13:00-14:00 Coffee & Registration
14:00 Introduction and Welcome – Fran O’Hara, Chair
14:10 Paul Gerrard Technical Director, Systeme Evolutif Limited: Risk-based Testing
15:10 Coffee
15:30 Fran O'Hara, Insight Consulting : A Practical Method To Rapidly Improve The Performance Of Testing
16:30 Birds of a Feather Session
17:00 Panel Q&A Session
17:30 Mulled Wine & Networking opportunity
18:00 Close

The SoftTest committee reserves the right to amend the programme as circumstances make it necessary.

Delegates are able to discuss their hot topic round a table with like-minded people and more than a few ‘experts’. Three key points from the session will be reported back at the start of the Panel Q&A session also. Choose from the topics listed below (please indicate your first and second choices of these topics on your registration form).

1. Automation - is it worth the effort?
2. IEEE 829 Standard for Test Documentation – what can it do for me?
3. Web sites – have we ‘cracked it’ or do we still have to test everything we did in 1999?
4. Usability Testing – does informal usability testing have value?
5. Managing Testing – from good to great – what worked for you?
6. Testing profile – how to make management sit up and listen.
7. Exploratory testing – does it deserve to be called ‘a technique’?
8. Getting budget for testing – does blood have to be spilt first?
9. Risk-based testing – where to start?
10. Test process improvement – problems and what worked for you.

Please feel free to submit other 'specific questions' (not just general areas) you would like to have discussed in addition to their first and second choices of the above list.

Fran’s experience spans over seventeen years, working with Philips Research Laboratories (Netherlands), Telectronics Pacing Systems (Australia) and Q-SET (Ireland). In 1996, he formed his own company, Insight Consulting Ltd. (www.insight.ie) providing Software/Test Process Improvement Services.

At Telectronics, he managed the Implant Software Dept. responsible for the design, development and test of real-time embedded safety-critical software for cardiac defibrillators in an ISO 9001/CMM level 3-equivalent environment.

He is a regular speaker at seminars and International Conferences, a trained TickIT auditor, a certified ISEB testing tutor and a trained SEI CMM lead assessor. Fran is co-founder and chair of SoftTest Ireland, the Irish special interest group in Software Testing

The experience of the last decade has shown that there are many barriers to successful process improvement. Some of the most documented barriers to improving testing processes include the following. 

• There may be a lack of management commitment and a perception that test process improvement is not a core business activity providing measurable benefit.
• Buy-in from staff for using some industry standard/model (e.g., TMM, TPI) may be lacking and perceived as having little relevance to them.
• Explicitly documenting a process adds more bureaucracy and work to existing practices.
• Staff perceive process improvement as an expensive overhead when energy is drained by excessively documenting and assessing the process.

This presentation describes a rapid and iterative method that implements effective testing practices in software organisations, while directly addressing these (and other) barriers. The method does this by getting managers and staff to focus their improvement actions on their specific goals and immediate project problems. It is highly flexible and provides measurable performance results quickly, thus creating buy-in from staff and management and ensuring continued improvement and success.

Paul is the Technical Director and principal consultant for Systeme Evolutif. He has conducted consultancy and training assignments in all aspects of Software Testing and Quality Assurance. Previously, he has worked as a developer, designer, project manager and consultant for small and large developments. Paul has engineering degrees from the Universities of Oxford and London, is Co-Programme Chair for the BCS SIG in Software Testing, a member of the BCS Software Component Test Standard Committee and Former Chair (current member) of the ISEB Certification Board for a Tester Qualification whose aim is to establish a certification scheme for testing professionals and training organisations. He is a regular speaker at seminars and conferences in Europe and the US, and won the ‘Best Presentation’ award at EuroSTAR ’95. He is the Webmaster for the www.evolutif.co.uk and several other web sites hosted by Systeme Evolutif.

Paul’s first book, “Risk-Based E-Business Testing”, written with Neil Thompson, was published in August 2002.

The risk-based test method is an attempt to use early risk analysis to connect the concerns and objectives of senior management to the test process and the activities of project testers. The consequences of so doing are obvious and most of these consequences are beneficial. If the test process is developed specifically to address the risks of concern to stakeholders and management:

• Management has better visibility of the testing and so has more control over it.
• The budget for testing is likely to be more realistic.
• The testers have a clearer view of what they should be doing.
• The budget allocated to testing is determined by consensus, so everyone buys into the quantity of testing that is planned.
• The information provision role of testers is promoted, but fault detection is as important as ever.
• The information provided by testers increases their influence on management decision-making.
• Release decision-making is better informed.

The risk-based test method is universal. Risks pervade all software projects and risk-taking is inevitable. The method helps projects to identify their product risks of relevance and focus the attention of testers onto the risks of most concern. Testing aims to mitigate risk by finding faults, but testing also aims to reduce the uncertainty about risk by providing better risk information to management. In doing so, management will be better able to steer their projects away from hazards and make better decisions.

This presentation presents an overview of the thinking behind the risk-based approach and walks you through the risk-based Master Test Planning method. The method is illustrated by introducing RBT templates and sample documents as well as a prototype of a tool, being developed to support the RBT process.