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Keynote Presentations


What are today's primary challenges as seen by our software quality and testing leaders? What will the future hold for software development and testing?

Join recognized leaders as they look at the challenges surrounding quality software strategies and the leadership needed both now and in the future. Join a distinguished panel of CIOs and Senior IT Executives as they share their organizations' strategy for quality software delivery.

    1. Standardizing Software Metrics: The Good, the Bad, the Why are You Doing This to Me?
    2. Optimizing Application Quality through Software Quality Transformation
    3. The Future of Testing: How Testing and Technology Will Change
    4. Crowdsourced Testing for Mobile Apps: Assuring Quality with a Global Testing Community
Wednesday, April 21 - 8:30 a.m.

Standardizing Software Metrics: The Good, the Bad, the Why are You Doing This to Me?

Mike Farabelli
General Manager of Process Improvement, Microsoft

Just how powerful are metrics?  The answer may surprise you.  How you plan, standardize, and socialize metrics throughout the organization can significantly enhance the value you deliver to the business.  The old adage “what gets measured gets managed” is as true in software as it is any other functional area.  Standardize too much and you lose transparency of measurements, accountability, and agility.  Standardize too little and you have tribal silos.  Like many companies with diverse businesses, Microsoft employs a decentralized, P & L approach with the challenge of determining the proper mix of practices, processes, and metrics to standardize across the business.  Mike will share Microsoft’s approach to standardizing its maintenance metrics for enterprise customers with an eye toward achieving the proper balance between standardization and localization of metrics.  He will share the lessons learned with respect to metrics selection criteria, metric standardization process, metric operational definitions, guidelines for management to properly interpret the metric findings, and grass roots promotion of adoption to ensure success.

Attend Mike’s keynote and hear about:

  • Microsoft’s approach to standardizing its maintenance metrics for enterprise customers
  • Lessons learned in regard in to the process of selecting, standardizing, operationalizing, and implementing metrics across an enterprise
  • How bottom-up promotion will produce the greatest success for your standardization program

Mike Farabelli is General Manager of Process Improvement, an organization within Microsoft’s Quality and Business Excellence Group.  As a part of Microsoft’s drive for excellence, Mike and his team are responsible for translating the voice of customer requirements into the reality of business process.  Mike has had decades of experience working with technical communities on metrics and process improvement.  His experience includes conducting process improvement for Ernst & Young as a Partner in the Washington D.C. practice.  Mike was also the first Vice President of Marketing for Telcordia, a Bell Labs spin off.  In that role, he was responsible for commercializing the central services organizational spin off.  As Vice President of Services Marketing at Cisco Systems Inc., Mike developed Cisco’s enhanced engineering services. His passions are translating the voice of the customer for cultural change and the global impacts of international affairs.

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Wednesday, April 21 - 9:50 a.m.

Optimizing Application Quality through Software Quality Transformation

Sumithra Gomatam
Senior Vice President and Head of Testing Services, Cognizant

Quality transformation is a top-down exercise.  It involves identifying and seizing improvement opportunities across various functions in the software development lifecycle.  Every aspect of the SDLC plays a significant role.  Software application quality can only be achieved through a dedicated effort that entails optimization of environments, ITIL functions & tools, data, infrastructure, processes, and test methods.  This radical shift requires a potent mix of thought leadership and an innovation-driven approach to quality assurance that includes governance transformation in operational excellence, as well as transformation of the delivery model, technology and test management processes.

In her talk, Sumithra will discuss ways to achieve consistent quality that is benchmarked against best-in-class organizations.  She will highlight alternative approaches to building an innovation-centric organization that can drive quality optimization across all touch points and critical functions.
  • Discover ways to build quality into the application -- rather than wrapping it around
  • Learn ways to ensure predictability in quality, cost, and schedule

Sumithra Gomatam is the Business Leader of Cognizant’s Testing Services practice.  She has over 22 years of experience in the IT industry spanning essential functions such as corporate strategy, customer relationship management, business development, delivery management, and operations management.   Sumithra has played a crucial role in growing several key accounts with her strong delivery management and business development skills.  Cognizant’s testing practice has grown phenomenally under her leadership, as well.  Today, with over 10,600 career testers, Cognizant’s testing practice is acclaimed in the industry and has established itself as one of the fastest growing business units in the company.

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Thursday, April 22 - 8:30 a.m.

The Future of Testing:
How Testing and Technology Will Change

Joachim Herschmann
Director of Product Management, Micro Focus

During these challenging economic times and, in coming years as well, test and quality professionals, and development organizations as a whole, will be under ever-increasing pressure to test better and test faster.  In the face of rapid technology changes, vastly more complex systems, globalization, and new regulatory burdens, changes in the way we test and develop software are critical.  Deeply embedded software, SOA, mobile devices, cloud computing, and technologies of which we aren’t even aware affect testing and often make it much more difficult.  Dynamically interacting systems that continuously morph themselves make it almost impossible to even know what we are testing.  While new approaches like agile and lean development are rapidly gaining popularity, they too pose new challenges and opportunities for software quality.  Join us as we delve into these and other emerging trends that impact testing.  Explore the ways that these powerful forces will result in burgeoning new test technologies and require software leaders to change the way they think about the quality professional role, test technologies, and processes.

In his presentation, Joachim will address:

  • The technical challenges of the quality role, now and in the future  
  • New test technologies on the horizon
  • A new way to think about software development and quality assurance

Joachim Herschmann is the Director of Product Management for Micro Focus, formerly Borland Software.  He is responsible for overseeing the evolution of Micro Focus’ testing suite of products and solutions.  His previous roles at Borland included Solutions Marketing Manager of Lifecycle Quality Management for the EMEA region.  Joachim came to Borland in April, 2006, through the acquisition of Segue, a leading testing solution provider. While at Segue, Joachim spent several years as technical account manager and technical consultant in the area of software testing and quality assurance.  Joachim has more than fifteen years of IT and business experience, more than half of which is in the consulting and testing business.

Friday, April 23 - 8:30 AM

Crowdsourced Testing for Mobile Apps:
Assuring Quality with a Global Testing Community

Doron Reuveni
CEO & Co-Founder of uTest

Mobile applications are making big headlines.  Historically, “mobile apps” meant games, maps, and music.  But today, mobile applications are making deep inroads into enterprise organizations in industries as diverse and mature as healthcare, banking, technology, and retail.  These applications are accessing internal systems like ERP, CRM, inventory management, and communication tools.  More clinical, financial, and customer data is being accessed by mobile devices than ever before.  

With so much critical data flowing to smartphones, the pressure is immense to ensure that mobile applications, the ones your company produces and the ones employees use, are stable, private, and secure.   The testing methods that have worked for web and desktop applications, however, won’t suffice for mobile – the testing matrices are simply too complex.  QA departments must assure quality across handset makers and models, wireless carriers, OS, and browsers. Beyond that, they must account for location-based testing, which has proven difficult and prohibitively expensive. This unmet challenge calls for a fresh approach – crowdsourcing.   By tapping into a diverse community of professional testers who operate outside the lab environment, companies can build an on-demand testing team that compliments their existing efforts and meets their coverage requirements.

In his presentation, Doron will address:

  • The mobile application adoption curve of enterprises and the implications for QA leaders
  • The differences between mobile testing vs. web or desktop testing, and how traditional methods fall short of meeting mobile’s “in-the-wild” testing requirements
  • The growing trend of crowdsourcing in mobile testing and how it augments existing teams and efforts

Doron Reuveni co-founded uTest in February, 2007. Since its inception, uTest has provided functional and load testing services through a community that includes more than 20,000 professional testers from 158 countries around the globe.  He is a published author and expert in testing methodologies for web, desktop, and mobile applications.  Prior to uTest, Doron was the Senior Vice President of Technology at Enigma, Inc., delivering large-scale software implementations through his global team of product managers, developers, QA professionals, and project managers.  He has more than 20 years of experience delivering software applications to Fortune 500 companies as well as young, agile startups.


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