The Calgary Software Quality Discussion Group is back for the season! We are kicking off with a mixer at Ceili's Irish pub! Join us to discuss this season, the local industry in Calgary, and of course eat, drink, and network with your peers!

Due to a family emergency the SQDG will be rescheduling tomorrow's talk at a later date and instead hosting a special event:  our first ever "Lean Lunch"!   

The conecept is based on "Lean Coffee"   ( http://leancoffee.org/ ) and is described as "A structured, but agenda-less meeting. Participants gather, build an agenda, and begin talking. Conversations are directed and productive because the agenda for the meeting was democratically generated. There are currently dozens of Lean Coffees happening world-wide, including Seattle, San Francisco, Stockholm, Toronto, Boulder, New York City, and more."

Abstract: At many companies the senior management, development team, as well as the test team itself are not satisfied with their testing or QA effort. Senior management complains that it takes too long or is too expensive or testing always impacts the schedule. Development gets frustrated with finding too many or too few bugs or late breaking bugs. Test teams seem to always complain about compressed schedules and not enough time for their testing. An approach to testing will be presented to address the fundamental cause of this testing frustration – fundamentally flawed testing purpose and application. The presented testing approach utilizes the scientific method and empirical falsification. Application of this testing approach will be presented by discussing the impact to many testing activities and product phases. Using this approach the presenter has transformed the testing teams at many companies including Amazon, Microsoft, and startups, delivering retail electronics, software, enterprise storage, and life critical medical devices.

In agile development, the whole cross-functional team shares responsibility for building quality in to their software, and for making sure all necessary testing gets done. Since the dawn of “agile”, back in the XP days, we’ve heard lots of talk that testers on agile teams should have programming skills. Some agile teams cling to the “Software Developer in Test” model, trying to hire programmers who are willing to work exclusively on automating tests. Others say “everyone should be able to do everything, including coding”. Do testers really need to be coders to succeed on agile teams? Janet will address this issue. They’ll share their ideas on specialized skills testers need to add value to their agile teams – and these aren’t necessarily coding skills!