Between February and November this year, UNICOM plans a series of independent conferences which cover and bring together the related themes of Software Testing, DevOps, Agile and Low Code. These conferences are held in metros throughout UK and India. These events are primarily in-person but global attendees can also join via live-stream.
These events are single track and address the interplay between four key aspects of IT. This includes [1] Software Quality Assurance and Testing
[2] Agile (including Scrum, Scaled Agile Framework SAFe and other disciplines)
[3] DevOps – a philosophy and set of practices supported by tools that have the goal of improving culture, communication and automated delivery between software development and operations
[4] Low Code is in an increasingly important feature in the agenda of these events with its potential to simplify development and software testing. There is a burgeoning array of Low Code tools and platforms on the market.
Increasingly AI, and in particular Large Language Models (LLM) e.g. ChatGPT and Bard – is making its presence felt within organisations – both at strategic and technical team level. For example, a question frequently raised at these conferences is how AI is going to make a difference to tasks and techniques, and indeed if it will make some roles and jobs redundant.
Format of each conference is similar –
they comprise a series of presentations by acknowledged thought leaders giving their views and opinions. There are also several case studies where organisations share their experiences and war stories.
To facilitate deep discussion the program includes a session of roundtables where the audience are invited to join a table where there is a specific theme discussed – each table is facilitated but there is no set agenda, delegates share their opinions and ask questions of peers. The topics addressed at the tables range from technical to conversations around cultural and people issues.
An additional dimension of the conferences is a specialist exhibition where product vendors and service companies demonstrate their solutions, tools and products. To remain at the cutting edge, UNICOM tries to ensure a balance in the exhibition between traditional established vendors and consulting firms – along with SMEs and start-ups to give a representative flavour and snapshot of the marketplace.
The conferences cover various aspects of the four topics –
Software Quality & Testing, DevOps, Agile and Low Code.
The evolving developments of Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) result in convergence. Multiple aspects of these are software related: Agile, DevOps, Testing, Low Code and No Code, also topics of Knowledge Management, Information Systems include many areas of interplay and commonality. To reflect this, later this year, UNICOM is co-locating the conferences on 19 October in London ‘TestExpo, Agile, DevOps and Low Code Expo’ is co-located with ‘Knowledge Management, Conferences, Information and Data: Confluence and state of the art’. In Bangalore, 23 November, ‘World Conference Next Generation Testing’ is co-located with the finals of two contests the India testing League and India Testing Awards.
