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Michael BoltonPrincipal @DevelopSense

Keynote:
Rapid Testing in an Agile Context

Over the last several years, a set of ideas and activities have been dumped into a big bucket called “Agile software development”. Agile development has hit mainstream recognition.  Yet there is often uncertainty and turmoil around what “Agile development” means, in theory and in practice, and the confusion affects Agile projects and the people in them.

There have been some discussion points, such as Mike Cohn’s Agile Testing Pyramid and Marick, Crisipin and Gregory’s Agile Testing Quadrants, and many people have found them helpful.  Yet James Bach and Michael Bolton, authors of Rapid Software Testing, still hear testers expressing a good deal of pain over the role of the tester and the structures of testing activity in Agile projects.

Is there really such a thing as “Agile Testing”?  Building on what has gone before, Michael Bolton will look at the testing in “Agile Testing”.  He’ll use the lens of Rapid Software Testing an agile (but not necessarily Agile) approach to testing that focuses on the mindset, skill set, and role of the tester.  Michael will show how Agile projects can and should be infused with testing that helps to identify and defend the value of the product while reducing the costs of development.

About Michael Bolton

Michael Bolton is a consulting software tester and testing teacher who helps people to solve testing problems that they didn’t realize they could solve.  He is the co-author (with senior author James Bach) of Rapid Software Testing, a methodology and mindset for testing software expertly and credibly in uncertain conditions and under extreme time pressure.  Michael has 25 years of experience testing, developing, managing, and writing about software. For the last 18 years, he has led DevelopSense, a Toronto-based testing and development consultancy. Prior to that, he was with Quarterdeck Corporation for eight years, during which he managed the company’s flagship products and directed project and testing teams both in-house and around the world.

Contact Michael at michael@developsense.com, on Twitter @michaelbolton, or through his Web site, http://www.developsense.com.