📝 Bio

Tariq King is one of the top thought leaders in the world for AI in testing. He was formerly the Chief Scientist at test.ai, where he led research and development of their core platform for AI-driven testing. Tariq has over fifteen years of experience in software engineering and testing and has formerly held positions as Head of Quality, Director of Quality Engineering, Manager of Software Engineering and Test Architect. Tariq
has been an international keynote speaker at leading software conferences in industry and academia. He is the co-founder of the Artificial Intelligence for Software Testing Association (AISTA) and has contributed to multiple projects in the open-source community.

🎤 Talk: “Introduction to AI-Driven Test Automation”

You may have heard that software ate the world and AI is eating software. However, if you’ve been paying attention, then you’ve probably realized that the world is filled with bad software. Many organizations struggle with meeting their quality goals and keeping testing-related costs contained. Software is indeed revolutionizing the world, but the world is also paying a revolutionary price for bad software. So where do AI and machine learning (ML) fit in? Are AI/ML breakthroughs just new ways of filling the world with bad software? Or do they offer a path towards better software? Tariq King believes that although ML is bringing valuable improvements and capabilities to software, it is unlikely for such advances to be successful without integrating testing and quality engineering into AI/ML workstreams. Join Tariq as he highlights the parallels and differences between ML engineering and software testing and explains why he is convinced that testing professionals hold the keys for the transition to AI/ML system development. However, before testers can revolutionize AI/ML, they must first become agents of change through innovation. For the first time, Tariq will share his own journey and transformation, and discuss how he is helping other individuals, teams, and organizations on the road to AI.

📝 Bio

Dr. Francisco Gomes de Oliveira Neto is a Senior Lecturer in Software Engineering at Chalmers and the University of Gothenburg. His mission is to foster curiosity and interest in software engineering. Francisco earned his PhD in computer science from the Universidade Federal de Campina Grande in Brazil. His research focuses on the intersection of software engineering and machine learning, specifically applied to areas such as software visualization, automated software testing and software development bots.

🎤 Talk: “Facets and Feelings of Software Engineers using ChatGPT”

ChatGPT has shown prowess in generating software artefacts (code, tests, requirements), as well as advising software engineers in their daily tasks (planning, e-mailing, communication). Even with its limitations and eventual hallucinations, ChatGPT often provides useful suggestions to practitioners seeking answers to their questions. But how do people feel after those interactions? Do we see meaningful improvements in the person’s productivity? Do they actually learn new concepts? Francisco will show the results of an observational study with more than 20 software engineers in multiple roles (developers, managers, testers)  using ChatGPT for a work week. We will show both the positive and negative impact on various productivity levels such as team discussions, decision-making, and focus.

📝 Bio

EuroStar Tester Excellence award winner (2015) James Lyndsay is a renowned conference speaker that not only talks about systems testing but rather teaches it. With James, focus is most often hands-on and experiencing testing. He ran LEWT (the London Exploratory Workshop in Testing), kicked off the TestLab, built the Black Box Puzzles and the list is longer. He has worked as a consulting test strategist since 1994 and you most likely use several of his clients’ systems every day.

🎤 Talk: “Wrangling, Debugging and Testing“

This is a talk about embarrassment. The embarrassment that happens when you’ve spent months on requirements and design, on coding and configuration, you’ve got plans, processes and people – and you’ve still got nothing working well-enough to test. This is a talk about the necessary, practical and unique work of wrangling and debugging – illustrated with nearly-true tales from years of systems integration testing.

Exploring wrangling (getting the system to work), we will dig into problems such as getting the plumbing right between system components, orchestrating authorisation for tools and testers, working with configuration data and managing interlocking shared environments. We will look into ways that testers can gain technical savvy and leverage political and expert champions to unlock problems.

Focussing on debugging (getting the system to work well-enough to start testing), we will look into situations where experts rely on trial and error, and when the earliest actions on the system reveal fundamental problems in performance, security, and usability. We will cover how to design bulk experiments to find working paths, how to build data for variety and volume, and how to bring organisationally-distant colleagues together to resolve trouble with cross-disciplinary insights.

Projects find discomfort in uncertainty – this talk will help you to anticipate problems and mitigate their effects.

📝 Bio

Test Scouts own star Robert Hennersten-Manley is a passionate and engaged software tester that after 10 years of testing in the London FinTech business decided to follow his heart and move to Sweden. Technically he has taken on the challenge with testing complex Autonomous Train System. He is passionate about the testing craftmanship and always eager to learn something new.

🎤 Talk: “Soft Skills for Software Testers”

Sharing of key learnings and nuggets of wisdom acquired through over a decade in testing, with a focus on non-technical aspects of the role.

📝 Bio

James has been testing since 1986, and has worked independently since setting up Workroom Productions in 1994. As a consultant, he’s worked in a variety of businesses and project styles; from retail to telecommunications, from rapidly-evolving internet start-ups to more traditional large-scale enterprise. He’s worked to technical requirements for companies that make and sell software, to commercial requirements for companies that buy and use software, and to unexpected requirements everywhere. He’s been in and out of agile (and Agile) teams since 2002. James was an internal irritant to the ISEB exam process for five years, is a regular speaker and occasional teacher, ran LEWT (the London Exploratory Workshop in Testing), kicked off the TestLab, built the BlackBox Puzzes and receievd the European Tester Excellence award in 2015.

🛠️ Workshop: “Making Sense with Exploratory Testing “

Join James Lyndsay in this half-day hands-on workshop and sharpen your testing skills by bringing structure and focus to your exploratory testing. In the workshop, you’ll build cohesive models which reliably capture your thoughts and actions – and the system’s reactions. We’ll use a range of approaches from experimental science to give us insights into our own preferred and effective methods of exploratory test design, observation, and recording. By sharing our approaches with the group, we’ll expand our testing range, and build on our existing testing, organizing and communication skills. Come prepared to test. We’ll test things we think we know, and things we’ve never seen. We’ll look for trouble, diagnose problems, build models when we don’t have requirements, and will use simple tools that you already know to design thousands of bulk tests and to analyse their results. You’ll show what you’ve done, talk about how and why you’ve made your testing decisions, and you’ll learn from your workshop peers.

📝 Bio

Tariq King is the Vice President of Product-Service Systems at EPAM, where manages a portfolio that lies at the intersection of software products and services and supports the business through technology consulting. Tariq has over fifteen years’ experience in software engineering and testing and has formerly held positions as Chief Scientist, Head of Quality, Director of Quality Engineering, Manager of Software Engineering and Test Architect. Tariq holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from Florida International University, and a B.S. in Computer Science from Florida Tech. His areas of research are software testing, artificial intelligence, autonomic and cloud computing, model-driven engineering, and computer science education. He has published over 40 research articles in peer-reviewed IEEE and ACM journals, conferences, and workshops, and has been an international keynote speaker at leading software conferences in industry and academia.

🛠️ Workshop: “An Introduction to AI-Driven Test Automation”

Conventional test automation approaches are time-consuming and can produce scripts that are fragile and overly sensitive to change. The rise of AI-driven test automation tools is promising more robust and resilient test scripts that are able to self-heal as the application evolves. But what exactly is this technology all about and how do you get started? Does it require learning new skills and technologies? What tools are immediately available for beginners? Join Tariq King as he introduces you to the world of AI driven test automation. Learn the fundamentals of AI and ML and how you can apply it to software testing problems. Discover where you can find freely available, open-source tools to support AI-driven test automation. Using a step by-step approach, Tariq guides you through the basics of what is needed to help you get started with AI-driven testing. No prior programming or AI/ML experience needed!