1. Get some inspiration to test no only via the user interface but also dig deeper into the application stack.

Thomas is a professional Software Tester, Consultant and Scrum Master at Ebcont proconsult Gmbh in Vienna. He started as a developer but put his focus on software testing and quality. Thomas puts quality on two pillars, software testing and agile/lean methods and thinking. During his career he has worked in several industries like sports betting, finance and government in Vienna and London.

Way too often we focus only on the visible and completely neglect all there is on the backend of a system. This leads to a narrow view and may not reveal problems deeper down in the application stack.

If we have a look at the Agile Testautomation Pyramid we can see that there is a lot more to a system/application than the user interface. Let’s have a look at a simple example. An ATM (cash machine) has got a very slim user interface with just a few actions. But if you withdraw some money from your bank account there are a lot of things going on in the system. So what we see ain’t all there is. However if we want to deliver good quality and do good testing we need to dig deeper into the application stack. Furthermore we need the power of the whole team to tackle technical challenges that arise on lower levels of the Test Automation Pyramid.

During my professional career I have seen a lot of different approaches to testing and test automation. Nevertheless most of them where done via the user interface writing thousands of high level, long running and brittle test cases. Back then in my early days it seemed to be right to me. Then one of my former managers opened my eyes to broaden my horizon and so I started to look more into the inner life of the applications as well as towards the business goals and the users of a software product.

This talk will be about my learnings and the challenges of effectively and efficiently checking and testing applications under the bonnet with respect to business goals and users in mind. In general it will be a technical talk as we look into testing RESTful APIs, using proxy tools, etc.