The International Conference on Software Testing-2007, organized by the STeP-IN Forum, and hosted by QSIT was a very well organized event with participation from major organizations across globe. The speakers constituted a mix of product as well as services based organization with eminent speakers from Microsoft, Yahoo! , Adobe, Infosys, Texas Instruments, Philips, applabs, Agitar.
This summit turned out to be a nice platform to learn the best practices across industry and in turn sharing our experiences.
Key highlights of the event
- The conference started with the Keynote Address from Ashutosh Tiwary Product Unit Manager for Visual StudioTeam Edition, Microsoft, Redmond. He showcased the use of In house Automation tool built by Microsoft that helped in increasing the productivity of testers by many folds.
- The attraction of the event was Michaels Bolton’s talk on Exploratory Testing. He emphasized the importance of asking questions while testing. The tester needs to be equally well versed with the application like developers who are creating that application. In terms of James Bach (regarded as a Software Testing guru) “Testing can be little exploratory or Very exploratory”.
- Tanuj Vohra, Senior Engineering Manager for Automated Software Quality Development, IBM Rational talk on Are you Testing like a Customer? was quite inspirational. You need to keep yourself in customers shoes…think like a customer of that application and then test.
- Panel Discussion—To build or buy a Automation tool? The panelists were the VPs and directors from organizations like Wipro, Yahoo!, Accenture, Valtech, Symphony Services etc. The discussion basically hovered around the “cost factor” of tool. A new dimension was added to the discussion from Seshadri Nathan, FS TcoE Lead Accenture. If an organization feels that a tool will not be required in future or a only a less no of licenses will be required than an option of lease with the vendor can be worked out. Again homework on cost of lease, duration of lease is required to get the benefit out of this.
- Almost all speakers unanimously emphasized the use of Automation tools for enhancing productivity. Key factor here is the need of sound automation framework that should be built according to the needs on project-to-project basis. The planning for the same being a very important aspect otherwise automation is doomed to fail.
The conference ended with a beautiful,humorous and inspirational talk from Dr Sukanta Bhatt, Senior Architect, Testing Philips Innovation Campus.
Here I would like to encourage other wannabe and professionals to join and contribute to the beautiful world of Software Testing. Share your knowledge you would feel great!
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@Anon: You can contact me through admin(at)learnloadrunner(dot)com
Anukur, do you do any consultant work?
Hi, What ever it was mentioned in STep-In summit -2007 was inspirational to readers like me.