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Cloud Computing: Powering the Future of Development and Testing
Slideshow
Developers and testers are under constant pressure to operate more efficiently, cut costs, and deliver on time. Without access to scalable, flexible, and cost effective computing resources, these challenges are magnified. Brett Goodwin explains how to create scalable dev/test environments in the cloud, and shares best practices for reducing cycle time and decreasing project costs. Learn how scalable, cloud-based data centers can run software without complicated re-writes; enable rapid defect resolution with snapshots and clones; and provide global collaboration for multiple product and release teams. Brett presents a case study of Cushman and Wakefield, the world's largest privately held real estate services firm, which struggled with an on-premises development and testing environment.
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Brian White, Skytap, Inc.
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Cloud-based Testing: Flexible, Scalable, On-demand, and Cheaper
Slideshow
Cloud computing is here to stay-and it is changing the way we test software. Cloud-based testing offers flexible, scalable, and on-demand infrastructure services. And as a bonus, because the cloud offers pay-per-use purchasing options, cloud-based testing usually costs less. Tauhida Parveen describes the concept of cloud-based testing: scope, specific requirements, benefits, and drawbacks. She explains how cloud-based testing brings new capabilities and options for your testing activities-instantly creating and dismantling test environments and miming production environments in early testing. Tauhida discusses how to engineer scalable environments for load, stress, and performance testing. Then, she introduces cloud-based compatibility, cross-browser, and cross-platform testing opportunities you can exploit.
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Tauhida Parveen, Independent Testing Consultant
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The Lean and Agile Way into the Cloud
Slideshow
Advances in technologies-virtualization, cheap storage, high-speed networks-and a growing comfort with the Internet's security and reliability are leading to widespread adoption of cloud computing. Still, traditional software development methodologies are unable to make full use of the power and flexibility cloud computing offers. Yash Talreja describes how he helped his clients implement lean and agile software development methodologies to take full advantage of cloud computing. Find out how a social networking site and a branded instant messaging company combined the ease and economy of cloud-based system installation, management, and maintenance with the speed of lean and agile practices. They were able to simplify the deployment and upgrade process offered by the cloud, and combine the benefits of a tight feedback loop between developers and end-users.
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Yash Talreja, The Technology Gurus
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Embracing Uncertainty: A Most Difficult Leap of Faith
Slideshow
For the past couple of years, Dan North has been working with and studying teams who are dramatically more productive than any he's ever seen. In weeks they produce results that take other teams months. One of the central behaviors Dan has observed is their ability to embrace uncertainty, holding multiple contradictory opinions at the same time and deferring commitment until there is a good reason. Embracing uncertainty lies at the heart of agile delivery and is one of the primary reasons organizations struggle with agile adoption. We are desperately uncomfortable with uncertainty, so much so that we will replace it with anything-even things we know to be wrong. Dan claims we have turned our back on the original Agile Manifesto, and explains why understanding risk and embracing uncertainty are fundamental to agile delivery-and why we find it so scary.
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Dan North, Lean Technology Specialist
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Adaptive Leadership: Accelerating Enterprise Agility
Slideshow
Agile practices have proven to help software teams develop better software products while shortening delivery cycles to weeks and even days. To respond to the new challenges of cloud computing, mobility, big data, social media, and more, organizations need to extend these agile practices and principles beyond software engineering departments and into the broader organization. Adaptive leadership principles offer managers and development professionals the tools they need to accelerate the move toward agility throughout IT and the enterprise. Jim Highsmith presents the three dimensions of adaptive leadership and offers an integrated approach for helping you spread agile practices across your wider organization. Jim introduces the “riding paradox” and explores the elements of an exploring, engaging, and adaptive leadership style.
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Jim Highsmith, ThoughtWorks, Inc.
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The Missing Integration at Best Buy: Agile, Test Management, and Test Execution What can you do when test tools from proprietary vendors don’t seem to support your organization’s processes and open source tools are too narrowly focused? Best Buy, the world's largest electronics retailer, faced this very situation. With hundreds of agile development projects running concurrently, they needed an integrated test management and test execution tool set that would scale up easily. Frank Cohen describes how he helped Best Buy integrate open source functional and load test tools, vendor-supplied test management tools, and repository tools with their agile software development methodology. Now, with this integrated solution, business managers, testers, developers, and IT Ops managers click the “Start” button to perform a thorough set of automated tests, verify the results, and produce an informative dashboard of results.
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Frank Cohen, PushToTest
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Static Testing Comes to Agile: A Simplified Inspection Process that Works Costs soar when defects are not discovered until system testing-or worse, in production. Inspections can drive down delivery times, drive out defects, and help align business and IT expectations. The benefits of inspections are known and documented, although adding these quality steps can appear to slow down an agile team. Can there be harmony between prevention processes and agile practices? Anne Hungate takes you through the experiences she and her team gained bringing static testing practices into their transition from waterfall to agile. They streamlined and simplified the inspection process while still capturing critical data to prevent problems from escaping to production. Anne shares the practical steps to overcoming the organizational and cultural barriers that keep teams from realizing the benefits of inspections.
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Anne Hungate, Nationwide Insurance
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Agile Defect Management: Focus on Prevention Efficient agile organizations focus on defect prevention rather than downstream defect discovery because discovering defects during or after testing adds to development costs. Delaying discovery and repair of defects can make an agile team feel like they are operating in a mini-waterfall. Sharing his experience with Scrum/Kanban teams, David Jellison describes how grouping defects into two major categories-work-in-process defects and escaping defects-reduces development costs and improves reliability in the field. Dave illustrates how to manage problem discovery early and minimize the existence of escaping defects. Treating escaping defects as the exception rather than the norm results in a much smaller defect backlog and increased customer satisfaction.
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David Jellison, Constant Contact
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Making the Most of Test Automation on an Agile Project In today’s competitive marketplace, the ability to rapidly release new product features is vital. As we move from traditional release cycles of months and years to cycles of days and weeks, test automation approaches need rethinking. Alexander Andelkovic describes the challenges of implementing and integrating rapid test automation on an agile project. Traditional test automation tries to maintain an ever-growing regression test suite and struggles to implement automated tests of new functionality. Manual testers often lack the necessary skills to implement automated tests in a short-cycle development environment. Alexander describes a process to save time by having manual testers implement their own tests daily using a simple, model-based test automation framework that requires only basic modeling and scripting skills. Automated tests can be implemented earlier, providing valuable feedback to the project.
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Alexander Andelkovic, Spotify
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Journey to Agility: Leading the Transformation How far can you take agile within an organization? Is it enough to just focus on agile development practices such as Scrum and XP or is something more needed? Agile is much more than just a development methodology. Beyond product development, it can become an organizational strategy for increased success. Skip Angel shares an example of one company's journey from no knowledge of agile to an organization of high agility. He answers many of your questions about transformation that can help your company on its journey to agility, especially how to get started. Skip describes the preconditions a company must be ready to accept-significant organizational changes and the major activities and events that happen during the transformation process. Agile changes organizations in terms of who they are, how they think, and what they can achieve.
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Skip Angel, BigVisible Solutions
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