Dr. Erik van Veenendaal CISA has been working as a practitioner and manager in the IT-industry since 1987. After a career in software development, he transferred to the area of software quality. As a test manager and test consultant he has been involved in a great number and variety of projects, has implemented structured testing and carried out test process improvements activities in a large number of organizations. He is the author of numerous papers and a number of books on software quality and testing, including the best-seller “Testing according to TMap” and recently released a new testing book ”The Testing Practitioner”.

He is a regular speaker both at national and international testing conferences and a leading international (ISEB accredited) trainer in the field of software testing. At EuroStar’99 and EuroStar’02 he received the best tutorial award for a tutorial on usability testing. Erik van Veenendaal is the founder and managing director of Improve Quality Services ltd., a company that provides consultancy and training services in the area of quality management, usability, inspection and testing.

A major activity for during test planning is setting test priorities and defining and test strategy. This is done by means of a thorough risk analysis in communication with the major stakeholders. This presentation will discuss and present techniques for risk analysis and test strategy determination. Once the risk have been identified and analysed, appropriate techniques have to be defined to mitigate those risks. A difficult and experienced based task, however a number of guideline will be presented to assist in choosing the appropriate techniques. This presentation will address risk analysis and test strategy determination from a practitioner’s point of view, not just from theory.

The object of developing the test strategy is to ensure that the test is organized in such a way that it is reasonably certain that:

• The major defects will be detected;
• Defects will be detected at an early stage;
• The defects requiring most rework time will be found first;
• Accurate quality recommendations can be given on completion.

James Lyndsay is an independent Test Strategist, based in London. He's spent well over ten years in software testing, and has been the principal consultant at Workroom Productions since its formation in 1994. As a consultant, he's worked in a variety of businesses and project styles; from retail to telecommunications, from rapidly-evolving internet start-ups to more traditional large-scale enterprise. He's worked to technical requirements for companies that make and sell software, to commercial requirements for companies that buy and use software, and to unexpected requirements everywhere. James has used, taught and championed hands-on exploratory testing wherever it makes sense.

Aside from consulting work, James works with testtoolevaluation.com to independently evaluate test tools, runs a mentoring scheme for test managers, and continues to be an internal irritant to ISEB/ISTQB. James is becoming a regular speaker at international test conferences, delivering keynote talks at STAREast and AsiaSTAR in 2003. He received "Best Paper" at STARWest 2002 and at EuroSTAR 2002 for "Adventures in Session-Based Testing". See www.workroom-productions.com for more details.

James is also a director of The Manual (http://www.the-manual.org/), a not-for-profit organisation whose aim is to gather and publish basic skills.

Session-based testing is a management technique, and can be used to introduce measurement and control to unscripted, open-ended test approaches. It makes an effective foundation for significant improvements in productivity and error detection. The techniques are particularly helpful in controlling reactive, fire-fighting test teams, and in bringing agility and focus to exploratory methods.

Using two real-world case studies, this talk looks at the introduction and implementation of session-based testing. It details the session-based methods initially proposed, and notes problems, solutions and improvements found in their implementation particularly focussing on risk, coverage, test case selection and prioritisation. The talk also covers tools and simple metrics, recording sessions and the importance of feedback at a number of levels to allow process improvement. Finally, the talk picks up on common team issues; responsibility and empowerment, coaching and skills transfer, and what it is like to work in a session-based test team.

Supporting paper "Adventures in Session-Based Testing" won 'Best Paper' at STARWest 02 and EuroSTAR 02