Don Prather

When it comes to load testing in the cloud, going bigger is not always better. This article describes how organizations can utilize load testing to help right-size a production system being built in the cloud, allowing their project teams to build an ideal system that is not too small and under-performing for their needs and not too large and costly.

Understanding what’s going on “behind the scenes” provides us both insights into test design and details on failure, which makes our work more valuable. Testers, who are likely already the subject-matter experts on their applications from a business perspective, become much more powerful assets for their teams when their level of technical knowledge of their application increases through the process of service testing. This is a win-win-win for the tester, the test team, and the project team.

Just like a vehicle or any other complex machine with moving parts, test automation requires regular maintenance to keep it in a running state. And just as with vehicles, failing to perform routine maintenance of your test automation suite causes a buildup of minor issues, which, over time, creates compounding and expensive failures.

When test automation fails to live up to expectations, it may be due to foundational problems not directly related to the automation itself. The key to overcoming these foundational problems is to work toward gaining predictability by removing as many extraneous variables from the effort as possible.

This article describes four low-cost ways to provide training to your testing group. It does not encourage ignoring or eliminating traditional methods of training (e.g., in-house, tuition reimbursement, conferences); rather, it encourages test managers to explore how they can effectively increase their team's value to the company by using these methods as an adjunct to the more traditional methods.