Automation promises to free employees from repetitive tasks and refocus them on tasks that require human cognition all while improving speed and efficiency.

Bill Matthews, UKSTAR Program Committee has selected a journey through the programme for those who are currently involved with or interested in automation. Below we’ve highlighted Keynotes, Deep Dives and Tracks that are perfectly suited for someone looking to improve their automation skills at UKSTAR 2019.

Monday

Keynote 1: The Reality of Testing in an Artificial World with Angie Jones (USA)

• In this talk, we’ll discuss the tester’s role in an artificial world, the skills needed to test such applications, and the impact that a tester can make in this space.

Deep Dive B: Hot Fuzzing: Testing With The Full Power of Your Data with Dan Billing (UK)

• Fuzzing utilises automated tools that allow large data sets to be submitted to applications. Learn what it is and how it can support and enhance your testing strategies.This talk will help testers to apply technical learning beyond the functional and help them discover potential errors in an exciting and challenging way.

Track 1: When You are Moving House and the Pipeline Needs Re-Plumbing with Peet Michielsen (UK)

• Peet will take you through his own personal experience and hopefully you will gain insight into what’s involved in test automation and release pipeline re-structuring, which can also be used for setting up a framework and pipeline from scratch.

Track 4: What To Look For In A Test Automation Tool with Joep Schuurkes

• What happens if your automation tool isn’t right for you? When faced with this problem Joep decided to create his own!

Track 8: Is It Possible To Automate Customer Support? Maja Schreiner (Switzerland)

• Learn how to transform your customer support process into a valuable product development pipeline and hear about Maja’s approach with integrating developers, testers and customer support experts into an effective pipeline.

Track 11: Chatbots & How To Test Them with Hristo Gergov (Bulgaria)

• Every new and innovative area places challenges that require a lot of creative and out of the box thinking. Chatbots are not an exception to this. Join Hristo and discover how they adapted to this issue.

Keynote 2: Technology’s Feet On Society’s Ground with Fiona Charles (Canada)

• What microphones are listening? What cameras are watching you? Who is analyzing the data, who is profiting? Join Fiona as she tackles these difficult questions and unveils the truth behind the cost to our privacy with all these technological advancements.

Tuesday

Keynote 3: How To Lead Successful Organisational Change with Amy Phillips (UK)

• In this talk Amy will use her real life experiences of implementing Continuous Delivery and DevOps processes to explore the exciting, and difficult world of organisational change. You’ll come away with tips to successfully spot opportunities for improvement, who to tell, when to do it, and how to make sure your change has the best chance of being successful.

Track 1: Why Have We So Much Technical Debt with Andy Brown (UK)

• Technical debt is a well-documented endemic problem within software development. In this session Andy will focus on how we determine a trade-off between different options, such as the benefit of obtaining software earlier at a low initial cost against the benefit of obtaining better code and lower maintenance costs.

Track 4: Troubleshooting The Fudge Out of It with Corina Pip (Romania)

• Complex problem solving can be quite fun! Join Corina for some advice on how to get to the root cause of seemingly impossible issues, starting with how to make sure you reproduce it, what are some common things you can check and what tools you have to help you.

Track 7: Adept: AI, Automation & Laziness with Jaroslaw Hryszko (Poland)

• In recent years, inspired by endless laziness in projects, Jaroslaw decided to fully automate the process of defect prediction in an easy and enjoyable way – by using open source. Hear Jaroslaw’s story at UKSTAR 2019.

Keynote 4: Why Do We Automate? with Bas Dijsktra

• Bas states that throughout his career he’s “seen (and created!) a lot of horribly ineffective automation solutions”. In this talk, I’ll share with you what I think is the key to doing better when it comes to automation and it all starts with the “why”.

Deep Dive D: CSS Selectors: From Zero to Awesome with Corina Pip

• The purpose of the workshop is to get hands-on experience with identifying the CSS selectors for a wide range of cases, which will lead to you dropping XPATH altogether.

 

 

 

Deepening your Automation Knowledge: A selection for those who are currently involved with or interested in automation.