May 22, 2010 by mensming.

The 2011 International Conference on Software Quality (ICSQ 2011) will be held in San Diego, CA between February 7 - 10, 2011. The theme of the conference is "High Reliability and Human Safety Critical Software".

The deadline for the call for papers is rapidly approaching - May 30, 2010. See the pdf for more details.

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February 13, 2010 by mensming.

It is that time of year again. My favorite conference, Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC), has opened their call for papers. This years theme is "Achieving Quality in a Complex Environment". A new twist is that there are two calls - one for traditional papers and one for poster papers. The conference will be held October 18-20, 2010.

Look at the Call for Abstracts page for full details.

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January 30, 2010 by mensming.

This is another in a series of posts of my reactions to watching the videos from the Google Test Automation Conference 2008 held in Seattle. The talk The Value of Small Tests (38 minutes long) presented by Christopher Semturs on October 24, 2008 was not what I expected. The slides from the talk can be found here.

I was hoping for a discussion around the broader test case / test suite management and the intersection with test automation. Instead, it discussed the value of creating small tests with limited dependencies and using dependency injection, mocking, etc. Not to say that it is a bad talk - just a quick introduction for these topics. I would say the talk is aimed at getting developers writing and enabling automated testing.

If you are already familiar with dependency injection and mocking, I would not spend the time watching. However, if these concepts are new, it may be valuable.

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January 16, 2010 by mensming.

I am in the process of watching the videos from the GTAC (Google Test Automation Conference) held in Seattle in October 2003. This post contains my notes for the presentation Taming the Beast - How to Test an AJAX Application (1 hour 1 minute) by Markus Clermont & John Thomas held on October 23, 2008.

I am not recommending spending time watching this video. The presentation is not bad. However, it does not translate well to video. There is a lot of interaction with the audience - which is great when you are present at the presentation. However, in the video the audience cannot be heard and the presenters do not repeat many of the questions / responses. In addition, the talk is misnamed. While an AJAX application is used as the example throughout the application, most of the talk is not about how to test an AJAX application. The talk is a good discussion of how to tame automation - automation of any application.

Here are the slide titles:

• AJAX: A Different Beast
• An Example GWT Application - (GWT = Taming the Beast - How to Test an AJAX Application)
• Some Statistics - (At this point there are questions to the audience regarding their automated testing experience.)
• System Architecture
• Small Medium Large - (Essentially how much of the application is under test)
• Testing Layer Pairs
• Are we done?
• Comparison
• Conclusion

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September 7, 2009 by mensming.

One of the things I love is being able to see presentations from conferences I was unable to attend. A coworker passed on a link to this video (55 minutes) from the Business of Software conference. In the talk, Jason Fried of 37Signals, makes of Ruby on Rails and Basecamp, speaks on many aspects of running a software company and keeping teams working effectively.

Here are some of the slide titles, topics and items Jason discussed:

• Planning is vastly overrated - no roadmaps, specifications, projections. Get rid of distractions. Functional specification does not reflect reality and leads to an illusion of agreement.
• Decisions are temporary - optimize for now
• Red flag words - need, can’t, easy, everybody, nobody. These are the words that cause projects to be late
• Interruption is the enemy of productivity - the closer the team is physically, the less you get done. Interruption is not collaboration. A fragmented day is not a productive day.
• Underdoing - target non-consumption
• Find the right size - imagine the software as a physical item
• Follow the chefs - what is your cookbook?
• Always be questioning - Why are we doing this? What problem are we solving? Is this actually useful? Are we adding value? Will this change behavior? Is there an easier way?
• Give up on hard problems - there is an abundance of easy problems
• You’re an editor - Curate your product. Say no to more things than you say yes.
• Work Less
• Q&A - Starts 28 minutes into the video

An enjoyable video, especially the first half before the Q&A session.

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March 29, 2009 by mensming.

I received an email from the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC) alerting me that a call for paper abstracts is currently active. This year’s conference (the 27th annual) will be held October 26-28, 2009 in Portland, OR. Presenting at a conference is an excellent way to sharpen your ideas and subject them to a rigorous examination by your peers. I have presented twice a PNSQC and found it to be a professional stretching activity. I am thinking about submitting an abstract.

Detailed information on the call can be found here. Abstracts must be submitted by May 1, 2009.

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January 27, 2009 by mensming.

I love it when conference proceedings are available online. The Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC) has offered their proceedings online for some years. The 2008 proceedings are now available. However, on the page with the link to the proceedings, the following message is displayed:

Note: These proceedings will only be available for a short time to the general public. After this time, the proceedings and individual papers will be available for download by PNSQC members only (membership is free and requires registration on the website).

The current link, accessible to the public, can be found here.

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January 21, 2009 by mensming.

I just received notice that the International Conference for Software Quality 2009 in Chicago November 9-11, 2009 has opened their call for papers. Abstracts must be submitted by March 1, 2009. Details about the call for papers (as well as panels and tutorials) can be found here.

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April 22, 2008 by mensming.

In a prior post, I mentioned the call for papers (CFP) for the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC). I received a notice last week that the deadline has been extended to May 1. More details can be found here.

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March 2, 2008 by mensming.

A call for papers (CFP) for the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC) is currently active. This year’s conference (the 26th annual) will be held October 13-15, 2008 in Portland, OR. Presenting at a conference is an excellent way to sharpen your ideas and subject them to a rigorous examination by your peers. I have presented twice a PNSQC and found it to be a professional stretching activity.

Detailed information on the call can be found here. Abstracts must be submitted by April 20, 2008.

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