How Google Tests Software

Date and Time: 
2010 Jul 29th @ 3:15pm
Location: 
CG1-1210 South Auditorium
Speaker: 
James A. Whittaker

The mythology around Google Test runs like a ghostly spirit through the larger software quality community. Google automates everything. Google's cloud is the ultimate tester playground. Sometimes myth is larger than reality and sometime the reverse is true. In this talk James Whittaker will dispel some Google Test myths and reinforce others. There is indeed a secret sauce we mix into our product quality efforts and many of its flavors can be sampled in this short presentation.

  • Test machines and test labs available in any number, on-demand
  • Developer resources and skill set applied to testing
  • Internal tools that trump commercially available ones
  • Innovation is the soup du jour of the Google tester
Speaker Description: 

James A. Whittaker joined Google in May 2009 as a Test Engineering Director where he oversees the testing of Chrome browser, Chrome operating system and a bevy of other products. Formerly an Architect with Microsoft’s Visual Studio Team System, he directed product strategy for Microsoft’s test business and led internal teams in the application of exploratory testing. Dr. Whittaker previously served as Professor of Computer Science at Florida Tech. There, he was named a Top Scholar by The Journal of Systems and Software, and led a research team that created many leading-edge testing tools and technologies, including the acclaimed runtime fault injection tool Holodeck. Whittaker is author of Exploratory Software Testing: Tips, Tricks, Tours and Techniques to Guide Test Designand How to Break Software. He is coauthor (with Hugh Thompson) of How to Break Software Security, co-author (with Mike Andrews) of How to Break Web Software and author of 50+ peer-reviewed papers on software development and security, and the holder of patents on various inventions in security testing and defensive security techniques. Dr. Whittaker has a PhD in computer science from the University of Tennessee.

Video recorded: 
J. Whittaker

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