13th International Software  /  Internet Quality Week (QW2000) Conference Theme: New Century, New Beginnings San Francisco, California USA 30 May 2000 - 2 June 2000 BIRDS OF A FEATHER SESSIONS (BOFSs)

How The QW2000 BOFSs Work

BOFSs are schedule to occur during the luncheon hour, during breaks, or after the last conference session. Locations of each meeting will be announced later.

BOFS Topics

Moderated by Johanna Rothman.

Maybe you want to become a test lead. Maybe you want to become a test manager a project manager, or a program manager. Maybe you're already a test manager, and want to be the Director of product development or move into product marketing. We all have multiple capabilities, and testing is a great way to exercise some of those capabilities, and see which new ones you'd like to examine. In this BOFS, Johanna Rothman will moderate a discussion around the positions people would like to move towards, and the strategies and tactics that have worked for other people.

Moderated by Mark Foulkrod, who will moderate these discussions to ensure that participants leave with a strong understanding of the available tools, techniques, and the payoffs of each. He will redirect attempts by participants to debate the superiority of any particular tool over another feature-by-feature.

Java inherits many of the well known object-oriented testing challenges and presents several unique new ones. How should a Java project team approach adopting automated testing? With a rich set of both commercial and non-commercial testing tools available, which ones are right for your development arsenal?

During this BOF, we'll share experiences on the various types of automated testing tools and strategies for using them. Ultimately, we'll examine and discuss the bottom-line of each in terms of time, quality and savings for any given team member.

Some topics open for discussion are:

For any given test phase, what tools are available and what are the tradeoffs and implications for adopting them?

• Unit/Component Based (White/Grey/Black "box" modifiers)
• Integration
• Function
• System
• Virtual Machine profiling (memory allocation, performance, statistics)
• Stress/Load Testing
• Regression

Who can use these tools, and who SHOULD be using these tools?

• Developers
• QA Specialists
• Business Analysts

Looking Under the Program's Hood (Grey Box Testing)

Moderated by Brian Marick

"Grey box testing" is the use of internals information in test design. There are at least two ways in which it can be used:

• It can improve *effectiveness* by leading to productive new ideas for tests.

  For example, you might discover that session information is stored on disk, which should make you think about full disks, lack of permissions, what happens when the session file is deleted, etc.

• It can improve *efficiency* by allowing you to eliminate redundant tests.

  For example, suppose that two features maintain lists and sort them. Without internal knowledge, you might have to test whether each sorts correctly. But if you know that they both use the same sorting library, you don't need to fully test sorting in each feature. You only need to test that each feature uses the sorting library correctly, which is a much smaller task.

In this BOFS, we'll share techniques for *quickly* and *cheaply* learning *just enough* about the internals of systems we're testing. The presumption here is that there's a point of diminishing returns. At some point, the benefit of learning more ceases to outweigh the cost. We'll also discuss rules of thumb for where that point is.

The moderator will ruthlessly squelch attempts to define "black box", "white box", and "grey box" testing. His experience is that such attempts are not useful. It's better to talk about how to do "it" than about what "it" is.

Strategies for Testing Web Sites

Moderated by Jim Bampos

Web Testing is a discipline, that for the most part, has been derived from other testing practices, like testing of consumer products, client/server testing, etc. Today's challenge is to develop web testing strategies to keep up with the pace of web development, while maintaining a solid quality criteria.

We have begun this transformation, and are continually facing shorter test cycles with more functionality and site content. The BOF discussion will evolve around the topics of web testing as they relate to:

• Performance testing: Is your site ready to handle the expected load - and considerations of load testing.
• Feature/Link testing: Are the features and links functioning properly - what is the approach and strategy of these types of testing (Regression testing included).
• Usability testing: Issues specific to testing E-sites - navigation, UI consistency, logical flow, etc.
• Compatibility: How to manage testing an exponential number of hardware/software configurations with limited time and resources.
• Checklist Is your site ready to go live - is there a method to demonstrate the readiness of a site from the QA/Test effort.

Tools and Strategies for Testing Protocols

Moderated by Brian Marick

Testing protocols is hard. Your implementation must conform to a specification. It must interoperate with implementations from other vendors. It must behave sensibly in surprising situations. It must be fast. In this BOF, we'll talk about test design techniques, coping with this special domain, and what tool support would be nice to have in the future.

Strategies for Finding Better Software Testing Jobs and Negotiating Better Employment Contracts

Moderated by Cem Kaner, J.D., Ph.D.

Labor markets are cyclical. Right now, your services are in big demand, and you should take advantage of the opportunities while you have them. Some companies are adjusting the wages they pay to current staff while others are paying new hires dramatically more and creating severe inequities. My impression is that some people are letting themselves be talked into accepting (or sticking with) rates that are a lot lower than those being offered to people who are a little more assertive as negotiators.

In particular, I think that a difference in negotiating savvy is resulting in differential treatment of some women and people of color. Similarly, some companies are giving their current staff a lot of room to stretch and learn, while others are keeping current people in their box, reserving the coolest stuff for enticing prospective new hires. Maybe it's time for you to check out your fair market value, decide what is important to you in a job, and move forward in your career. This might involve a new job or it might involve renegotiating your current situation.

I'm not a recruiter. I don't think that I stand to make any money from anything that comes out of this discussion. But I've been actively involved on all sides of the employment thing and might have a few angles to suggest that you might not have thought through yet.