What is QA: Challenge Accepted?

QA: Challenge Accepted is a conference targeted towards enthusiasts, specialists and managers participating in software testing and software quality assurance. The event is initiated by the QA community in Bulgaria - for professionals from professionals. After the successful first edition in 2015, QA: Challenge Accepted 2.0 is going to be even bigger, even more inspiring and hopefully even better which will give you an opportunity for new knowledge, skills, contacts, ideas and approaches, while we preserve our fundamental principles

A single presentation track - you will be able to attend all of the lectures without having to worry that you can miss out on a topic that you find interesting;
Distinguished presenters and non-commercial talks - the policy for the content of the presentations is to be non-commercial, presented by the best specialists in their area;
Work and fun combined - besides the technical part of the conference, you can expect show, games and surprises;
Free time and networking opportunities - during the conference itself there will be many coffee breaks (and good coffee provided), as well as a long lunch break to chat with your old connections and create new ones;
After-party - after the end of the event we will meet for a few beers.

Buy tickets

The regular price is 99 BGN but if you order 10 or more tickets, you'll get a 5% discount.

Receive news and updates for QA: Challenge Accepted in your email and be the first to learn the important things about the conference.

Agenda

Time	26 March 2016
9:30-10:00	Registration
10:00-10:10	Opening ceremony of QA: Challenge Accepted 2.0
10:10‑10:45	Role of Quality Assurance Specialist on Agile Project Svetlana Mukhina (Kiev, Ukraine) (in English) In Agile we value collaboration, continuous improvement, embracement of changes, regular feedback and working software that brings value to users. Models and approaches will be discussed with focus on how quality assurance specialist can be a true member of Agile team. Svetlana Mukhina has over 13 years of experience in the IT industry and is currently focused on project auditing and process transformations, personal coaching and mentoring for managers and Scrum masters. She loves turning the daily routine into an inspiration.
10:45‑11:00	Coffee
11:00‑11:35	How to Ensure High Quality Before Testing Nikolay Kolev What tools are useful for QA at the lowest software levels? How can Git and its workflow can contribute to a better product? Introducing Stash plugins, hooks and other tools. Integration between Git, Stash, Jenkins and SonarQube for high quality through static analysis, comparison between the source and target branches, unit tests and reviews done before the code reaches test environment. Nikolay Kolev has a significant experience with development of web applications. Since his university student years he works as a QA Automation Engineer, and soon he also takes on the role of a DevOps Engineer, where he performs a wide spectrum of activities related to virtualization, integration and automation. Nikolay values software quality, calm life and cold beer.
11:35‑11:50	Coffee
11:50‑12:25	Performance Тesting with Gatling Lyudmil Latinov We will start with a bit of theory on performance testing and its different nuances and we will then continue with a short introduction of Gatling, its strengths and weaknesses as well as how to record a simple test scenario and to analyse the results from it, after which we will deep dive into the details of real life about Gatling’s API, how to make queries and process the responses as well as series of other practical problems. Lyudmil Latinov has worked as a QA specialist for 11 years already, four of which (the most exciting ones!) he worked mostly on automation and he claims that he has accepted his work as his hobby ever since. He is constantly improving and he believes that automation is the only natural evolution of the QA profession as well as of the software industry as a whole.
12:25‑13:30	Lunch
13:30‑14:05	UX/Usability Testing and Its Impact Slavy Slavov Good design and usability are important factors for the success of a given business and they contribute to higher customer loyalty, better product and more revenue. We will look into real situations and we will learn to test with a more business-oriented focus Slavy Slavov has over 15 years of management experience in companies such as OrderDynamics and Experian - in the latter he was responsible for the entire QA department with teams in Bulgaria, Monaco, the UK and Malaysia. Today Slavy is one of the creators of Equafy - a tool for automated cross-browser testing.
14:05‑14:20	Coffee
14:20‑14:45	Back Door Manipulation - API Layer Evgeni Kostadinov The main topic of the presentation are GUI tests and their speed, reliability and maintenance. Even with the entire assistance of DevOps on the infrastructure (like containers and virtual machines) testing the presentation layer requires considerable effort in order to bring real value to the product. As we are striving for successful builds on our Continuous Delivery Pipeline, there is no room for fragile or slow software. Evgeni Kostadinov prefers challenges related to testing with different technologies. He also believes that compromises made with quality are paid for in time. Right now he is a QA Lead, as well as a lecturer in a course on automated testing.
14:45‑15:10	How and why we need to use Behat Bozhidar Boshnakov What is BDD, Gherkin, Behat, Mink and how these all can be combined? Why should we choose these tools for automation instead of others, even more popular ones? All of the theory in the talk will be illustrated with a chosen set of real-life examples. Bozhidar Boshnakov is a QA Manager and as a person who has coded for years and is currently developing a very technical team, he has found the Golden mean between QA and developer. He also worked on some of the biggest Drupal projects on a global scale. Bozhidar believes in BDD (Behaviour Driven Development) and in the fact that being a QA specialist is the most interesting and complex job in IT.
15:10‑15:25	Coffee
15:25‑16:00	Model Based Testing, A Practical Example Niels Sander Christensen (Copenhagen, Denmark) (in English) It is often necessary to test a new feature in a lot of configurations and flows. Model based testing can provide auto-generated tests for all of these variations, and through the sheer number of tests, also serve as a measurement of stability. We will demonstrate in practice using NModel, while also going through some theory, pitfalls and an alternative tool. " After some years as a developer Niels managed the QA department in the startup company Beologic. He stayed in that position several years, and then went to Microsoft for 10 years, mostly acting as a test lead. In recent years he has gone back to development, testing and test automation, concentrating on specifics instead of management.
16:00‑16:15	Coffee
16:15‑16:40	How to Turn Your Smartphone into a Fully Automated SuperPhone Dilyana Totseva and Georgi Ivanov We will learn how to easily write automated test scenarios for Android and iOS using Cucumber and how such frameworks can help overcome the gap between the technical and non-technical members of the team. In other words, we will perform the following test: GIVEN I am a Super QA, WHEN I write my tests using Calabash THEN they never fail. Dilyana Totseva is a QA Lead and she always strives to apply the best practices in testing, while during recent times she is focused on QA of mobile applications. Her personal goal is building a team of motivated people with experience and knowledge who can find even the most well-hidden defects. Georgi is a Senior Automation QA with more than 7 years of expertise in the field of automated testing for Mobile, Web and SOAP/REST services. He likes to share his knowledge and he expresses that by establishing courses and trainings for automated testing.
16:40‑16:55	Show: Impro-Talk The less you know, the funnier it will be :-)
16:55‑17:10	Coffee
17:10‑17:50	Lightning talks Series of short presentations up to 5 minutes: Testing IoT - Hristo Gergov Hello World QA Challenge - Alexander Todorov 1000 Bugs - Borislav Traykov The Hidden Wisdom of the Testing Troll - Viktor Slavchev How do they bear you? - Vasil Tabakov What makes release of mobile apps different? - Dimitar Topuzov For CVs, interviews, companies and gentle IT professionals - Milen Strahiniski About improvising - Toni Karabashev
17:50‑18:00	Closing ceremony
20:00‑+∞	QA after-party