program selection system

The biggest issue for testing tools (not just functional ones, and not just for agile projects) is to get undergraduate students to believe they’re worth using. Even today, most unit tests are written after the rest of the assignment is done (or not at all if they aren’t explicitly worth marks); higher-level testing isn’t done, and higher-level testing tools aren’t used, because students do not believe they actually add value.

i) What do you see as the biggest issue for Functional Testing Tools on Agile projects? Collecting the information produced into meaningful and useful data.

ii) What do you hope to contribute? I’ve built a number of metaframeworks[1] around python and selenium

iii) What do you hope to get? Further interest / discussion on the idea of metaframeworks in the next generation of testing apps

[1] a framework that controls the execution of multiple, disparate frameworks and aggregates their output into a single reporting structure

Several teams, multiple projects and a mix of work – new products, existing products, maintenance – welcome to life in the enterprise. What does it mean for an Agile team? There is an art to figuring out how to adapt Agile so that it works for the business, and we’d like to share our own approach. This session will draw on the experiences of Borland’s Agile teams to highlight the ways they make Agile work in the enterprise. This talk will explore: - How Borland empowers self-managing teams in a distributed environment

In stark contrast to the mind-numbing monologues you’d expect from other vendors, VersionOne Theatre presents the dramatic production A Day In The Lifecycle…, based on a true story*. This multi-act, action-packed feature highlights the pragmatic value a tool can offer in day-to-day product development activities – from product planning through your daily standup – illustrated within the context of the way agile teams actually work.

“One thumb, way up! A Day in the Lifecycle… was totally refreshing – entertaining and informative – a real breath of fresh air.” Ebert

This talk will tell the story of how to do agile development in the upcoming version of visual studio. We’ll talk about agile planning, quality early, TDD, continuous integration and improvement, connecting with customers and a host of other agile practices enabled through the new VS tools. This talk will showcase the tools by walking through the story of building Team Foundation Server v.next using the Visual Studio tools.

Join Michael Mah (Senior Consultant at Cutter Consortium and Managing Partner at QSM Associates) and Zach Nies (VP of Products at Rally) to learn about a landmark study that resulted in unprecedented quality and productivity metrics for several major Agile initiatives.

You will learn:

• How Agile projects fared in terms of speed, efficiency, quality and cost • What the benchmark findings revealed against a database of 7,000+ primarily traditional development projects • How your team can use Rally and QSM SLIM models to make measurement easy

Agile methods provide new opportunities to create great products through tightly integrated design and development. But too often, that promise is not fulfilled. In this session, you’ll learn why that is and how leading teams make it work.

Why does Agile adoption fail? Why do projects doing “textbook” Agile sometimes fail. There is of course no one right answer to these questions. But we suggest the answer can often be gleaned by considering the small things. It’s quite common for projects to follow a “textbook” Agile methodology in the large, while undermining basic Agile principles in the small. We don’t suggest that allowing small problems to flourish is willful neglect. Rather, small, easily ignored nuisances or compromises in the quality of the process and product can become debilitating in size and number.

In the playground world of software development, Agility has cool shoes and the latest gadgets. Testing has asthma and sticking plaster on his glasses.

Does testing have anything desirable at all to bring to the party? This discussion-based track proposes that testers bring something at odds with Agile approaches; disbelief, cynicism, pessimism. It is by defeating these that the software shows that it is genuinely ready to meet the real world.

Can one truly be an ‘agile tester’? Would that be a good thing?

** End of 90-word summary **

At last! After ten years of successfully coaching teams into XP, Mike Hill reveals the secret to agile transition: throwing a continuous good party.

There are several keys to hosting a good transition party:

• The Pre-Party Prep:
  • Invitations — Who to get involved, and how.
  • The Dance Floor — Preparing the workspace.
  • Food & Favors — Getting everyone in the mood.
• The Early Days:
  • Finding a Groove — Getting your team into rhythm.
  • Path-Smoothing — Dealing with incompatible guests.
  • Games — Keeping the team entertained.
• The Steady State: