Dr Stuart Reid FBCS CITP
Stuart Reid is Chief Technology Officer at Testing Solutions Group. He has 25 years' experience in the IT industry, working in development, testing and education. Application areas range from safety-critical to financial. In addition to his work at TSG, Stuart also supports the worldwide testing community in a number of roles. He is convener of the ISO Software Testing Working Group, which is developing the new ISO 29119 Software Testing standard and is the software testing representative at BSI. He currently chairs the BCS Specialist Group in Software Testing and also chaired the ISEB Software Testing Panel through the initial years of qualification development. Stuart founded the International Software Testing Qualifications Board (ISTQB) to promote software testing qualifications on a global scale and still works on the ISTQB Examination and ISEB and ISTQB Accreditation Panels. A popular speaker at conferences on software testing, he is invited to present keynotes, tutorial and track sessions in Europe, Asia, Australasia, and the US. He chaired EuroSTAR 2007, Europe’s largest ever software testing conference with over 1200 attendees, and he regularly writes articles on software testing for magazines.
Isabel Evans FBCS CITP
Isabel is a Principal Consultant at Testing Solutions Group. She has more than 20 years’ experience in the IT industry, mainly in quality management, testing, training and documentation. Most of her work has supported clients in the financial, communications and software sectors. Her experience as a tester and as a quality consultant provides a practical approach and real-life experiences. Isabel has spoken at conferences worldwide on software quality, testing and test management. Voted best speaker at EuroSTAR 2002 and at BCS SIGiST in 2003, she has provided keynotes and tutorials at conferences in Europe, New Zealand and the USA, and she is a member of the 2009 EuroSTAR programme committee. She has been a member of working parties contributing to improvement in software quality and testing, including the Quality Forum Testing Metrics Forum, the Customer Satisfaction Measurement working party, the BCS SIGIST Test Standards Working Party, and ISEB/ISTQB accreditation and syllabus development boards, currently working on the Expert Level syllabus. Her book, “Achieving Software Quality Through Teamwork” was published in June 2004.
Managing Testing in Agile Projects
Join TSG expert consultants and presenters Stuart Reid and Isabel Evans and learn how to address the challenges and reap the benefits of testing in an agile project. Through four key workshop sessions, gain:
- a better understanding of what is meant by ‘agile’ and how testing fits into this approach;
- insight into the many options available for agile development and testing and guidance on selecting the optimal set for your project;
- an awareness of the skill set required and how to manage team-work challenges for agile testing;
an understanding of the key factors that make agile such an attractive proposition and guidance on its introduction.
The Four Key Workshop Sessions:
- Introduction to Agile Development and Testing: What is the philosophy behind agile and how does it differ from traditional approaches? What are the attributes of an agile project? What are the expectations and benefits from applying an agile methodology? What is Scrum and how is it applied on a typical project? How does agile change our approach to testing? Do specialist testers have a role in agile projects? Is independent testing still needed or possible? Stuart and Isabel will introduce agile methods and testing in an agile project: who does it, how they do it, and the contrasting challenges for test independence and collaboration for fully agile projects.
- Options in Agile Projects: The choice of approach for implementing agile depends on constraints and factors at both the organisational level and the project level. They will include your reasons for choosing agile, your organisation’s norms and values, your team, and their technical and competence constraints. This session will examine each of the options, their pre-requisites and their expected consequences with the aim of identifying the optimal set of options for a given project. We shall include blended approaches and outsourcing, for testing undertaken by developers, customers and specialist testers.
- Managing Agile Teams: People are the most important component of a successful agile project and, as such, special attention must be paid to getting the right mix of skills and personalities on your agile team. Team leadership is especially important in an environment so dependent on team-working, co-operation, trust, respect and direct communication. Stuart and Isabel will identify the skills and capabilities required for working on agile projects, how these differ from those required on a traditional project, and how agile team roles affect the motivation of both agile developers and testers. They will also consider why communication may be different in traditional and agile projects, and how to introduce ways of working as a team to enhance communication and optimise performance.
- Making the Case for Agile: Despite its growing popularity, those advocating an agile approach still need to be able to provide evidence to justify its take up to higher management. This session will provide data on the take-up and success of agile projects in the industry as a whole and guidance on how to identify appropriate projects for agile development (initially for a pilot project and subsequently for mainstream agile development).