ALM & SCM Tools
Articles
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The Value of Making Your Data Sources Reusable across Test Automation Tools Many automation tools have a mechanism for storing data used in their test scripts. Typically, the specifics of this mechanism is different across tools, making it difficult to use this data outside the tool itself. Using an external, reusable data source allows organizations to avoid the cost of migrating or duplicating existing data, thereby future-proofing their frameworks. |
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How to Guarantee Failure in Your Agile DevOps Transformation Many organizations make the same agile and DevOps scaling mistakes year after year, then attempt to rectify them by putting together a great new strategy—only to miss the reasons causing the failure. If you want to refuse to evolve and, as a result, cause your organization’s agile and DevOps transformation efforts to deliver zero business value, be sure to follow these seven antipatterns. |
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Lessons Learned in Jenkins Configuration Management Managing the configuration of Jenkins—the popular open source, continuous integration and continuous delivery application—is not trivial. Even a small change can make the platform less stable or result in problems. Vishal Sahasrabuddhe talks about his experiences using Jenkins and offers tips to take advantage of its many powerful features to automate deployment and increase productivity and product quality. |
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Continuous Improvement in Configuration Management Continuously improving your configuration management practice results in delivering high-quality, complex software beautifully and efficiently. But it’s equally as important to observe the entire CM process so you can envision and plan for worst-case scenarios as well as think about how you can scale with time—and keep on improving. |
Interviews
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Getting Started with Security Testing: An Interview with Jeff Payne
Video
In this interview, Jeff Payne, the CEO and founder of Coveros, talks about software security. He discusses the Internet of Things and how it relates to safety-critical devices, some useful tools, how testers can test for security, and how DevOps pushes that process earlier in your lifecycle. |
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Identify Bottlenecks in Your Agile and DevOps Processes: An Interview with Tanya Kravtsov In this interview, Tanya Kravtsov, a director of QA at Audible, explains why identifying bottlenecks is so critical when you’re turning to agile and DevOps, as well as how automating manual processes can lead to better quality. |
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How Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and Agile Impact Business: An Interview with Jeff Morgan
Video
In this interview, chief technology officer and cofounder of LeanDog, Jeff “Cheezy” Morgan, explains how continuous integration and agile are impacting not only technology groups, but the businesses that the people in the technology groups are helping to enable, support, and develop for. |
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Testing Faster, Better, and Cheaper with Continuous Delivery: An Interview with Gene Gotimer
Video
In this interview, Gene Gotimer, the senior architect at Coveros, explains how you can test better, deploy features into production faster with continuous delivery, and arrange your tests so each round provides just enough testing to give you confidence. |
Better Software Magazine Articles
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The Amazing Benefits of Integrated ALM Tools For years, developers have struggled with using individual lifecycle management tools, but no longer! Joe Farah walks you through a history and benefits of an integration of ALM tools that every team should seriously consider. |
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Why NoSQL Matters and What Configuration Management Experts Need to Know About It NoSQL is a new approach to data storage that addresses many problems associated with relational databases. Many highly popular websites—including Facebook, Netflix, and Digg—are using NoSQL to crunch large volumes of data. Eugene Dvorkin gives us insight into why NoSQL is important and what CM experts need to know about it. |
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Practical Security Testing for Web Applications It seems like every week the press has yet another story about security breaches or stolen data at some of the world’s largest companies or government agencies. Sometimes the responsibility for ensuring thorough security resides with an IT security group, and other times it gets outsourced altogether. The responsibility seldom falls to testing teams. However, this is changing. Having trained and experienced testers hunt for security bugs will make web applications safer from hackers and will further protect consumers, corporate assets, and brands.. Scott Aziz offers some practical techniques that will help you get started. |
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Traditional Test Engineering, Your Days Are Numbered In the first installment of this article, Dr. James Whittaker discussed turning testing on its head—to revitalize and improve the value of late-stage testing. James also discussed ideas behind empowering your dogfooders, testers, and the crowd to significantly and efficiently improve software quality. In part two, Jason Arbon discusses the research and engineering experimentation behind realizing these ideas into new tools and processes. |
Conference Presentations
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Teamwork Tools: Movement Games for Collaboration and Creativity
Slideshow
Are you looking for new ways to invigorate your teams? Do retrospectives seem stale? Do story breakdown meetings feel flat? On the other hand, maybe your teams are humming and you’re looking for additional variety. The research is clear—movement matters, and play stimulates creativity. |
Andrew Smith
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Them’s the Rules: Using a Rules Engine to Wrangle Complexity
Slideshow
When dealing with complicated and ever-growing program conditions brought on by new business requirements, it's easy for what was once a small conditional block of code to grow to evaluating hundreds of unique conditions. Unfortunately, much like kudzu, that bad practice begins to creep... |
Micah Breedlove
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Objects vs. Images: Choosing the Right GUI Test Tool Architecture
Slideshow
Most popular GUI test tools are based on an object recognition architecture. They recognize and manipulate screen objects by communicating with the underlying GUI subsystem. A new breed of tools has been introduced in the past few years that implements an image recognition architecture. |
Chip Groder
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A Simple Tool for Speaking Honestly and Constructively
Slideshow
Are you on a team where people avoid conflict or shy away from saying anything that might sound critical? Reluctance to speak up can block important challenges from being identified, and deny your team and organization the opportunity to learn and improve. According to Lorraine Aguilar... |
Lorraine Aguilar
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