The second WREST workshop will be held this May in Indianapolis. WREST is the workshop on regulated software testing.
The primary goal of the workshop is to cultivate a community among software testers that work with regulated software. It can be helpful to know other testers working with regulated software and the auditing process but how can you find each other? We’re hoping the workshop will build a community of software testers who work on products that are regulated. For more information on WREST see: http://www.wrestworkshop.com/CFP.html
John McConda and I are the hosts of the workshop and Mike Kelly is our facilitator for the event.
Here are a couple of questions I’ve received and thought I would share comments here:
Q: How can I participate in the WREST workshop if the product I work with is highly confidential?
We – John and I respect confidentiality and we encourage participants to avoid any information that could jeopardize confidential information. We begin the workshop by outlining how you can share information without exposing product or corporate information. If the confidential concern is one that you have, please feel free to contact John or I (our emails are on the WREST site) and we will step you through how we help attendees.
Q: Do I need to write a long formal response to the CFP to attend?
No, but you do have to submit a reply and you have to be prepared to share an experience report at the workshop. Your experience should be your own and it should be relevant in some way to regulated software. Your paper can be short; your writing can be informal. This is a workshop planned with an attendance of no more than 20 people and formal papers are not needed.
Q: What is meant by regulated software?
The workshop is focused on testing in regulated environments – with no restrictive definition on what “regulated” software is or what type of regulations your product and process may need to adhere to. Some examples of regulations include: HIPPA, Sox, and FDA regulations.
We’ve also started an email group for people to connect outside of the workshops, see the WREST site for more info. http://www.wrestworkshop.com/