Mobile apps and hand-held computing have become ubiquitous in today's world. When developing and testing for mobile, one must consider a host of fragmented hardware, software and even userbases. Testing, let alone creating automated test suites for a hand-held device or emulator is not a task for the faint of heart. April Luk will lead us through a day in the life of a mobile app tester, and explain when and how automation in the mobile space is your best option.

Exploratory testing is largely agreed to be the fastest way to find bugs and defects, while one of the most difficult to prove and evidence. Lyndsey Byblow and Gordon Bird will lead a group based discussion on the best practices and methodologies for documenting and evidencing your Exploratory testing, and touch on some common psychological tips, tricks and pitfalls, which may influence your methodologies. Group discussion is encouraged, as better methodologies can often come from spirited team work.

People in every role in in Information Technology are asked to estimate their work. Many of us have no formal training in estimating techniques. Others have formal training that they do not often use, as they are presented with a date and expected to meet it. Patrick has given presentations on estimating in a variety of situations. This presentation will provide a toolset for estimating that anyone can use.

This month's session will be a facilitated discussion on problems and solutions when dealing with vendor applications. The emphasis will be on ways to improve communication between clients and vendors. We are hoping for input from both the client and the vendor perspective.

Attend this interactive discussion and share your perspective and insights on this topic.

Exploratory testing provides both flexibility and speed, characteristics that have become increasingly important with the quick pace of short agile iterations. But, how do you retain traceability without losing your creativity? The answer is xBTM – a combination of session-based test management (SBTM) and thread-based test management (TBTM). In SBTM, exploratory testing is structured and documented in sessions. However, at times the work environment is too hectic or chaotic and requires the flexibility and freedom that is provided by TBTM. xBTM unites the two exploratory techniques to get the full advantage of both, focusing on increased test efficiency and creation only of artifacts that actually add value. In this talk I discuss the difference between SBTM and TBTM and show how the two methods can be combined for best efficiency. Using a mock example I go through the xBTM workflow on an agile project, covering all steps from test planning to test reporting. The focus is on practical examples and providing a range of flexible tools that can be immediately applied on almost any project.

Mobile applications are exploding in popularity. As their popularity moves from the consumer market to the enterprise, many of us will suddenly find ourselves on mobile projects. As the consumer app market has shown us, many mobile apps are of poor quality. It’s tempting to think that in more experienced enterprise projects we won’t make those same mistakes, but the mobile world is different. It requires adjustments in design, development, analysis and testing approaches. Doing what we have done before on successful projects is not a guarantee for success. In this talk, Jonathan Kohl describes some of the common pitfalls of mobile applications and how to avoid them. Quality issues on mobile applications are important, and require each of us on a project to be aware of in order to avoid the dreaded buggy release and inevitable #fail rants on social media. If you are a tester, developer, designer, project manager or decision maker transitioning to mobile projects, this topic is important for you.

This month we are bringing back our "Lightning Talks" format for the 2012-2013 season. Lightning talks provide an excellent forum for covering diverse topics and generating interesting discussion. Be sure to check out this unique format!

What is a "Lightning Talk"?

A lightning talk is a 5 minute talk given by a presenter on a specific topic. Since the time allotted is only 5 minutes, presenters are asked to present on a small slice of their chosen topic. The talk is timed and when the 5 minute period runs out, the presenter is asked to finish their sentence and the talk ends. Another 5 minutes is allocated for Q&A about the presentation. After the Q&A session has completed, another presenter is called and the same process starts again. Lightning Talks are widely used at peer conferences and workshops.

Confirmed Presentations

• "So I hear anyone can be a tester?" by Julie Hurst
• "The Psychological Side of Test Reporting" by Nancy Kelln
• "Working to Meet Deadlines Management Created" by David Higginbottom
• "Just Enough Process" by Sherry Heinz

The terms "testing" and "quality assurance" are often used interchangeably, but what do we really mean by them? Are they the same thing? Does it even matter, and why should we care?

Join us for our first debate panel of 2013 where Rob Irving, Janet Hykaway, Lynn McKee, and Vincent Chiew will discuss similarities and differences between testing and quality assurance (QA), and why they're worth exploring.

The panel will address questions such as:

• What do you do now, QA, testing, or both?
• Are there more testers than QAs? Why? What’s the difference?
• Does QA have a higher status than testing?
• What are the dangers of not understanding the differences between testing and QA from a business perspective?
• What are some examples of where QA should have meant testing and testing should have meant QA?

We want your input to drive the discussion. Please email r...e@sqdg.ca the questions you would like explored.

NOTE: This talk was originally given to the SQDG in 2010. Mike has agreed to deliver it again as many faces within the group have changed but the need to understand the metrics we use has not.

Collecting and reporting effective metrics can be a tricky business. Einstein captured it well when he noted "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted".

Software projects have a history of measuring irrelevant and even counter-productive progress tracking metrics. The "Hawthorne Effect" should teach us that we will influence what we measure, yet companies continue to overtly track things like hours worked and lines of code written, unaware that they send the message of valuing long hours over results, and discourage simplifications and healthy refactoring. Quite often the metrics we want to track are intangible and subjective and so people tend to shy away from them.

More fundamentally, why are we even tracking these metrics? Is it to report on what has already occurred or help steer our future course? Often an imperfect view of the future is more useful than a perfect view of the past. In the real world, rear-view mirrors are much smaller than windshields for good reason, yet the accuracy of hind-sight and our attraction to certainty often creates too much of an emphasis on lagging, already occurred measurements compared to leading metrics. So we get fancy graphs of project spend and defect rates, but no better insights into what we should be doing differently in order to meet our goal.

In this presentation Mike will review many common project metrics and explain why they are largely misguided and counterproductive. An alternative set of "Design Factory" metrics will be presented that are "simple and relevant to the true project goal", these metrics leverage the Hawthorne effect and focus on leading metrics to support smarter decision making.

We are excited to announce our rescheduled SQDG Summer Social!

Join us for an opportunity to network on a sunny Patio after work with your peer community of folks who care about quality.

Who should come? The SQDG isn’t limited to people with QA or testing in their title. If you’re passionate about quality and want to meet others who feel the same way, we would love to meet you. This is also a great time to discuss your thoughts, ideas, and expectations around what you’d like to see from the SQDG over the coming season.

Appetizers will be provided by DragonFire Inc., Diversity Consulting Limited, and the SQDG’s Outreach & Logistics Director, Janet Hykaway. Some beverages will be provided by PQA Calgary.

We look forward to speaking with everyone and enjoying what will be hopefully a sunny afternoon.

Read more on The Broken City Patio here: http://www.brokencity.ca/patio.html.

SQDG Is kicking off the 2013/2014 Season!

Good software testers often interact more with people than software, especially when reporting on the results of testing. Despite this our industry has little focus or training on the social and psychological aspects of our jobs. There are times when the results testers deliver to our project teams and stakeholders can be difficult to take. What I find fascinating are the reactions we can get from people about our results during the final, stressful phase of a project. This presentation will look at reactions to software testing results and draw parallels from the study of psychology.