|
|
Agile, Automation, and the Cloud The cry throughout organizations today is “move to the cloud”. However useful the cloud may be, testing applications hosted in the cloud presents an additional set of challenges. Both the application-under-test and the platform changes need to be regression tested. Taking you on a journey to demystify the testing lifecycle for cloud-based applications, Kiran Karnad details the different approach and the new set of practices and tools we need to deliver high quality cloud applications. Join Kiran as he shares the process of continuous integration for the cloud and introduces an open source tool for automation and performance testing. Using these experiences, Kiran highlights the salient points of testing cloud-based applications and differentiates it from testing in the traditional world.
|
Kiran Karnad, Mimos Berhad
|
|
|
Static Testing Comes to Agile: A Simplified Inspection Process that Works Costs soar when defects are not discovered until system testing-or worse, in production. Inspections can drive down delivery times, drive out defects, and help align business and IT expectations. The benefits of inspections are known and documented, although adding these quality steps can appear to slow down an agile team. Can there be harmony between prevention processes and agile practices? Anne Hungate takes you through the experiences she and her team gained bringing static testing practices into their transition from waterfall to agile. They streamlined and simplified the inspection process while still capturing critical data to prevent problems from escaping to production. Anne shares the practical steps to overcoming the organizational and cultural barriers that keep teams from realizing the benefits of inspections.
|
Anne Hungate, Nationwide Insurance
|
|
|
The Many Flavors of Exploratory Testing The concept of exploratory testing is evolving, and different interpretations and variations are emerging and maturing. These range from the pure and original thoughts of James Bach, later expanded to session-based exploratory testing by Jon Bach, to testing tours described by James Whittaker, to the many different ways test teams across the world have chosen to interpret exploratory testing in their own contexts. Though it appears to be simple, exploratory testing can be difficult to introduce into a traditional organization where testers are familiar only with executing scripted test cases and where the concept of exploration and creative testing may be somewhat foreign. At the same time, organizations need to address the challenges of traceability and reporting, moving from traditional ways to a more exploratory approach.
|
Gitte Ottosen, Sogeti Denmark
|
|
|
Three New Technologies that Will Disrupt Your Test Organization Which forces are shaping the future of your test organization-processes, tools, technologies? It is a simple-and misleading-question. The test organization is not the center of the universe. The test organization serves the IT department and the business. If they change, the test organization must change. Three new technologies-the cloud, service-oriented architectures, and multi-tenant systems-are revolutionizing IT departments. Test organizations must adapt their methodologies, tools, and processes to these technologies. The combination of these three is a catalyst for advanced sourcing models. Join Klaus Haller to learn how the rise of application or business service provisioning changes the task portfolio and staffing needs of testing organizations. Discuss with Klaus how to move from a classic testing organization to a continuous and holistic quality assurance organization.
|
Klaus Haller, Swisscom IT Services
|
|
|
Forgotten Wisdom from the Ancient Testers In our increasingly agile world, collaboration is the new buzzword. But collaboration is hard to do well. Testers are challenged to work directly, effectively, efficiently, and productively with customers, programmers, business analysts, writers, trainers-and pretty much everyone in the business value chain. There are many points of collaboration including grooming stories with customers, sprint planning with team members, reviewing user interaction with users, whiteboarding with peers, and buddy checking. Rob Sabourin and Dot Graham explain what collaboration is, why it is challenging, and how to make it better. Learn how forgotten but proven techniques can help you work more efficiently, improve your professional relationships, and deliver quality products. Join Dot and Rob to hear how “ancient” techniques apply in today’s world, with stories of how these techniques work now.
|
Dorothy Graham, Consultant
|
|
|
Beyond the Silver Lining: Testing Go Daddy's Cloud The cloud offers users a way to easily access applications and data from anywhere on any device. However, behind that simple façade lies a colossal testing challenge. Go Daddy's Storage as a Service and the surrounding SOA consist of technologies galore. Test automation and coverage do not come easily with a technology portfolio that includes PHP, Perl, Python, C++, MySQL, RabbitMQ, and Cassandra-to name just a few. Join Brent Strange to see how engineers at Go Daddy solve these problems by working together to build a test automation infrastructure and QA processes that ensure the dependability, scalability, and high quality of Go Daddy's next generation cloud storage solution. Brent shares the SOA automation frameworks and some techniques that Go Daddy employs to provide test coverage across all technologies, layers, and environments.
|
Brent Strange, Go Daddy
|
|
|
Agile Defect Management: Focus on Prevention Efficient agile organizations focus on defect prevention rather than downstream defect discovery because discovering defects during or after testing adds to development costs. Delaying discovery and repair of defects can make an agile team feel like they are operating in a mini-waterfall. Sharing his experience with Scrum/Kanban teams, David Jellison describes how grouping defects into two major categories-work-in-process defects and escaping defects-reduces development costs and improves reliability in the field. Dave illustrates how to manage problem discovery early and minimize the existence of escaping defects. Treating escaping defects as the exception rather than the norm results in a much smaller defect backlog and increased customer satisfaction.
|
David Jellison, Constant Contact
|
|
|
Stop the Test Automation ROI-based Justification Insanity In the past, we justified our automation efforts with ROI calculations based on saved test execution time. Unfortunately, those “savings” frequently led to eliminating testers from the organization. Management applauded the “do more with less” reality that these ROI savings promised. Seasoned and slightly askew test leader Bob Galen challenges these traditional views toward automation ROI-based savings. Explore better value drivers for automation that include increasing your competitive position, increasing the capacity and skill of your test organization, allowing for late-binding changes for development that provide a delivery “safety net,” and increasing the overall quality of your risk-based testing strategies. Bob explains why cost savings is a low-level, trivial pursuit and discusses why focusing on increased investment in your team and your testing should be the prime directive for your automation initiatives.
|
Bob Galen, RGalen Counsulting Group, LLC
|
|
|
The Tester's Role in Continuous Integration If your software product is recompiled and integrated frequently, you can improve your testing by integrating automated tests into your continuous integration process. In many organizations, unit tests are run as part of continuous integration; however, that is not enough. During the continuous integration cycle, integration of all automated tests-system, integration, unit, and regression-is vital to help find defects quickly and provide a substantial return on investment. Ayal Cohen and Roi Carmel describe the types of tests needed, the pros and cons of each type, and how to choose which tests to execute according to development code change, business criticality, and history of execution. Ayal and Roi discuss the need for service virtualization so you can run your tests in an environment that has not yet been fully developed, providing virtual substitutes for the missing services.
|
Ayal Cohen, HP
|
|
|
Moneyball and the Science of Building Great Testing Teams Moneyball is an analytical, metrics-based approach to assembling a competitive baseball team. It is based on breaking down accepted preconceptions and finding new ways to look at individual skills and how they mesh as a team. Sometimes the characteristics that we believe the team needs aren’t that important in improving quality. In fact, some accepted practices may have less impact on quality than we might have predicted. Peter Varhol examines how to use data about applications and quality to tell the right story about our state of quality and our success in shipping high quality applications. Looking at some of our preconceptions about testing and individual skills, Peter identifies characteristics for building and running a high-performance testing team.
|
Peter Varhol, Seapine Software Inc
|
