Leader for Element. This presentation will document his experience and challenges implementing a QA Guild into an enthusiastic but inexperienced organization.

Speakers

Richard Strang

QA Guild Leader, Element Fleet Management

Richard Strang has 25 years of software quality assurance experience. He considers himself a professional tester. Starting in the test automation tools space immediately after university graduation, he has worked with a broad array of organizations as a tester, QA Manager, QA Architect... Read More →

Tuesday September 24, 2019 1:30pm - 1:50pm EDT
Yorkshire Room

Lightning Plus, Presentation

1:30pm EDT

Can you imagine what can happen if we split teams differently by building a community of practice in agile organization?

Managers have the ability to split organizations into teams, programs and functions. This causes a deep level of ignorance, duplication of work, and less knowledge sharing or even worst. In this case, people feel they are working alone and not supported which is the main 'WHY' people left their job and start seeking for better scope.
In order to avoid all those problems, organizations are making new changes and ways of transformation to make their collaborators more fluid. That's why and how communities of practice are built. In fact, the main reason is to create a link between different people and connect them independently from which function and team they are working on.
Those communities offer multiple important advantages to members and to organization. In this talk, Emna will brings examples of community of practice development within Ministry of Testing Meetups. She will illustrate why communities of practice are an essential part of agile organization and what role they can perform in the short and long term. Also she will refer to the importance of gamification in building those communities and other helpful strategies to connect participants using different methods of fragmenting the organization such as spotify model.

Speakers

Emna Ayadi

Test Coach, Primatec

Emna has been involved in the world of testing and quality for almost 5 years on different projects. Currently she is a test coach at Primatec Engineering. Mentoring teams, monitoring and evaluating the test training program’s effectiveness to help them grow and give the best of... Read More →

Tuesday September 24, 2019 1:30pm - 2:15pm EDT
Norfolk Room

Leadership and Communication, Presentation

1:30pm EDT

Testing of AI Systems

There are two main challenges to testing systems that incorporate elements of artificial intelligence (AI). First, the same input can trigger different responses as an AI system learns and adapts to new conditions, and second, it is difficult to understand what the correct response really should be. Such behavior violates one of the main principles of traditional testing: the repeatability of test case execution. Testers lose confidence in the outcome of their testing when traditional approaches no longer apply. Yury Makedonov explains how testing can be improved if we have direct access to the system’s state (grey box testing). He provides a demonstration of a simple “machine learning” system to show some grey box testing techniques. In the second part of his presentation Yury discusses test data challenges using a “pattern recognition” model as an example. These data handling techniques can be used for both cases of grey box and black box testing (when we can’t access the state of AI system). You can apply these techniques to a wide range of AI systems, ranging from simple machine learning systems to complex neural networks.

Speakers

Yury Makedonov

Yury Makedonov was trained as a researcher and worked in a research and development institution dealing with composite materials. He has a Ph.D. degree in physics and math, though he is not a rocket scientist anymore; now he is using his skills and knowledge to improve software quality... Read More →

Tuesday September 24, 2019 1:30pm - 2:15pm EDT
Essex Room

Specialization, Presentation

1:30pm EDT

Automated visual testing and health checks in CI/CD

Testing a site for common errors and tracking visual changes throughout its development may turn out to be a key aspect of continuous software delivery lifecycle. Moreover, regression testing across a range of environments is expensive and time-consuming.

Improve the quality of your site and at the same make your development process more efficient and cheaper. Automate your regression (visual comparison and page health checks) with AET, an open-source selenium-based testing tool for everyone, no matter if you are a QA engineer, a developer or a content author!

AET allows for automated change supervision by comparing the actual version of your site (visual and source regression) to its pattern approved before by the user along with its validation against accessibility and W3C guidelines and testing status codes for HTTP responses.

The tool has been used in various projects realized at Cognifide and our clients for over 7 years and it went open source 2 years ago. During the lecture Radek and Maciej will take you on a journey through test automation experiences showing:
- how easy you can launch automated tests for your pages with AET,
- how quickly you can analyze their results,
- how aptly you can identify issues related to them,
- benefits of the implementation of AET in various projects realized at Cognifide.

Speakers

Radek Lawgmin

QA Senior Engineer, Wunderman Thompson Technology

Radek Lawgmin is a senior QA engineer and QA lead at Wunderman Thompson Technology. Being responsible for defining testing strategies, he ensures the product complies with industry and company standards and best practices.He has 18 years of professional experience in the fields of... Read More →

Maciej Laskowski

Principal Software Engineer, Wunderman Thompson Technology

Maciej is a software engineer who believes that production-readiness and simplicity are the most significant qualities of applications. With his comprehensive approach to solving problems, he is a natural DevOps culture evangelist. His interests and experience are focused mainly... Read More →

Tuesday September 24, 2019 1:30pm - 2:15pm EDT
Dorset Room

Tools Infrastructure and Automation

1:55pm EDT

Gamify your Agile Workplace

Let's Play and learn some useful Innovation Games that can help you gamify your agile team and workplace, making the team meetings shorter and communication more fun!
We'll present live some innovation games like Speed Boat, Mitch Lacey Team Prioritization and have audience volunteers engage and play games based on known scenarios.

Speakers

Nishi Grover Garg

Evaneglist & Head of Trainings, Sahi Pro

Tuesday September 24, 2019 1:55pm - 2:15pm EDT
Yorkshire Room

Lightning Plus, Presentation

2:15pm EDT

Afternoon Snack! (Also, Q&A/Networking/Session Travel)

Use this 15 minutes to grab an afternoon snack, ask 1:1 questions with the presenter, networking and travelling to your next session!

Tuesday September 24, 2019 2:15pm - 2:30pm EDT
Sussex Ballroom 700 Hespeler Rd, Cambridge, ON N3H 5L8, Canada

Networking

2:30pm EDT

From Manual Tester to Automation Engineer: A Guide For Everyone

Learn some easy stepping stones to go from manual testing to getting your feet wet with automation to writing full automation suites. In this talk you can expect lots of easy to understand code snippets, lots of sources for more information, and plenty of encouragement.

Speakers

Mike Roznik

Tuesday September 24, 2019 2:30pm - 2:50pm EDT
Yorkshire Room

Lightning Plus, Presentation

2:30pm EDT

Team Dynamics AKA Good Code Co-Parenting

Fostering good team dynamics is a difficult and thankless job, one that is often relegated to managers. Problematic personalities, clashing communication styles, egos… All thrown to our poor managers, to be dealt with from the top-down. But it doesn't have to be this way! The team dynamic is the responsibility of the entire team, to own, manipulate and tweak to their benefit. And it's not as scary as it sounds. But how do you know what makes a team dynamic good or bad? What's worth fixing and what do you work around instead? In this talk, I'll be sharing my experiences working with different teams - both good and bad - and what I've learned from them. What are the markers of a good team, and why? What adjustments can you make, or suggest to management, to improve a teams dynamic? What can you do to promote good working relationships with your team members?

Speakers

Jade Promhouse

Software Developer in Test, MappedIn

Jade currently hangs her hat at Magnet Forensics, where she strives for balancing quality standards and efficient testing methods. Although new in her career, she's had the opportunity to work at a variety of companies, in a variety of industries, such as D2L, Zynga and Apple. She... Read More →

Tuesday September 24, 2019 2:30pm - 3:15pm EDT
Norfolk Room

Leadership and Communication, Presentation

2:30pm EDT

R.I.P Test Design

Test design is an important phase in testing lifecycle but with rapidly changing technologies and methodologies, the way test design is approached is going to significantly change. It will reach a point where the phase will become obsolete while the function continues to plan an important role. Our presentation covers the following

• Journey of the test design concepts
• Test design approaches largely used in industry
• Test design optimization approaches, implications and benefits
• Impact of emerging technologies and methodologies on test design practices
• R.I.P test design

Speakers

Pavan Kumar YG

Senior Manager, Capgemini

Pavankumar YG has over 19 years of experience in quality assurance of web, windows, SAP, cloud and mobile applications. Pavan is currently working with Capgemini as automation architect. Published an article on Robotic Process Automation Testing on LinkedIn (LinkedIn: http://ca.l... Read More →

Rajamohan Maddineni

Rajamohan has over 10 years of experience in test automation. He is the inventor of a test design optimization approach and tool. He is currently working as automation architect with Capgemini. He has several certifications; most recent is UIPath – RPA tool (https://ca.linkedin... Read More →

Tuesday September 24, 2019 2:30pm - 3:15pm EDT
Essex Room

Specialization, Presentation

2:30pm EDT

Sometimes Our Tools Can't Come With Us

Who’s in the driver’s seat of that flashy new app or widget, you or your tools and processes? If your tools and processes are dictating how you do everything how do you innovate? How do you rapidly respond to customer feedback? How can this new flashy app you are creating be any better than the last one?
Let’s be honest what organization isn’t under some kind of transformation be it Waterfall to Agile or adoption of DevOps and Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) or something else. It’s the reality of our industry, Change, it’s the only constant. So why do our toolboxes look virtually the same as 10 years ago, or worse yet they are busting at the seams because you can’t shed dead weight?
It’s time to take a good hard look at your toolbox and determine who stays, who goes and what you need to go shopping for. Can you build it in house or is it better to buy a commercial tool? What do you need to consider when decommissioning tools and managing the change that surrounds it? It’s not always an easy choice, buy vs build, keep vs put out to pasture, we will explore all these and some with practical examples along with tips and tricks to take back to your own organization. What’s good enough? nothing is perfect, stop looking for perfection and stop trying to build it. While this presentation will focus on Quality tooling from code quality to function and performance testing and reporting the concepts apply to the broader software development tools.

Speakers

Kevin Malley

Kevin Malley is currently a Senior Technical Product Owner at Manulife where he along with a group DevOps evangelist’s are transforming the way Manulife builds, delivers and supports it’s products. He started his career testing hardware and software for the broadcast industry... Read More →

Tuesday September 24, 2019 2:30pm - 3:15pm EDT
Dorset Room

Tools, Presentation | Infrastructure and Automation, Presentation

2:55pm EDT

Your test coverage is lying to you (and how to fix it)

If you take comfort in knowing that your unit test suite has very high coverage, or think that increasing your test coverage will guarantee catching bugs earlier, I have some bad news. Your test coverage metrics are lying to you.

If you’ve already been bitten by bugs that turned up in code that you thought was thoroughly tested, or suspect that your unit tests leave something to be desired, I can provide some hope. There is a better way!

In this interactive demonstration, I will use just a few lines of Javascript to achieve 100% test coverage without actually testing anything, and then show how using mutation testing tools can expose those lies without writing a single new test.

If you rely on unit tests in your development process at all, you’ll see how this simple technique can be used to evaluate your actual test coverage and highlight exactly what kinds of bugs you might still be missing.

Speakers

Gregory Paciga

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Tuesday September 24, 2019 2:55pm - 3:15pm EDT
Yorkshire Room

Lightning Plus, Presentation

3:15pm EDT

Q&A/Networking/Session Travel

Use this 15 minutes for 1:1 questions with the presenter, networking and travelling to your next session!

Tuesday September 24, 2019 3:15pm - 3:30pm EDT
Sussex Ballroom 700 Hespeler Rd, Cambridge, ON N3H 5L8, Canada

Networking

3:30pm EDT

More Than That

“What do you do?” It’s a frequent first question asked at parties, networking events, and bad dates. And sadly, the answer often includes the word “just”. Perhaps a more interesting question is, “Who are you?”. But, how should you answer? Often, our identity is dominated by our professional image. However, even those that “live to work” have other facets which may contain hidden value.
In this keynote, Damian explores labels, anxiety, models, and more in order to examine our identities, explore our interests, and help us find value in unexpected sources. Through humor, improv, personal stories, examples, research, and pop-culture, this talk inspires and motivates while simultaneously providing practical tools to help you reevaluate Who You Are and Who You Can Be. Join him to laugh while you learn, as you “unjust yourself” and discover that everyone is More Than That!

Speakers

Damian Synadinos

Tuesday September 24, 2019 3:30pm - 4:30pm EDT
Sussex Ballroom 700 Hespeler Rd, Cambridge, ON N3H 5L8, Canada

Keynote

5:00pm EDT

Social

After conference social presented by Oracle Netsuite

Sponsors

Oracle | NetSuite

Tuesday September 24, 2019 5:00pm - 7:00pm EDT
The Bruce Craft House

Networking