TALMUG: Agile testing

Been a while since I posted anything - so busy with life and work.

Last night I had the chance to attend the Toronto Application Lifecycle Management User Group (TALMUG) as they were discussing something I've been grappling with:  Testing (specifically, Agile testing)

Some key points I pulled out of the discussion:

  • The key to doing Agile correctly is 'definition of done' and retrospectives (continuous improvement)
  • The key to ensuring testing is a part of the process is 'definition of done', and thus, you must have some sort of Agile-y development process
  • The key to getting the time to continuously improve is to PARTNER with your business colleagues - IT must be viewed as a partner, not a cost centre or necessary evil or code factory
  • The key to transforming to a 'team is responsible for all vs. I'm only responsible for my part' is holding the entire team accountable - no deadline extensions, public shaming
    • Sub-key is 'attitude is king' - a team with the right attitude can accomplish anything
  • If you find not enough time to test - most likely committed to too much up front
  • Test automation is best done in TINY pieces.  For example:
    • A login sequence (load page, enter user, enter pass, click login) is too long!
    • Have code for 'load page', 'enter user', 'enter pass', 'click login'
    • This means you can substitute user/pass, or one or the other, for stuff like different environments, or negative testing
  • Test automation requires consistent and agreed-upon naming of IDs that CANNOT change.
    • This gives you a much longer shelf life for UI-based tests
  • Test automation 'helper' tools are useful for starting out, but generally fall down in long-term maintenance
    • That said, they are a good 'better than nothing' first step
  • MOST IMPORTANT I thought was being able to tell a story using metrics
    • Quality is end to end, right? (build quality in)  So use a variety of metrics across the process flow to determine if quality is improving or not
    • Start measuring right away - even if the measurements are manual
It was great - many thanks to ObjectSharp for hosting the event!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Learning through failure - a keyboard creation journey

Image
tl;dr Built a custom keyboard cuz I have weirdo nerve pain issues.   Learned a lot cuz I failed a lot.   Maybe 'do it right the first time' is a bad frame of mind.   The keyboard ended up being kinda nifty.   It has lights, and a trackball, and QMK, and it helps my issues.   \o/ ( tl;dr is internet lingo that means, too long; didn't read ) Pain as a key ingredient An old proverb says, 'necessity is the mother of invention', and that is how this story begins. Over the last few years, age or stress or something has caught up with me and I developed the need to change my human-to-computer interface.  Mousing changed to trackballing.  The traditional keyboard was swapped out for an ergonomic, and then split keyboard.  Complicated multi-finger-and-hand key combinations were replaced by single keypress macros.  And yet more was still needed. It's often said that change only happens with pain - indeed, the organizations many of us work in seem to apply this as law - an
Read more

Learning Opportunities - Watching/listening list

Over the last year I've spent a lot of time learning (thank you, long commute & lunch hours).  Many topics ranging from Chef to DevOps to architecture concepts to management concepts and everything in between.  Why have I done this? DevOps Demystified with Ben Rockwood: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5E--QSBVBY DevOps at ancestry.com: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF5ya0q53kk Those two presentations were key in sending me down this road.  First, and most important, was Mr. Rockwood's explanation as to the real 'why', and the point behind DevOps from an operational perspective.  Second, and no less important but for a different reason, the continuous delivery system at ancestry.com really made it real to me because they are a 'Windows shop'.  So much of what I'd been reading about Chef/config mgmt. relied on amazing tools (see the error there?) only available to the Linux world.  Suddenly here's this guy telling me that it's possible on
Read more

DFSR - eventid 4312 - replication just won't work

This warning isn't documented that well on the googles, so here's some google fodder: You are trying to set up replication for a DFS folder (no existing replication) Source server is 2008R2, 'branch office' server is 2012R2 (I'm moving all our infra to 2012R2) You have no issues getting replication configured You see the DFSR folders get created on the other end, but nothing stages Finally you get EventID 4312: The DFS Replication service failed to get folder information when walking the file system on a journal wrap or loss recovery due to repeated sharing violations encountered on a folder. The service cannot replicate the folder and files in that folder until the sharing violation is resolved.    Additional Information:  Folder: F:\Users$\user.name\Desktop\Random Folder Name\  Replicated Folder Root: F:\Users$  File ID: {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}-v0  Replicated Folder Name: Users  Replicated Folder ID: 33F0449D-5E67-4DA1-99A
Read more