Speaker

Cher Fox

Cher Fox

Fox Consulting

Denver, Colorado, United States

I'm a passionate consultant with over 3 decades of experience managing various long-term projects in multiple industries. I improve performance & quality in DW/BI/SW delivery & development processes, automate “spreadsheet madness” & time-consuming manual processes, reverse engineer reporting challenges to improve data quality, reliability & scalability, & improves management decisioning & operations efficiency overall. I seek to enable clients by leveraging existing technologies, re-engineering high level management & operations processes, and consulting/coaching on DW/BI implementations.

I'm fluent in data delivery via SQL server tables, stored procedures, views, SSIS packages, SSAS tabular models, Oracle Toad, & SAP Universes. My specialties for BI delivery are SSRS, Power BI, Tableau, SAP Business Objects & Crystal Reports.

I serve as VP of Communications & Marketing on the Data Management Association - Rocky Mountain Chapter board, the Boulder BI Brain Trust & am formerly a board member for the Colorado Chapter of TDWI. I am very active in the SQL PASS community, collaborating at local SQL Saturdays, PASS Data Community user groups & Summits & BA conferences. I contribute to Women Who Code, HMG Strategy, Women in Technology & Colorado Technology Associations groups. I enjoy sharing my expertise via speaking engagements locally, nationally & internationally.

I've held the corporate positions of Interim CEO for a national marketing agency, Customer Services Manager for an international software development group, Interim IT Manager for a national risk management company, & VP for a regional construction firm.

Area of Expertise

  • Information & Communications Technology
  • Business & Management

Topics

  • Test Automation
  • Business Intelligence
  • Data Warehousing
  • Agile Transformation

Test Automation: Agile Enablement for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Teams

Regardless of whether your data warehousing (DW)/business intelligence (BI) team is dedicated to Scrum, a fan of Kanban, or focused on XP, “Agile” in any form calls for small increments of potentially deployable results – which means that QA is essential on a regular, frequent basis. As we develop these small increments, we need to not only test the new development, but also regression test what we’ve already built. Our test suite grows larger with each iteration, and manual testing quickly becomes infeasible. Agile requires that we automate our tests so that regression testing doesn’t become a development bottleneck.

Test automation is one of several key technical enablement practices that allows teams to be more successful in their agile journeys. While there are lots of test practices and automation tools out there for software development teams to leverage, very few are targeted to data-related development and testing. Agile analytics practitioner Lynn Winterboer and DW/BI architect and developer Cher Fox will share essential agile test foundations and data-focused test automation technologies to help data warehousing and business intelligence teams get a leg up on this important agile practice, including a demo of how this works!

Agenda:
Why is test automation important for agile DW/BI teams?
Why aren’t all DW/BI teams automating their tests today?
What is the path to data-focused test automation?
Where to start? What tests to automate first?
Demo of a simple test automation tool any DW/BI team could build and use
Learning Outcomes:
The intent of this presentation is to:
1) Educate DW/BI folks on why test automation is important to an agile journey;
2) Clarify that a solid foundation is needed in testing practices and principles before automation is useful;
3) Show that automation is easy to do, using simple DW/BI tools and coding languages.

Agile Test Automation for Data-Centric Applications

Test automation, one of several key technical enablement practices, allows teams to be more successful in their agile journeys. Although there are lots of test practices and automation tools available for software development teams to leverage, few are targeted to data-related development and testing. This lack of data-centric testing tools leaves Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence teams thinking they can't possibly automate their tests. Why is test automation important to agile data teams? Why aren’t they automating their tests today? What is the path to test automation? Cher answers these questions, bringing the concepts to life using small-group exercises and a short demo of how it works. Leave knowing that a lack of vendor-supported tools is NOT the issue, and that if you roll up your sleeves and develop good testing practices and procedures, you can easily start automating those practices and procedures using the tools and development languages that you already use.

BSC & ADC & DO/West 2017 Conference
Software Testing Conference 2017

Behavior-Driven Development & Test Automation: Agile Enablement for DW & BI Teams

Behavior-Driven Design (BDD) and test automation are key practices that allow data warehouse and business intelligence teams to be more successful in their agile journeys. While there are lots of test practices and automation tools out there for software development teams to leverage, very few are targeted to data-related development and testing. Agile analytics practitioner Lynn Winterboer and DW/BI architect Cher Fox will share essential agile test foundations, describe BDD, and identify data-focused test automation technologies to help data warehousing and business intelligence teams get a leg up on these important agile practices, including a BDD exercise and a test automation demo!

SQL Saturday #673
PASS Data Community Summit 2017

PASS Data Community Summit

Behavior-Driven Development & Test Automation: Agile Enablement for DW & BI Teams

October 2017 Seattle, Washington, United States

STARWEST Software Testing Conference

Agile Test Automation for Data-Centric Applications

October 2017 Anaheim, California, United States

SQL Saturday #673

Behavior-Driven Development & Test Automation: Agile Enablement for DW & BI Teams

September 2017 Denver, Colorado, United States

Software Quality Association of Denver (SQuAD)

Test Automation: Agile Enablement for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Teams

September 2017 Denver, Colorado, United States

BSC & ADC & DO/West 2017 Conference

Agile Test Automation for Data-Centric Applications

June 2017 Las Vegas, Nevada, United States

Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group (RMOUG)

Test Automation: Agile Enablement for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Teams

May 2017 Denver, Colorado, United States

SQL Saturday #584

Test Automation: Agile Enablement for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Teams

March 2017 Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States

SQL Saturday #596 BI Edition

Test Automation: Agile Enablement for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Teams

February 2017 Denver, Colorado, United States

Agile Testing Days 2016

Test Automation: Agile Enablement for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Teams

December 2016 Potsdam, Germany

SQL Server Users Group

Test Automation: Agile Enablement for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Teams

November 2016 Denver, Colorado, United States

Agile Testing and Test Automation Summit

Test Automation: Agile Enablement for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Teams

November 2016 Westminster, Colorado, United States

SQL Saturday #548

Test Automation: Agile Enablement for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Teams

September 2016 Kansas City, Missouri, United States

Agile Alliance 2016

Test Automation: Agile Enablement for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Teams

July 2016 Atlanta, Georgia, United States

Data Management Association - Rocky Mountain Chapter (DAMA-RMC)

Test Automation: Agile Enablement for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Teams

July 2016 Denver, Colorado, United States

Agile Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Meetup

Test Automation: Agile Enablement for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Teams

June 2016 Denver, Colorado, United States

The Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI) - Colorado Chapter

Test Automation: Agile Enablement for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Teams

June 2016 Denver, Colorado, United States

Cher Fox

Fox Consulting

Denver, Colorado, United States