How To Get What You Want From Testing by Michael Bolton

How To Get What You Want From Testing

Abstract: You're a manager, or a developer, a tester, or someone else working on software-based product or service. Where does testing fit? What's the difference between testing and quality assurance and quality control? What can testing do for you? What kind of questions should you ask the testers? How do you get the best value out of testing?

Managers have the authority and the mandate to make important decisions about the project scope, staffing, budgets, customer relationships, product quality—and when the product is ready to be shipped. Developers have control over the source code and the design. Whoever you are, skilled testers provide you with an extension of your senses. Skilled testers are like scientific instruments, communications equipment, and smoke detectors. But the best kind of testing is not just data collection. The best testers are like social scientists too, understanding the software, the systems that are connected with it, the people who use it, and the relationships between them. In every sense, it’s the mission of testing to reveal information, and you remain in control of what to do with the information that testers reveal.

In this talk, Michael Bolton (who has extensive experience as a tester, as a programmer, and as a project manager) explains the role of skilled software testers, and why you might not want to think of testing as "quality assurance". He'll present ideas about the relationship between testers and the other members of the project community, and about the service he believes that testers really provide: making quality assurance possible by lighting the way of the project.

Speaker: Michael Bolton (DevelopSense, Canada).

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Michael Bolton is a consulting software tester and testing teacher who helps people to solve testing problems that they didn’t realize they could solve.

He is the co-author (with senior author James Bach) of Rapid Software Testing, a methodology and mindset for testing software expertly and credibly in uncertain conditions and under extreme time pressure.

Michael has 25 years of experience testing, developing, managing, and writing about software. For the last 15 years, he has led DevelopSense, a Toronto-based testing and development consultancy. Prior to that, he was with Quarterdeck Corporation for eight years, during which he managed the company’s flagship products and directed project and testing teams both in-house and around the world.

Agenda:

18:30 - 19:00 Gathering and snacks

19:00 - 20:00 The Talk

20:00 - 20:30 Q&A Session

NB: RSVP'ing through meetup.com will not secure a spot for you.

This session is recommended mostly for experienced QA Engineers, so please tell us a bit about yourself by submitting this form (https://docs.google.com/a/wix.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeeIpV6fuzIh6WJUHFiIs1UcKeTR7WKehNTvAeHDuYAmaADeg/viewform) and we’ll be in touch soon.