Calendar

See the Next Meeting information and register.

The WSA QA Workgroup meets on the 2nd Wednesday of each odd-numbered month. The location will vary for the convenience of our wide spread participants.

Please refer to our calendar regularly for the latest information and a list of upcoming topics. And, Sign up for our Email Reminder list for automatic updates and timely reminders.

Please contact us with ideas for topics or if you would like to become more involved with the QA SIG.

May QA Workgroup Meeting

May 14, 2008
6:30 PM
Location: Quardev, Inc., Seattle (Directions and Map)

Secrets of a Buccaneer Tester

Presented by James Bach

Education has been the key to my success. Early on I chose not to outsource it. I quit high school in 1982, and have lived without the benefits and drawbacks of institutionalized learning ever since. There are no undergraduate degrees in software testing. The certification programs and graduate degree programs I've seen are disturbingly content-free. The leaders in our craft are all self-educated to some degree.

I develop and sell a methodology for software testing that I call Rapid Software Testing. At the time I created it, my ideas contradicted most of what was conventional wisdom (and still do, although rapid testing concepts are somewhat less controversial, today). This talk will present, not my testing methodology, but rather some of the methods by which I arrived at it. I believe these methods are fundamental to self-education on the job, and that self-education is fundamental to competing in a difficult and diverse economy. You can benefit from these methods even if you completely disagree me about testing and even if you are Harvard educated thrice-over and wear powdered wigs.

About our speaker: James Bach is a local self-educated software tester and author of the unpublished book How I Learn Stuff: Secrets of a Buccaneer Scholar, as well as the published book Lessons Learned in Software Testing.

Register for this event.

QA Workgroup meetings are free for all attendees.

Upcoming Meetings

Past Meetings

from March 12, 2008

Distributed Agile

Presented by Joy Shafer
See the Past Meetings page to see more detail.

from January 9, 2008

The Strange World of Problem Solving

Presented by Dr. John Medina
See the Past Meetings page to see more detail.

from November 14, 2007

Please Break My Stuff!

Presented by Brian Snyder
See the Past Meetings page to see more detail.

from September 12, 2007

SBT Lite: Components of Session-Based Testing

Presented by Sam Kalman
See the Past Meetings page to view the slides.

from May 9, 2007

STAREAST Preview: Top Ten Tendencies that Trap Testers

Presented by Jon Bach
See the Past Meetings page to see the abstract and view the slides.

from March 14, 2007

Panel Discussion: Steer Your Quality Career with a Career Portfolio

Presented by Brian Branagan, Lisa Buffmire, and Rebecca Warriner. See the Past Meetings page to see the presenters and view presentation materials.

from January 17, 2007

CSI Seattle

Presented by Detective Hanf. See the Past Meetings page to see the presenters and view presentation materials.

from November 8, 2006

Lightning Talks

Presented by multiple presenters. See the Past Meetings page to see the presenters and view presentation materials.

from September 13, 2006

An Integral Approach to Creating Quality Software

Presented by Brian Branagan and John Forman.

from May 10, 2006

Measurement Pitfalls

Presented by Steve Smith, Technical Business Consultant for EMC, a manufacturer of intelligent storage systems, software and services and an independent consultant.

from March 8, 2006

Breaking Down (and Building Up)Exploratory Testing Skill

Presented by Jonathan Bach, Manager, Corporate Intellect and Technical Solutions, Quardev Laboratories

from January 11, 2006
See the slides

Evolution of Structured Exploratory Testing at Philips Ultrasound

Presented by Doug Carlton, System Integration Test Manager and LeAnn Coker, Integration Test Lead, Philips Ultrasound.

from November 9, 2005
See the slides

Anatomy of an Attack

Presented by Joe Basirico, Manager, Technology & Security Services with Security Innovation (http://www.securityinnovation.com)

from September 14, 2005
See the slides

It's Too Darn Big to Test

Presented by Keith Stobie from Microsoft Corporation

from May 11, 2005
See the abstract

A Theory of Variation in Software Development, Architecture and Project Management

Presented by David Anderson from Microsoft Corporation

from March 9, 2005
See the abstract

Agile Product Management

Presented by Greg Patrick from TechMeth, Inc.

from January 12, 2005
See the abstract

The Revolution in Manufacturing Quality - What can we learn?

Presented by Larry Schuiski, President/CEO, AGILEAN Corporation, Productivity for Performance™

from November 10, 2004
See the abstract

TeamTest 2005 Demo

Presented by Tom Arnold and Jason Anderson, Microsoft Corporation

from September 8, 2004
See the slides

When *You're* Tested

Presented by Jonathan Bach, Quardev Laboratories

from July 14, 2004
See the slides

Rapid Test Planning

Presented by Joy Shafer, Quardev Laboratories

from May 12, 2004
See the overview, slides, and review

Exploratory Testing Bootcamp with Microsoft's Noel Nyman

Presented by Noel Nyman

from March 10, 2004
See the overview, slides, and review

Model-based testing in the key of C#

Presented by Harry Robinson and Michael Corning

from January 14, 2004
See the overview, slides, zip files, and review

The Three R's of Software Testing

Presented by James Bullock and Brian Branagan

from November 11, 2003
See the abstract, slides, and review

When All is Said and Done—hosting a meaningful project retrospective

Presented by Christina Chen
Microsoft Corporation

from September 23, 2003
See the abstract

Measuring up: QA and the FDA

Presented by Andrew Jelen
Encompass International Inc.- www.encompassintl.com

from July 8, 2003
See the slides and review

It's a Beta... What Do You Expect?

Presented by Hal Bryan
Microsoft Corporation

from May 13, 2003
See the slides, article, and review

Testing In Session: A Way to Manage Exploratory Testing

Presented by Jonathan Bach

from March 11, 2003
Defect Management: Building a Better Bug Trap. Presented by BJ Rollison

from January 2003
The Revolution in Manufacturing Quality – What can we learn? Presented by Larry Schuiski