F10 – 402: Mission Over Method: What Really Makes Your Testing Valuable

Track: Test Strategy & Process

Agile, Iterative, or Waterfall? Automated, or Manual? Scripted, or Exploratory? Unit-level, or User-level? Scenario or Domain? Black-box, White-box, or Grey-box? This tool, that tool, or the other tool? These are just a few of the questions people ask when they are trying to improve their testing. It may surprise you to know that I start out by answering all of them with the same word… “Irrelevant.” That’s right, when it comes to improving the value and effectiveness of your testing, I believe those are completely irrelevant questions to start with. I believe the right questions to start with are:

  • What is my testing mission?
  • What about my testing is important to the managers and executives who are choosing to pay my salary (or consulting fee)?
  • How can I add value to the software, the project, and the business through testing?

When you start by figuring out the answers to these 3 questions, the answer to most of the other questions about processes, methods, tools, techniques, and procedures become obvious.

Attend this session to learn how determine what your testing mission really is, how to determine what testing brings real value to your project and your company, and ultimately how to increase your confidence that the testing you are doing at any moment during a project is valuable and will be valued by the stakeholders who matter most.

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Session Speaker:

Scott BarberScott Barber – President & CEO, PerfTestPlus
Scott Barber is the chief technologist of PerfTestPlus, executive director of the Association for Software Testing, co-founder of the Workshop on Performance and Reliability and co-author of the Microsoft patterns and practices book Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications. Scott thinks of himself as a tester and trainer of testers who has a passion for testing software system performance. In addition to performance testing, he is particularly well versed in developing customized testing methodologies, embedded systems testing, testing biometric identification and personal security systems, group facilitation and authoring instructional materials. Mr. Barber is an international keynote speaker and author of more than 100 publications on software testing. He is an advisory board member of STP Collaborative, and a member of ACM, IEEE, American MENSA, the Context-Driven School of Software Testing, and is a signatory to the Manifesto for Agile Software Development.