The Road to Intent-Driven Automation en

Robotic Process Automation is difficult to get right. Current tools rely on specifying the “How”: Write text into a textfield for example. Instead, you should specify the “What”: Fill out the form with the data. Automation is therefore often implemented by specialized teams with technical expertise but lack domain knowledge. To add to this, tools often only target specific platforms and operating systems. This leads to automation that is brittle, and flaky and relies on outside support for maintenance.

This talk will present the bright future of RPA due to current advancements in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Vision. In the future, domain experts will formulate automation as an intent in the form of natural language and let the tool figure out a way to achieve the desired outcome with the appropriate actions. This will break the dependence on tool specialists and empower domain experts to automate workflows autonomously, which is cost-effective and faster.

A live demo will show the practical implications by leveraging GPT for task understanding, Computer Vision models for object detection, and human-like interaction with the operating system to write a poem about RPA and save it to a desktop application. All of this is initiated by a single prompt and no further user interference.

Useful and Beautiful Developer Docs and How to Create Them en de

Inadequate developer documentation can be detrimental to your product's success. Developers seek efficient problem-solving, and if your product fails to provide that, they will quickly move on.

Join me as I share my experience of revamping developer documentation at my current company. Initially, the documentation was subpar and barely functional for many developers. Onboarding was challenging, and existing users struggled to accomplish their tasks effectively.

In this talk, we will delve into the stages of enhancing documentation quality, complete with real-world examples of our journey. Gain insights into structuring your documentation to meet your audience's specific needs through segmentation. Discover the power of crafting learning objectives to streamline content focus. Additionally, I will demonstrate how adopting the Docs-As-Code approach can automatically ensure inclusive language, spelling accuracy, and stylistic consistency, resulting in an enjoyable reading experience.

Greek Philosophy for Modern Software Development en

Hardly a year goes by without a new disruptive technology appearing. While it used to be possible to keep up to date with moderate effort, it has now become practically impossible. In addition, agile methods are used for development and, especially in the corporate environment, existing interpersonal and political tensions often spill over to the individual employee.

I also found myself in this situation and was looking for a sensible way to deal with it.
In the process, I came across the Greek philosophy called Stoicism. It is practiced by many people who find themselves in challenging life circumstances. As a holistic practice-focused philosophy, Stoicism is primarily aimed at individuals and helps them strive for the highest goal of happy existence (eudaimonía).

In this lecture, the main features of Stoicism will be presented. Then we will deal with the most important qualities of a practicing Stoic. Among them is emotional self-control. These can be specifically trained through suitable exercises in order to gain more composure in everyday life and become more resilient. In everyday life, stress can be avoided and the focus can be directed towards possible solutions instead of entering into unprofitable conflicts.

Challenges in UI Automation and How to Solve Them en de

It is impossible to imagine software development without UI tests. Despite technological progress, the automation of UI tests is still considered too complex to function completely without manual intervention. Especially when automating canvas elements, embedded maps or shadow DOM elements, many approaches reach their limits.

That is why more and more image-based approaches are being pursued, in addition to classical ones such as Selenium.

This talk will cover modern UI automation approaches with an overview of tools and techniques. In particular, current problems and future developments will be addressed. We show exemplarily how several tools like Taiko and Cypress can be used and how AI will help to approach such challenges in the future.

Herausforderungen bei der UI-Automatisierung und wie man sie löst en de

UI-Tests sind aus der Softwareentwicklung nicht mehr wegzudenken. Trotz des technologischen Fortschritts gilt die Automatisierung von UI-Tests immer noch als zu komplex, um vollständig ohne manuelle Eingriffe zu funktionieren. Insbesondere bei der Automatisierung von Canvas-Elementen, eingebetteten Karten oder Shadow-DOM-Elementen stoßen viele Ansätze an ihre Grenzen.

Deshalb werden neben den klassischen Ansätzen wie Selenium auch immer mehr bildbasierte Ansätze verfolgt.

Dieser Vortrag behandelt moderne UI-Automatisierungsansätze mit einem Überblick über Tools und Techniken. Dabei wird insbesondere auf aktuelle Probleme und zukünftige Entwicklungen eingegangen. Wir zeigen exemplarisch, wie verschiedene Tools wie Taiko und SikuliX eingesetzt werden können und wie KI in Zukunft helfen wird, solche Herausforderungen anzugehen.

Real Cross-Platform Workflow UI Automation en

Testing workflows that span multiple applications and platforms is a challenging task. Imagine a test case that calls an API first, then an operator has to enter information at his web app so that the end user finally sees the update in his native app on a smartphone. Real End-to-End automation is nearly impossible today.

Current approaches try to automate cross-platform with the help of web apps running on (mobile) browsers. Native apps on Android or iOS can only be included in the workflow using time-intensive techniques like picture-in-picture search because they lack code selectors that operate on the Document-Object-Model (DOM).

With the rise of machine learning/artificial intelligence, we can train models to recognize elements on User Interfaces based solely on visual attributes. With that, it becomes possible to automate any platform when you combine it with automation on the Operating System level.

In this talk, I will show a live demo that will walk the audience step-by-step through a typical 2-Factor Authentication using a physical smartphone. We will see what automation is possible today and how it enables testing currently untestable workflows.

Take an end-to-end test case where an operator has to enter data and you need to verify the successful processing on a smartphone. Test automation for this is nearly impossible today.

I will show a live demo that automates 2-factor authentication with a physical device in conjunction with a laptop.

Wie nützliche und schöne Docs für Softwareentwickelnde erstellt werden können en de

Unzureichende Docs für Softwareentwickelnde kann dem Erfolg Ihres Produkts abträglich sein. Sie suchen nach effizienten Problemlösungen, und wenn Ihr Produkt diese nicht bietet, werden sie schnell weiterziehen.

Ich berichte von meinen Erfahrungen bei der Überarbeitung der Dokumentation für Softwareentwickelnde in meinem derzeitigen Unternehmen. Ursprünglich war die Dokumentation mangelhaft und für viele kaum brauchbar. Das Onboarding war eine Herausforderung, und Benutzende hatten Schwierigkeiten, ihre Aufgaben effektiv zu erledigen.

In diesem Vortrag werde ich die einzelnen Phasen der Qualitätsverbesserung der Dokumentation anhand von Beispielen erläutern. Wie Segmentierung dabei hilft die Dokumentation so zu strukturieren, dass sie auf die spezifischen Bedürfnisse der Konsumierenden passt. Außerdem gehe ich darauf ein, wie wichtig es ist, präzise Lernziele zu formulieren, um den Fokus der Inhalte zu optimieren. Darüber hinaus zeige ich, wie mit dem Docs-As-Code-Ansatz automatisiert auf verständliche Sprache, korrekte Rechtschreibung und stilistische Konsistenz getestet werden kann.