Can you quantify quality? How do you distill qualitative and contextual dynamics of product development into actionable monitoring that empowers leadership decision-making and exemplifies the quality vigilance you specialize in? Reporting Up is a critical soft skill that’s not always clear. This talk expounds on basic tactics and advice for test and quality leadership.
About our Speaker:With 15 years of test & quality leadership in software, Jacob Stevens has extensive experience engaging with project stakeholders and executives. He has moved into quality consulting and project management for the emerging fields of non-deterministic computation including Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Quantum Computing.
Presented by Jon Bach, Senior Program Manager, eBay
There are all kinds of boxes to consider as a software professional. Your project needs to have people who will question assumptions, examine the design, create experiments, analyze data, and report meaningful metrics. It needs people with the social skills to connect teams who work in silos, bring customer insights to light, and track risks that no one seems to make time to think about.
For 22 years, Jon Bach was a tester, test manager, test trainer, and test consultant. Then he became a Program Manager. This talk is about how he still uses his testing skills, but in different ways to examine the boxes around us. He will share his new perspective on the state of the testing profession and provide some insights for you to consider when growing your skills and following the path to being a PM. He’ll also ask you some questions via an anonymous poll, sharing the results the second the answers come in.
About our speaker: Jon Bach is a Senior Program Manager at eBay, leading various quality-related efforts in its Marketing Technologies team of 150 people. He has more than two decades of software quality project experience as a tester, test manager, test consultant, and test director, which he now uses to help eBay make sure its marketing efforts are thoughtful and relevant. He has an energetic and practical style, and he is known to many eBay customers as “Jon the Bug Hunter.” Jon can be reached at jobach@ebay.com.
Successful Leadership with Confidence and Kindness
Presented by Nir Megnazi, Leadership Coach at Intel, Speaker, Author, and Mentor – Intel Corporation
Have you ever felt overly stressed when trying to lead a team while remaining a technical expert and completing your own workload at the same time? Our September QASIG presenter, Nir Megnazi, Leadership Coach, Author, and Speaker, has some solutions and tactics on how leaders can thrive.
Presented by: Roy McMillion, IT Quality Assurance Manager, Delta Dental of Washington.
Security concerns are an ever-present factor in software development. With the increasing visibility on breaches, how can SQA add value to an organization outside of the traditional testing role? Non-technical testers or testers without specific security focus can contribute to the security standing of the organization by understanding the various frameworks that are available and adding these frameworks to their test effort.
Experience Report: Building Test Speed and Confidence in a Continuous Delivery Model
Presented by Andy Peterson, QA Manager, Costco Travel
Learn how a growing organization has gone from a five-week release cycle with three sprints to a single two-week sprint release cycle. Andy shares the challenges that the testing organization had to overcome in order to test things quicker, earlier and more frequently as their culture changed to a more continuous delivery model. This was done not only with traditional only functional testing, but also the larger non-functional testing such as security and performance. These teams were able to raise the confidence of build candidates as they moved from 10 releases a year to 26 and the other benefits associated with a more frequent release cadence.
About our speaker: Andy Peterson has spent more than 20 years in IT roles with more than the last dozen in a QA specific role including SDET, lead, and manager. He is currently the QA manager for Costco Travel’s Products and Markets group. Before that, he was the QA Lead for initiatives such as their platform and international efforts. He is from Michigan originally and moved out to the Pacific Northwest in 2006. Since then he has been through a lot of the regional hobbies like mountain climbing and winemaking. Currently, he is busy trying to keep up with two daughters.
In March we had 3 speakers present Lightning Talks about QA/Test/Career Building:
Cindy Ponko, Quardev Partnering with Recruiters during your job search
Cindy Ponko, Partnering with recruiters during your job search
Whether you are selectively considering a new role, or unemployed and actively interviewing, leaning on a team of reliable recruiters can help relieve some of the pressure. Not to mention, help open doors to you that would otherwise stay closed. Cindy will share a few tips on how to partner with Recruiters during your job search to help improve your chances of landing a best next step for your career. Learn ways to vet recruiters to find the one that’s right for you and the best steps to building a partnership that will last your career long.
Aaron Volosin, Tableau Offer employees career change test drives with temporary visitor programs
Aaron Volosin, Offer employees career change test drives with temporary visitor programs
You’re smart. You’re curious. What do you do when curiosity is focused on a career change? After more than a decade in Software Testing, Aaron was curious about a new discipline – UX design. He contemplated making a change but didn’t want to jeopardize his current team and career with a wrong decision. So he did what most test engineers would do. Aaron will share his experience working with the head of his company’s UX department to create a temporary “Visitor Program” – an internal intern program that enables people who are passionate about growing their career by moving to new disciplines to test drive it in a stress-free environment for all involved.
Aaron has spent the better part of 20 years testing software of all shapes and sizes. It as started at Wizards of the Coast when he was approached to test the first version of Magic the Gathering: Online. From there he went on to test other games, online marketing engines that integrated into Amazon, Windows Mobile, Zune, and most recently Tableau.
Jim Frazier, Quardev What does Quardev do when they aren’t hosting the QA-SIG?
Jim Frazier, What does Quardev do when they aren’t hosting the QASIG?
It sounds like a funny question, but it was one that came up during a discussion that I had during our last event. Although we try to focus the QA-SIG on the subject matter of the day, for this event, we will spend a few minutes talking about how we cater solutions for our clients using projects, and individually contributing resources.
Although we like our methods, we’ll be curious to hear how the audience thinks that we can improve… we’re always open to constructive ideas!
The Manager’s Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change by Camille Fournier
Overview:
A huge predictive factor in software delivery and high performing teams is having leaders with strong transformational leadership traits – but what does this mean and what are these traits and how can quality assurance team members influence their leadership from any position on the team?
Pat Loughery, Software Quality Assurance Manager at Starbucks, will address all of these questions at our November QASIG meeting in an interactive chat about Transformation Leadership for the QA Influencer. You will walk away from this presentation with a solid understanding of what this leadership style is and what you can do to bring more of it into your organization so that you can reap the benefits for your teams.
About our speaker: Pat Loughery has led and managed software test teams for more than 25 years including time with Microsoft, Quardev, startups, and consulting companies. He now manages QA for Starbucks retail systems in a team that is undergoing a DevOps and Lean transformation. In 2011 he earned a Doctorate in Ministry, studying Transformational Leadership for the Global City.
CI/CD: An Experience Report
Our Quest for the holy grail of software delivery
Presented by Leonard Vaughn and Joy Shafer, The Climate Corp
Climate has been working to achieve CI/CD with varying degrees of success for at least three years now. Although we are not “there” yet, we have made great progress toward that goal.
We’d like to share what we’ve learned:
How do we define CI/CD?
What does our process for getting there look like?
What is working for us?
What has not worked for us?
What is left for us to do? Why aren’t we “there” yet?
In this presentation, Joy and Leonard talk about the victories and setbacks, the Climate Corporation has experienced in its quest for the holy grail of software delivery.
Should your team embrace continuous delivery or bravely run away?
About our speakers:
Leonard Vaughn has been testing interesting software, from operating systems to apps, “for a long time.”
For the past 6 years, he’s been a Test Engineer with The Climate Corporation as it grew from a single-product, 100-person insurance company to the leading global digital agriculture platform. Along the way, Climate moved steadily* towards a Continuous Delivery model for their service and web stacks, and timely, frequent releases of both iOS and Android applications that today are critical to many farmers’ success.
*more like fits and starts, actually. But that’s where the story gets interesting!
Joy Shafer has been a software test professional for more than twenty years and has managed testing and testers at many diverse companies, including Microsoft, Alaska Airlines, and Quardev. She is currently a Test Engineering Manager at The Climate Corporation. Joy enjoys participating in community QA and Agile groups. She holds an MBA in International Business from Stern Graduate School of Business (NYU). For fun, she writes fiction and enjoys wilderness adventures (while drinking wine).
Thank you to everyone who joined us for the BBQ and July QASIG.
The grill masters were on point and the speaker was illuminating!
Keep an eye out for a big announcement and details for the September meeting!
July Meeting recap:
QA Management vs. Scrum Masters, Don Williams
Don has 33 years in SWQA, 8 as an engineer and 25 in management. He’s worked on a broad range of projects including a handheld data transfer device with embedded code, multi-million dollar medical imaging device, award-winning shrink wrap consumer software and some the largest websites in the world.
