Tag Archives: quality

vodQA Pune testing/QA event – 13th Oct

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vodQA Pune, to be held on October 13th in Pune, is an event for software testing and QA professionals.

In this edition of vodQA, the focus is on testing beyond the usual. The discussions will range from functional and cross-functional areas like Security, Usability, Scalability and Performance, to understanding testing practices within industries such as Manufacturing and Banking, among others.

The call for speakers. If you can give a talk (30 minutes), a workshop (60 minutes), or a quick lightening talk (5 minutes) in one of the above areas, you should apply. (Sorry, it appears that the call for speakers is now closed.)

For more details of vodQA, see the vodQA Pune 2012 page. (Note: although this page says that the last date for submitting a proposal has already passed, they are still accepting submissions.)

The event itself is free and open for anyone to attend. Register here. The event is on 13th October, from 9:30am to 4:30pm, at Thoughtwords, Panchshil Tech Park, Yerwada, Pune.

My Experience at the IndicThreads Conference on Software Quality

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(This post by Abhay Bakshi, a techie who has recently moved to Pune, is about the IndicThreads Conference on Software Quality that was held in Pune recently. This post first appeared on DZone, and is reproduced here with permission.)

Typically, it was about a week’s planning before I got to attend the IndicThreads conference.  I didn’t know that the conference was taking place on Friday until I got an invite by Harshad Oak through LinkedIn.  I took permission from my authorities at my work place, took Friday off and was looking forward to this 2-day conference in the city of Pune, India.

I had attended (TSSS 2003, USA), presented at (FIE 97, USA), and written about (NFJS 2005, USA) conferences in the USA — but had never attended one in India, specifically in Pune.  Honestly, I was eager to.

Expectations

From my background in attending conferences in the USA, the expectations were high in my mind — the glamour, the large-size attendance, the goodies and the prizes to receive, the signed copies of books from authors, the networking and food (!) for two consecutive days.

On many of these fronts, Q11 by IndicThreads delivered and delivered well!  Yes, they did a pretty good job indeed.

Benefits

Benefits to receive are up to the individual, I believe — how much you want to take away.  That includes the speakers too.  In USA, I had paid $675 USD from my pocket to attend an NFJS weekend show and my employer was also surprised (pleasantly) then. But even today, I benefit (because I choose to) from that attendance.  It becomes easier to get in touch with authors / speakers / fellow attendees.  That is just one benefit.  The other benefit is — from your regular everyday schedule, you get out and see in reality what other developers / IT engineers are doing.  That opens a whole new perspective and regains energies for you in multitude.

Who Hosted the Conference?

The Q11 conference was hosted by Harshad Oak (Rightrix Solutions).  Harshad is the first Java champion in India and has served and continues to serve the overall IT community in several ways.  For his achievements, he is not that old – in fact quite young. 🙂

The thought process, as put in by Harshad, could be felt all throughout the conference

The Actual Sessions!

Every session was little over an hour.  That was good so that an otherwise information overload could be avoided.  Timings of the speakers were awesome — plus it didn’t feel that the speakers were running a race against time at any point.

The conference covered the following topics (all slides available on Slideshare):

  • Image Based Testing – Application Technology Independent Automation (Girish Kolapkar)
  • Proving correctness of a multiplayer game server (Nirmalya Sengupta)
  • Continuous Integration: A Case Study (Vaibhav Kothari)
  • Cloud based Testing for Mobile Applications (Dada Mote)
  • Test Automation for Mobile Applications (Dipesh Bhatewara)
  • Test Automation on Android Using Robotium (Amit Dixit)
  • Testing Flash and Flex for Accessibility (Rashmi Aghor)
  • PerformFuzz the Web Interface (Aniket Kulkarni)
  • Keyword Driven Automation using Selenesse (Ameya Naik)
  • Platform Independent Migration Testing Framework (Vishal Harane)

All speakers and sessions were accommodated fine by Harshad and Sangeeta (his wife).

It would be unjust to pick only one speaker that stood outstanding — everyone did a great job (offered their 100% for the attendees).  The professionalism was at its best.  This was probably the first time in the last 15 years that I interacted so closely with professionals in the IT industry in India.  All this was a superb learning experience for me.

Particularly speaking, Dada Mote, just for his zeal to learn more and offer more, had done a fantastic job.  I was amazed to see that he was accompanied by his boss who arrived just to give Dada moral support.  They both drove in from Mumbai.  Dada knows what he is doing.

Again, I do not have any bias for any one speaker (don’t even know Dada Mote in person that well!), everyone did so very well for us.

Vishal Harane, for what he put together at his work place using ANT (just under 3 days), was simply a great experience to watch and learn from.  I can go on and on like this for every session, but the space is limited and I have to get back to my work as well.

My Comparisons with the Conferences in the USA

The comparisons with the conferences in the USA will loom over my mind, by default.  But I attribute a few things lacking to the growth aspect of conferences at IndicThreads.

My mind was tuned to having parallel sessions and being able to choose a session where I want to get trained.  At Q11, there was however only one big hall for learning!  I couldn’t think of many “lacking” points at all.  Harshad has good experience in arranging the shows.  The professionalism shown by speakers was one of the best, as I mentioned earlier.  The consistent slide formats, good designs, aspects on the content arrangement for maximum absorption by the slide readers, real-time Q & A sessions, quizzes and prizes were all welcome and gave a pleasant appeal to the overall event.

What Can be Better / New Ideas

An obvious general difference between East and West — usage of English (well, I struggle myself with arrangement and good choice of words, as you can see in this article) during presentation.  And so we do not need “perfect” skills, just slight modifications with an element of clarity transferred from that in the slides’ content to every sentence that you speak.  Again, that’s about clarity only and nothing about undertaking the usage of any fancy English.

When speakers implement (more) clarity during speeches, here is a new idea for this conference (just for the sake of it) –> Harshad can even think about live broadcasting of the conferences where people from outside India can join the live sessions.  Yes, Harshad can charge a fee for such attendance. 🙂

The Best Take-away Point

The best take-away point for me will be the personal interactions with the fellow attendees and speakers.  A few of the speakers are local to the Pune city, and therefore if I were to get / offer help at any point regarding new emerging topics, I can rush for a get-together to a place which is only at a drivable distance.

Harshad encourages local speakers to come out and respond to the RFPs (and participate).  Hopefully, in the future, there will be “parallel” sessions (!), offering choices of topics, at conferences like Q11.

Call for Speakers – IndicThreads Conference on Software Quality

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Pune’s http://IndicThreads.com, which organizes various conferences in Pune every year, has just put out a call for submissions for their 2nd Conference On Software Quality to be held on 25th and 26th March 2011 in Pune. The conference will focus on software quality & testing.

Here are some suggested topics:

  • Automation Testing
  • Performance Engineering
  • Component Testing
  • Agile Testing
  • Embedded Systems Testing
  • Product vs. Application Testing
  • Games Testing
  • Security Testing
  • ATM Testing
  • Emerging tools and technologies
  • Reliability Testing
  • Testing Middleware Applications
  • SOA Testing
  • Database Testing
  • Protocol Testing
  • Compliance Testing
  • Software Usability Testing

Note, the audience will consist mostly of senior professionals with 5+ years of experience. Click here for submitting a proposal.

The submission deadline is 31st Jan, 2011. The conference itself will be on 25 and 26 March, in Pune. Write to [ conf AT indicthreads DOT com ] in case of any queries.

vodQA Nite: The testing spirit – event for QA professionals – 10th June

Events, , ,

What: vodQA Nite, an event for the software testing industry
When: Thursday, 10th June, 5:30pm
Where: ThoughtWorks Technologies, GF-01 and MZ-01, Tower C, Panchshil Tech Park, Yerwada. Map
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all to attend. Register here

vodQA Nite: The testing spirit

Thoughtworks Pune presents vodQA Nite – THE TESTING SPIRIT! – an event for the software testing industry to strengthen the QA community by sharing and learning new practices and ideas.

‘vodQA Nite’ offers a unique opportunity to interact with people who are equally passionate about software testing and continuously strive to better the art. The format of ‘vodQA Nite’ is scheduled such that each speaker will have 10-12 minutes to present followed by a couple of minutes of “open” discussion with participants. The topics covered in this workshop will be appropriate for any level of testing experience.

Connect with like-minded peers, and gain insight from industry practitioners.

Please note : This is a free to attend event. Register as an attendee here.

Who should attend?

Quality analysts and testing aficionados who want to interact with the testing community. This is also relevant to those interested in the nuances of test automation and how testing works in an Agile environment.

If you have any queries, email vodQA-Pune@thoughtworks.com

IndicThreads conference on Software Quality – Call for Presentation Proposals

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IndicThreads has put out a call for submissions from potential presenters for their first conference on Software Quality, to be held in Pune on 5th and 6th March. If you’ve done any work in tools, processes, programs for testing, you should submit an abstract of your proposed talk.

Why Bother?

indicthreads logo small

  • IndicThreads runs good conferences. See Dhananjay Nene’s report on the Java conference that IndicThreads had in Pune last month.
  • If you’re accepted as a speaker, you get a free pass to the conference.And free hotel stay if you’re from out of town. (All those reading PuneTech from outside Pune, please raise your hands.)
  • Become famous: being a speaker at a national conference is good for visibility, and all engineers should strive for visibility. It’s very important. Almost as important as being a good programmer. (Maybe more?)
  • Help out a good Pune initiative. More submissions will improve the quality of the conference, and having a high quality conference in Pune improves the overall stature of Pune as an emerging IT powerhouse.

Why You?

I’m willing to bet that many people reading this will think – but I am not an expert. Not true. If you’ve spend a couple of years working on some specific aspect of testing, chances are that you’ve acquired expertise that you can present and help improve the understanding of others. You don’t have to have done ground-breaking research. Have you adopted a new tool that came out recently? Talk about it, because others will not have experience with its use. Have you used an old tool in a new way? Definitely submit a proposal. The others in this field would love to hear of this new wine in an old bottle. Have you figured out some new process for making your quality assurance team more productive, or less buggy? (Hey, you of all people should know that we can do testing/QA/debugging on people too, right!?)

Just because you think you are not the Einstein of Quality, does not mean that you should not submit a proposal. If there is something interesting that you’ve spent your time on in the last year or two, and if you think that 5 other people doing a job exactly like yours would benefit from what you learned – then you should (no, actually, you must) submit a proposal.

And, since recently PuneTech has been thinking about how to involve students in industry, here another idea. If you’re a student and you have ideas on how the Software Quality industry can get students more interested in this field, here is your chance to make your idea to a large roomful of professionals in this field who’ll listen to you, and maybe a few of them will actually do something about it. We already know that students can come up with interesting, well thought out proposals, so here’s your chance.

So go, click submit. All you need right now is a one-paragraph proposal of what your talk will be about. Just do it.

Logistics – what, how, when

The last date for submission is 10th Jan, so please head over the the CFP and submit your entry using the form at the end of that page.

Topics of interest include new and groundbreaking technologies and emerging trends, successful practices and real world learnings.

Topics appropriate for submission to this conference include but are not restricted to the below, stated in no particular order –

  1. Automation Testing
  2. Performance Engineering
  3. Component Testing
  4. Agile Testing
  5. Embedded Systems Testing
  6. Product vs. Application Testing
  7. Games Testing
  8. Security Testing
  9. ATM Testing
  10. Emerging tools and technologies
  11. Reliability Testing
  12. Testing Middleware Applications
  13. SOA Testing
  14. Database Testing
  15. Protocol Testing
  16. Compliance Testing
  17. Software Usability Testing

Submission

  • Please note that submissions aimed at promoting specific organizations or products will not be accepted.
  • All sessions will be between 50-90 minutes.
  • The audience consists mostly of senior testers and test leads. Before submission consider how your submission can provide best value to this target segment.
  • Submissions will be accepted only on the website and not over email.
  • All submissions must include two session abstracts.
  • Please provide as much detail as possible in the session abstract, including the target audience.
  • The decision of the conference team as regards sessions, durations, timings, speaker benefits and all related aspects will be final and binding.

Speaker Benefits

  • Complimentary Full Conference Pass
  • We will arrange for your hotel stay and cover the room tariff. Please note that hotel incidentals will not be covered.
  • Speaking at an IndicThreads event gets you recognition as a subject expert.

Important Dates

  • Submission Deadline – 10th Jan 2010
  • Selection Mails – 31st Jan 2010
  • Conference Dates – 5 and 6 March, 2010

More details

For more details, see the conference website

PMI Pune Seminar: Introduction to the Telecom Software Domain

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PMI Pune LogoWhat: Monthly meeting of Project Management Institute’s Deccan Pune Chapter, featuring an introduction to the Telecom Software Domain, and an introduction to Six Sigma
When: Saturday, 11 April, 10am to 12:30pm
Where: Pune Shramik Patrakar Sangh, Cummins Auditorium, 193 Navi Peth, Ganjwe Chowk, Near Alka Talkies, Garware bridge
Registration and Fees: This talk is free for all to attend. No registration required

Session 1: Telecom Domain Overview by Utkarsh Kikani

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The session is based on understanding and knowledge that was developed from a vantage point of a software team member of an IT team of a typical Telco enterprise. It is meant to be an overview and introduction to Telecom as a domain or vertical. Telecom by its very nature can become quite a technological or technical subject. However, the current session is approached more from business angle. There will be a bit of technical Talk but that will be kept minimum and only when absolutely essential. A person who is barely familiar with the world of Telecom would have, at the end of an hour, developed a very high level understanding of the domain with some insights in to its evolution, current status and future trends.

Session 1: About the Speaker Utkarsh Kikani

Utkarsh Kikani MCA from Surat, started his career as a C++ programmer around 16 years ago. After first three years initial stint at a small start up in Gujarat moved to then Mahindra British Telecom which is now TechMahindra as Analyst Programmer. Utkarsh had 13 years long association with TechM with assignments with different Telcos – Singapore Telecom, British Telecom, U S West (now Qwest), Cingular Wireless, Rockwell First Point Contact and AT&T – in different roles of Team lead, Technical architect, Business Analyst, Onsite coordinator and Offshore Project manager and Program manager. Recently left TechM for a planned professional break, and currently teaching a course on Telecom Business Management to business management students as visiting faculty.

Session 2: Introduction to Six Sigma and Impact of Variation with Hemant Urdhwareshe

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Six Sigma Approach is implemented by many reputed world class companies. These companies have been benefited immensely in terms of improving their bottom-line, customer satisfaction and waste reduction. The purpose of this presentation is to create awareness about the approach and opportunities. The presentation also includes a simulation of typical manufacturing processes to appreciate impact of variation in various processes on productivity and waste. The simulation also helps understand a strong linkage between Lean and Six Sigma. The presentation will also attempt to illustrate impact of variation in the context of project management

Session 2: About the Speaker Hemant P. Urdhwareshe

Hemant Urdhwareshe is a mechanical engineer from VNIT, Nagpur with post graduate diploma in business management from IMDR, Pune. Hemant director of Institute of Quality & Reliability, comes with a rich experience of 28+ years in Cummins India Limited (CIL). He worked as Sr. General Manager Product Engineering. Hemant is a Master Black Belt (MBB) and has trained more than 300 Black/Green Belts. He has conducted Six Sigma Black Belt/Green Belt programs for several companies along with implementation support and project reviews as MBB. Hemant has also conducted Design for Six Sigma Green Belt Program for Satyam Computers. He has conducted many other workshops in Reliability Basics, Design FMEA, Quality Function Deployment, and Reliability Growth covering more than 500+ participants. Hemant was one of the eminent panelists for Lean Six Sigma Excellence Awards organized by SCMHRD and Sakal. He has published series of articles on Six sigma & related topics in renowned journals & magazines. Recipient of several awards, Hemant is a member of several institutes like American Society for Quality (ASQ) etc.

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