11th INTERNATIONAL
SOFTWARE QUALITY WEEK
(QW'98)
26-29 May 1998, San Francisco, California USA

GUIDED TOUR

Here is a quick outline of the QW'98 Conference Tour
[ Tutorials | Keynotes | Panel | Birds-Of-A-Feather | Quickstarts ]
[ Technology | Applications | Tools & Solutions | Management ]

TUTORIALS [Back to Top]

QW'98's ten half-day tutorials cover all of the main stops in the software quality technical landscape.

Let's start with the basics: Dr. Boris Beizer (Independent Consultant) An Overview of Testing -- Unit, Integration, System -- Outline and Index gives a comprehensive overview of quality test methods, while Mr. John D. Musa (Independent Consultant) More Reliable, Faster, Cheaper Testing through Software Reliability Engineering focuses on the hard-nosed reliability aspects.

Accompanying Musa's unusually fine perspective is a careful look at current reliability technology by Dr. Michael R. Lyu (The Chinese University of Hong Kong) Current Techniques and Tools for Software Reliability Engineering. That tutorial matches nicely with Mr. Robert V. Binder (RBSC Corporation) Testing Strategies for Object-Oriented Systems.

Along the same line, but focusing in on tools and techniques, we have tutorials by Mr. Ed Kit (Software Development Technologies) Automating Software Testing and Reviews and by Dr. Linda Rosenberg & Mr. Larry Hyatt (Unisys/SATC GSFC NASA) Metrics for Quality Assurance and Risk Assessment.

Those interested in the management side of the quality process will want to attend the tutorial by Mr. Michael Deck (Cleanroom Software Engineering, Inc.) How Testers Can Use Formal Methods to Analyze and Improve Software Requirements Specifications or the tutorial by Mr. Tom Gilb (Independent Consultant) Evolutionary Delivery Project Management.

And, for a more-formal (and a European-style) look at testing and quality control, QW'98 brings you: Mr. Martin Pol (IQUIP Informatica B.V.) Test Process Improvement, and, Mr. Hans-Ludwig Hausen (GMD German National Research Center for Information Technology) Software Metrics for Procedures, Objects and Agents.

KEYNOTE TALKS [Back to Top]

QW'98's theme is "Countdown to 2000" and you won't want to miss these important priority-setting talks: Dr. Cem Kaner (Attorney at Law) Year 2000, How Can I Sue Thee? Oh, Let Me Count the Ways, and, Dr. Boris Beizer (Independent Consultant) Prioritizing Your Y2K Testing Effort: Debunking the Special Date Myths.

Without doubt the Year-2000 problem is "real" but perhaps many still need to be reminded of the necessities! Catch these two talks: Mr. Robert L. Glass (Computing Trends) The Software Crisis - Is It for Real? and Dr. Dave Parnas (McMaster University) Software Engineering: An Unconsummated Marriage.

On a more-practical side, what is the best that the community has to offer? Here two experts relate "how to do it" in realistic terms: Mr. Robert Binder (RBSC Corporation) Testing Object-Oriented Systems: Best Practices, and, Mr. Dave Duchesneau (Boeing Commercial Airplane Group) Design for Test (Or, How to Make it Hard for the Pernicious Bugs to Hide).

QUICK-START TUTORIALS [Back to Top]

QW'98 attendees get the benefit of seven "QuickStart Tutorials" -- talks by acknowledged experts that are aimed to give you a quick get-up-to-speed summary of some of the most-important quality topics.

Offering a very high return on investment -- it's claimed to be better than 10X the costs -- is the testing approach favored by AONIX, described here in an excellent talk by Mr. Robert Poston (AONIX, Inc.) Making Test Cases from Use Cases Automatically

Practical realities and what it really takes for coming years is addressed by: Mr. Thomas A. Drake (Booz Allen & Hamilton, Inc.) Is Quality Really "Good Enough" for the Millennium?

Next, you should consider attending this talk, by Mr. Larry Bernstein (National Software Council) Trustworthy Software.

If you're concerned about whether or not to test, these two tutorial gives you contrasting views: Mr. Brian Marick (Testing Foundations) When Should a Test Be Automated?, and, Mr. Tom Gilb (Independent Consultant) The Alternatives and Supplements to Conventional Testing.

Also on a very practical but sound theoretical level is this talk by Mr. Douglas Hoffman (Software Quality Methods) A Taxonomy for Test Oracles.

Finally, from a lawyer and technologist -- truly a unique combination -- is a talk by Dr. Cem Kaner (Attorney at Law) Concise Test Planning.

SPECIAL PANEL SESSION [Back to Top]

Most testing and quality assurance projects fail or succeed, in part, based on the skill of the project manager. Just how important is the test manager is the subject of this special panel session: The Role of the Test Manager Co-Chairs: Ms. Johanna Rothman & Mr. Brian Lawrence includes Panelists: James Bach & Melora Svoboda.

SPECIAL BIRDS-OF-A-FEATHER SESSIONS [Back to Top]

Organized by industry gurus Brian Marick and Danny Faught, QW'98 offers a set of Birds-Of-A-Feather sessions devoted to important special topics.

TECHNOLOGY TRACK [Back to Top]

QW'98 opens with two papers that deal with questions of how best to develop and apply requirements based tests: Mr. James M. Clarke (Lucent Technologies) Automated Test Generation from a Behavioral Model, and, Dr. Linda Rosenberg, Mr. Larry Hyatt, Mr. T. Hammer, Ms. L. Huffman & Mr. W. Wilson (Unisys/SATC GSFC NASA) Testing Metrics for Requirement Quality.

Next, there are papers that focus specifically on special-purpose test environments: Dr. Thomas Ostrand, Dr. Herbert Foster, Dr. Tarak Goradia & Dr. Wojciech Szermer (Siemens Corporate Research) A Visual Test Development Environment for GUI Systems, and, Mr. Anil Rao (Hewlett-Packard Company) A Structured Framework for Designing Kernel Reliability Tests.

Coverage analysis, the "insurance policy" against Y2K disasters and potentially the basis for liability coverage, is addressed in these two presentations: Ms. Annaliese vonMayrhauser, Mr. Andre Bai, Mr. Tom Chen, Mr. Amjad Hajjar & Mr. Charles Anderson(Colorado State University) Fast Antirandom (FAR) Test Generation to Improve Code Coverage, and, Mr. Zachi Karni, Mr. Dror Orel & Mr. Shmuel Ur(IBM, Haifa Research Lab) Using 3D to Visualize Dynamic Path Coverage.

Always an important issues, these two papers aim to deal with issues that surround test automation: Dr. David J. Brown & Dr. Jarrett Rosenberg (Sun Microsystems) Static Checking of Application Binaries for Cross-Release Stability, and, Dr. Matthias Grochtmann, Mr. Joachim Wegener & Mr. Roman Pitschinetz (Daimler-Benz AG) Integrated Test Management within the Tool Environment Tessy.

New methods, including those which tie statistics to behavior analyais, are presented in: Dr. Pascale Thevenod-Fosse & Dr. Helene Waeselynck (LAAS-CNRS) Software Statistical Testing Based on Structural and Functional Criteria, and, Dr. Elaine J. Weyuker & Dr. Alberto Avritzer (AT&T Laboratories) Facilitating the Enforcement of Quality of Service Objectives by Using Software Testing Artifacts. In addition, these two writers dig into the question of how to apply statistical methods: Prof. William E. Howden(UCSD) Software Confidence, Computational Integrity, and Statistical Model Checking, and, Mr. David Banks, Mr. Leonard Gallagher, Mr. Charles Hagwood & Mr. James Yen(National Institute of Standards and Technology) Software Testing by Statistical Methods.

Lastly, some very important work on Java: Mr. Richard Kasperowski (Altisimo Computing) Automated Testing and Java Class Libraries, and, Ms. Carla Schroer (Sun Microsystems) Java(tm) Platform Compatibility Testing.

MANAGEMENT TRACK [Back to Top]

Leading off the Management Track are these fine papers addressing critical Y2K issues: Prof. W. Douglas Maurer (George Washington University) Program Correctness and the Year 2000 Problem, and, Mr. Gregory T. Daich (SAIC) Essential Year 2000 Practices.

For both Y2K applications and testing projects in general you'll want to hear: Ms. Cheryl Y. Moore (FedEx Corporation) Testing Policies and Standards, and, Mr. Manuel Gonzalez (Hewlett-Packard) Process Improvements Via Testing Results, A Case Study.

If Y2K is going to affect business, then software quality really is going to be good business, as illustrated by: Mr. William H. Warren (Independent Consultant) The Business Cost of Defective Software, and, Mr. Karen S. King (Sequent Computer Systems) Ensuring Quality in Software Suppliers.

Meanwhile, back to the Y2K problem, here are two papers that deal with very practical approaches: Mr. Rainer Pirker & Mr. Andreas Rudolf (IBM) Testing the Software Portfolio of a Bank for Year 2000 Readiness, and, Ms. Claudia Dencker (Software SETT Corporation) A Tester's Perspective of a Y2K Project at Hewlett-Packard.

Overall, management methods have the main responsibility for making sure Y2K issues -- and other software quality issues -- are addressed effectively. These four papers address general process improvement issues: Mr. Michael Heffler & Mr. Robert Thien (Bellcore) Providing a Context for Process Improvement and Assessment, Ms. Patricia O'Reilly (InPower) The Accidental Improvement Opportunity is Knocking, Ms. Elfriede Dustin (Freddie Mac Corporation) Automated Test Tool Introduction Process, Dr. Karl E. Wiegers (Process Impact) Software Process Improvement: Ten Traps to Avoid, and,

In any process you need metrics and here are two papers dealing with how to get the most and the best metrics: Mr. Jon Huber (Hewlett-Packard) Developing Metrics for a Software Testing Organization, and, Mr. Jeff Singer & Ms. Cindy Friedman(Ensemble Partners, Inc.) The Software End Game - Accurate Prediction of Time of Product Completion.

TOOLS & SOLUTIONS TRACK [Back to Top]

These papers aim at the heart of Y2K issues: Dr. Eugenio Cervetto (Performance Research) Performance Evaluation of Real-Time Embedded Software Applications Using PREDICTA Mr. Mike Powers (ST Labs, Inc.) Testing in a Year 2000 Project Mr. Michael Bowden (CYRANO) Year 2000: A Practical Approach to Reducing Business Risk, and, Mr. Larry Boldt (Technology Builders, Inc.) Y2K Requirements-Driven Automated Testing...Do You Have a License to Drive?.

Threading through QW'98 -- and through contemporary software devopment -- is the subject of Java, addressed here with these papers (there are also Java papers in the Technology Track): Mr. Oliver Jones(Rational Software Corporation) System Testing for Java-based Internet Applications: How, When and Why, and, Mr. Stephen C. Ruten (GTE Directories) Introduction of 100% Java in GTE as a Primary Development Language for E-Commerce.

WebSite quality is a growing issue, one addressed here by two far-thinking papers: Mr. Ieuan E. Jones(Royal Military College of Science Shrivenham) Application of Quality Practices to Web-site Development, and, Dr. Edward Miller (Software Research, Inc.) Remote Testing & CAPBAK/Web.

Every project has to track progress, and these two papers give differnt shades of light to this process: Mr. Avi Harel (ErgoLight Ltd.) Automation in Usability Validation, and, Mr. Manu Das (SOFFRONT Software, Inc.) The Revolution in Defect Tracking and Analysis, Software Quality, and the Internet.

If your customers are unhappy, then you have a serious problem. Take a look at these approaches to customer satisfaction: Mr. Stephen Kaufer (Centerline Software) Best Practices for Building Higher Quality Software Faster, and, Dr. Antonio Cicu. Mr. Domenico Tappero Merlo, Mr. Francesco Bonelli, Mr. Sandro Francesconi Mr. Fabrizio Conicella & Mr. Fabio Valle (MetriQs Srl / OSRA SISTEMI) Managing a Customer's Requirements in a SME: A Process Improvement Initiative Using an IT-based Methodology and Tool.

Where best to learn but from real world experience: Ms. Alka Jarvis(Cisco Systems) Applying Software Inspections - Real-Life Experience at Cisco Systems, and, Mr. Flavio Sticozzi (Bellcore) Year 2000 Testing: Bellcore's Solution Directions.

APPLICATIONS TRACK [Back to Top]

Defect analysis, everyone knows, is key to "doing the right thing" and these two papers address this issue comprehensively: Mr. Otto Vinter (Bruel & Kjaer) Improved Requirements Engineering Based on Defect Analysis, and, Ms. Maxine Crowther & Mr. Dave Oliver (Cadence Design Systems, Inc.) Automating Defect Tracking and Reporting: A Solution for the 21st Century.

Reliability and robustness -- never easy to define or to quantify -- remain important in the overall scheme, as these papers make clear: Dr. Peter Liggesmeyer & Mr. Martin Rothfelder (Siemens AG) Going Beyond Correctness: Improving Software Robustness, and, Mr. Raymond V. Sandfoss & Mr. Steven A. Meyer (AT&T Laboratories) The Impact of OOT, Client/Server, and Distributed Computing on SRE Practices.

Progress imposes new conditions and new problems, and it is important to have a good handle on the details of what to do and how to handle things when new applications arise, as shown in: Mr. Fabbrizio Fabbrini, Mr. Mario Fusani, Mr. Vincenzo Gervasi, Ms. Stefania Gnezi & Mr. Salvatore Ruggieri(IEI-CNR / Dip. di Informatica) Achieving Quality in Natural Language Requirements, and, Mr. Ondrej Such(Microsoft Corporation) Applications of Stochastic Asynchronous Programming Technique to Procedure TEsting.

As mentioned elsewhere, in a world of "electronic commerce" the quality of WebSites can be a major issue, as shown by: Mr. Steve Goldstein (Genetics Computer Group) Strategies for Testing a Web-based Application: Divide, Conquer, and Automate, and, Mr. Manuel Gonzalez (Hewlett-Packard) System Test Server Through the Web.

Even as we face new challenges -- like Y2K and WebSite quality control -- we still have to deal with GUI's, as illustrated by: Mr. Larry Apfelbaum & Mr. John Schroeder (Teradyne Software & Systems Test) Reducing the Time to Thoroughly Test a GUI, and, Ms. Anna Newman (Adobe Systems, Inc.) Lessons Learned: Automating Testing Experiences with Framemaker 5.5.

One important technology, which is rapidly coming to the fore, is requirements testing (see the 10X talk by Poston for another example). These papers relate state-of-the-art aspects: Ms. Martha Gray, Dr. Kathleen A. Kegley, Ms. Lynne Rosenthal (National Institute of Standards and Technology) Applications of Formal Specification Languages in Conformance Testing, and, Ms. Hazel Curtis, Ms. Diana Burkhardt & Mr. Alfred Vella (Allstor Software / University of Luton) Automated Test Suites from Reverse Engineering and Planguage.

But the real world is the final testbed for all quality control methods, and these two papers give good summaries of what is really involved: Mr. David W. Carman, Mr. Siddhartha R. Dalal, Mr. Ashish Jain & Mr. Nachimuthu Karunanithi (Bellcore) A Test Generation Factory for Year 2000 Testing, and, Mr. Keith Stobie(BEA Systems, Inc.) Testware Engineering.

[Back to Top]