Spotify is a music streaming service offering high-quality, instant access to music from a range of major and independent record labels. Model-based testing (MBT) is an important test technique they use to ensure that their systems deliver quality service. Spotify has discovered new ways to use MBT for effective testing in support of its more than ten-million user base. Alexander Andelkovic shares the challenges of implementing and integrating new MBT solutions and convincing company management that MBT is both efficient and effective. Explore the choice they made between buying or building an advanced MBT tool, the benefits of using MBT in new ways, and the increased visibility from improved quality. Whether your organization employs automated testing or not, Alexander shows you how to successfully integrate advanced MBT techniques with traditional test methods.

Organizations look at two ways to reduce repetitive testing costs-automation and offshoring. Although either can work, combining these two approaches has the promise of even more savings to organizations by freeing up their employees for more creative testing. Because both automation and offshoring are complex operations in and of themselves, combining them adds more risks and challenges that can lead to disappointment and a "double backlash" instead of a "double benefit" if not implemented with proven approaches. Test automation pioneer Hans Buwalda shares his personal "adventures" with offshoring and outsourcing automated testing. Organized along major challenges he's faced-methodology, automation technology, cultural differences, long distances, and hard to deal with time differences-Hans presents a set of failure patterns that are common in offshoring and offers practical suggestions for how to overcome them.

Although testers know the ins and outs of functional testing, many of us don't have a smart process for doing software performance testing. To improve her personal performance testing skills, Mieke Gevers looked at processes from other disciplines-automobile manufacturing, medical rehabilitation, and project management. It was here she found SMART, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. Learn how Mieke’s organization used SMART to deal with chaotic performance testing situations-lack of clear requirements, discrepancies between business objectives and reality, running out of time, and changes in technology. In Mieke's organization, SMART has helped them save time, react quickly to production requests for developing and running tests, develop reproducible performance tests, and create better test results documentation.

The switch from traditional, top-down management to agile project practices poses a dilemma for managers and the team, including test managers and testers. If agile teams self-manage their work, what does a test manager actually do now? And without strong guidance from a traditional manager, how do teams organize their work? Dale Emery describes how successful agile teams resolve these conundrums-by adopting a seemingly paradoxical way of collaboration called “servant leadership.” A servant leader leads by serving and serves by leading. On high-performing agile teams, everyone is a servant leader in one way or another. There are no followers in the traditional sense and no command-and-control managers. Everyone leads-all the time. Everyone serves-all the time.