Articles

A Primer on Continuous Testing

Continuous testing shortens feedback loops through automated testing that occurs throughout the development lifecycle—hence "continuous." Testing and QA become the responsibility of everyone working on the software, not just testers. Let's look at some proven practices from organizations that have used continuous testing effectively to realize tangible benefits.

Vasudevan Swaminathan's picture Vasudevan Swaminathan
Colorful gears 5 Reasons Enterprise Test Automation Is So Challenging

Most organizations understand that test automation is essential for modern application delivery processes. They’re just not sure how to make it a reality in an enterprise environment without exorbitant overhead and massive disruption. Enterprise organizations typically achieve small victories, but the process ultimately decays due to challenges in five main areas. Understanding these challenges will help us overcome them.

Wolfgang Platz's picture Wolfgang Platz
Rubik's cube being solved A Tester's Role in AIOps

“AIOps” stands for “artificial intelligence in IT operations,” or using machine learning and data science to solve IT problems. AI can help with many IT functions, including detecting and remediating outages, monitoring availability and performance, and IT service management. Like with DevOps, a tester plays an important part with AIOps—they just have to determine what that is.

Bhavani Ramasubbu's picture Bhavani Ramasubbu
QA professionals performing continuous testing How Continuous Testing Is Done in DevOps

DevOps does speed up your processes and make them more efficient, but companies must focus on quality as well as speed. QA should not live outside the DevOps environment; it should be a fundamental part. If your DevOps ambitions have started with only the development and operations teams, it’s not too late to loop in testing. You must integrate QA into the lifecycle in order to truly achieve DevOps benefits.

Junaid Ahmed's picture Junaid Ahmed

Better Software Magazine Articles

Supporting Continuous Testing with Automation Supporting Continuous Testing with Automation

Create tests that can be used in a continuous testing environment, build the right number of tests, and don’t fall victim to the mistaken belief that everything can be automated.

Bas Dijkstra's picture Bas Dijkstra
The Unspoken Truth about IoT Test Automation The Unspoken Truth about IoT Test Automation

The internet of things (IoT) continues to proliferate as connected smart devices become critical for individuals and businesses. Even with test automation, performing comprehensive testing can be quite a challenge.

Rama Anem's picture Rama Anem
Building a Test Automation Strategy Building a Test Automation Strategy

QA departments always feel the pressure to start testing quickly, even if the ever-changing software being tested isn’t ready. A bought-in test automation strategy can keep a project on track.

Justin Rohrman's picture Justin Rohrman
Test-Driven Service Virtualization Test-Driven Service Virtualization

Because enterprise applications are highly interconnected, development in stages puts a strain on the implementation and execution of automated testing. Service virtualization can be introduced to validate work in progress while reducing the dependencies on components and third-party technologies still under development.

Alexander Mohr's picture Alexander Mohr

Interviews

Melissa Benua Whole Team Quality: A Conversation with Melissa Benua
Video

Melissa Benua, director of engineering at mParticle, chats with TechWell community manager Owen Gotimer about the importance of whole team quality, how to get started using the test pyramid, and how developers can start writing testable code.

Owen Gotimer's picture Owen Gotimer
John McConda How to Incorporate Agile and Automation in a Regulated Environment: An Interview with John McConda
Video

John McConda, principal consultant at Mozer Consulting, discusses his workshop designed to aid testers who work in a regulated environment to implement agile and automated testing. He talks about how those who work in businesses that are regulated by federal agencies, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and other compliance requirements can still work within those rigid specifications to introduce agile and automated processes.

Owen Gotimer's picture Owen Gotimer
Dawn Haynes Job Security in the Age of Automation: An Interview with Dawn Haynes
Video

In this interview, Dawn Haynes, CEO, testing coach, and consultant for PerfTestPlus, discusses the ever-evolving world of AI and machine learning and the impact on the future of testing. Dawn explains why tools and automation will not be able to replace people, so testers don’t need to worry about job security.

Jennifer Bonine's picture Jennifer Bonine
Greg Paskal Data Visualization in Test Automation: A Conversation with Greg Paskal
Video

Greg Paskal, test automation lead at Ramsey Solutions, talks about data lakes and how to effectively use data visualization. Done well, data visualization should help practitioners, managers, and stakeholders easily consume, understand, and act on the information the visual displays.

Owen Gotimer's picture Owen Gotimer

Conference Presentations

STARCANADA 2019 Document Generation for Regulated Industries
Slideshow

One of the lines in the Agile Manifesto is "Working software over comprehensive documentation." This doesn't mean that no documentation is produced, but instead that only documentation that brings value to the team and the customer should be created.

Jonathan Miller Kauffman
STARCANADA 2019 Destroying the Horcruxes of Full-Stack Automation
Slideshow

Iryna Suprun will detail all seven Horcruxes and show you how to win the battle by building a robust, highly adopted automation solution.

Iryna Suprun
Selenium IDE Is Making a Comeback—Can Codeless Testing Scale?
Slideshow

The rise, fall, and resurrection of Selenium IDE begs the question: Can codeless testing actually scale? Test automation folklore is full of horror stories of failed attempts to apply record-playback tools to perform UI-based functional testing. Putting these stories aside for a moment, let's take an objective look at record-playback tools and compare them with programming-based automation tools in order to evaluate their applicability to functional and visual test automation. Join Moshe Milman as he dives into a hands-on demo of the new Selenium IDE, reviews some of its new capabilities, and goes over the latest open source and commercial tools and trends in the codeless test automation space. Find answers to questions around codeless test automation and discover best practices that will help you to scale your automated tests.

Moshe Milman
What's That Smell? Tidying Up Our Test Code
Slideshow

We are often reminded by those experienced in writing test automation that code is code. The sentiment being conveyed is that test code should be written with the same care and rigor that production code is written with. However, many people who write test code may not have experience writing production code, so it’s not exactly clear what is meant. And even those who write production code find that there are unique design patterns and code smells that are specific to test code. Join Angie Jones as she presents a smelly test automation code base littered with several bad coding practices and walks through every one of the smells. She'll discuss why each is considered a violation and via live coding, she will demonstrate a cleaner approach. While all coding examples will be done in Java, the principles are relevant for all test automation frameworks.

Angie Jones

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