Articles

Integration overview path Who Should Set Up Continuous Integration for Automated Tests?

If you want to trigger long-running, end-to-end automated tests, you must integrate the test execution system with the continuous integration system. But this job falls in a fuzzy area that meets at the nexus of feature development, test automation development, quality assurance, and build and release engineering. Here's how to decide who should be responsible for the setup.

Ajeet Dhaliwal's picture Ajeet Dhaliwal
Service virtualization Overcome Test Automation Plateaus with Service Virtualization

With complex enterprise test automation systems, at least some of the many required dependencies are commonly incomplete, unavailable, or operating incorrectly at the time of test execution. The result is timeouts, incomplete tests, false positives, and inaccurate results. Service virtualization can help you overcome this plateau and increase test automation rates.

Checkers game Teach DevOps Software Development with a Game

The core idea of DevOps is the various roles working together to create a stable software system. People can hear that, or read about it, or even observe it, but often, the best way for a team new to DevOps to understand it is to just do it. When you're starting out, that can lead to failures on a real system, so a simulation is a good idea. Try playing a game to introduce your team to DevOps.

Matt Heusser's picture Matt Heusser
Data—binary code 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.

Paul Grizzaffi's picture Paul Grizzaffi

Better Software Magazine Articles

Scaling DevOps at the Enterprise Level

DevOps for the enterprise is the set of activities that support development and testing being managed within a framework for delivering the software into a stable production environment. Kim Megahee believes that DevOps can be successfully deployed with the adoption of Akaizen.

Kim Megahee's picture Kim Megahee
Adopting ALM Will Enhance the Value of Your Test Team

Modern ALM emphasizes total team involvement and a comprehensive set of tools so that the development lifecycle runs smoothly. Joe Farah shows you how test case management is a vital component to a successful ALM strategy.

Joe Farah's picture Joe Farah
Is Software Configuration Management Technology Regressing?

There are ever-growing ways to organize your project assets with public domain configuration management tools. There's a mistaken belief that these free software configuration management (SCM) alternatives can be just as powerful as leading commercial tools.

Joe Farah's picture Joe Farah
Why Do Defects Escape?

What happens when defects go unnoticed until it is too late? Mayank provides an insightful view of the true cost of not providing enough test coverage during a software development lifecycle. He also suggests some techniques to ensure that defects are identified and mitigated early.

Mayank Sharma's picture Mayank Sharma

Interviews

Steve Berczuk talks about how Agile Impacts Configuration Management and Testing How Agile Impacts Configuration Management and Testing: An Interview with Steve Berczuk
Video

Steve Berczuk is a regular contributor to TechWell and StickyMinds and a principal engineer and ScrumMaster at Fitbit in Boston. In this interview, Steve discusses configuration management and agile, helpful tools, and how testing has evolved over the years with the rise of agile.

Jonathan Vanian's picture Jonathan Vanian
Better Software magazine editor Ken Whitaker An Interview with Better Software Magazine Editor Ken Whitaker

We'd like to introduce the newly appointed editor of Better Software magazine, Ken Whitaker. Ken has a long history in software and is a great addition to the team. If you're interested in writing for Better Software, drop Ken a line. His contact info can be found in this interview

Noel Wurst's picture Noel Wurst

Conference Presentations

STAREAST 2012 Keynote: Bridging the Gap: Leading Change in a Community of Testers
Video

When Keith Klain took over Barclays Capital Global Test Center, he found an organization focused entirely on managing projects, managing processes, and managing stakeholders—the last most unsuccessfully.

Keith Klain, Barclays Capital Global Test Center
Build a Model-Based Testing Framework for Dynamic Automation

The promises of faster, better, and cheaper testing through automation are rarely realized. Most test automation scripts simply repeat the same test steps every time. Join Ben Simo as he shares his answers to some thought-provoking questions: What if your automated tests were easier to create and maintain? What if your test automation could go where no manual tester had gone before? What if your test automation could actually create new tests? Ben says model-based testing can. With model-based testing, testers describe the behavior of the application under test and let computers generate and execute the tests. Instead of writing test cases, the tester can focus more on the application's behavior. A simple test generator then creates and executes tests based on the application's modeled behavior. When an application changes, the behavioral model is updated rather than manually changing all the test cases impacted by the change.

Ben Simo, Standard & Poor's
Keyword-Driven Test Automation Illuminated

Test Automation has come a long way in the last twenty years. During that time many of today's most popular test execution automation tools have come into use, and a variety of implementation methods have been tried and tested. Many successful organizations began their automation effort with a data-driven approach and enhanced their efforts into what is now called keyword-driven test automation. Many versions of the keyword-driven test execution concept have been implemented. Some are difficult to distinguish from their data-driven predecessors. So what is keyword-driven test automation? Mark Fewster provides an objective analysis of keyword-driven test automation by examining the various implementations, the advantages and disadvantages of each, and the benefits and pitfalls of this automation concept.

Mark Fewster, Grove Consultants
Testing Requirements: Ensuring Quality Before the Coding Begins

Software that performs well is useless if it ultimately fails to meet user needs and requirements. Requirements errors are the number one cause of software project failures, yet many organizations continue to create requirements specifications that are unclear, ambiguous, and incomplete. What's the problem? All too often, requirements quality gets lost in translation between business people who think in words and software architects and engineers who prefer visual models. Joe Marasco discusses practical approaches for testing requirements to verify that they are as complete, accurate, and precise as possible-a process that requires new, collaborative approaches to requirements definition, communication, and validation.

Joe Marasco, Ravenflow

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