Design & Code
Articles
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Learning the Skills of a Professional Software Developer We hire for programming language skills or framework experience, but these are the kinds of things that any developer should be able to pick up quickly. David Bernstein says we should be hiring based on talent instead, and mentoring developers to write code that can be maintained and extended more easily. These critical skills are best learned on the job, which is why mentoring is so valuable. |
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6 Steps for Succeeding with Test Automation in Agile Lots of test automation efforts in agile software development fail, or at least do not maximize their potential. This article looks at two main reasons test automation may not live up to the expectations that testers and other stakeholders in the agile development process have, then outlines six steps to avoid falling into these traps. Here's how to succeed with test automation in an agile environment. |
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5 Ways to Tackle Mobile Development Problems Early with Scrum Using Scrum for mobile application development can be difficult due to various challenges inherent to building mobile applications. Environmental dependencies, platform limitations, service outages, ownership and access issues, and short sprints can all derail your agile development. Here are some tips for overcoming these five common mobile application development issues early by using Scrum. |
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The Agile Advantage for Last-Minute Changes Companies using heavyweight development processes manage change by limiting or locking down scope, but this has negative consequences for our products and our customers. Agile takes a different approach by recognizing the value of last-minute changes and making it inexpensive and straightforward to make changes to software, even late in the development cycle, using continuous integration. |
Interviews
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The Glamour Is Back in Testing: An Interview with Dona Sarkar
Video
In this interview, Dona Sarkar, head of the Windows Insider Program at Microsoft, speaks about how the initiative allows them to get user feedback before final release. She highlights the importance of getting out in the field to understand your users’ experiences and the difficulties they encounter. Dona also discusses the evolution of the testing role, saying she anticipates that in the near future, testers will have their moment. |
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Testing Challenges in Creating Wearable Technology: An Interview with Janna Loeffler
Video
In this interview, Janna Loeffler, senior manager of experience quality standards at Carnival Corporation, discusses new technology being implemented on Carnival Cruise Lines to facilitate payments and security. She details the testing challenges of implementing wearable devices. |
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Finding Microefficiencies in Agile Practices: An Interview with Melissa Tondi Melissa Tondi discusses retuning your standard agile practices to better engage the project team, enabling them to write code that will pass testing and free testers to assume the role of user advocate. |
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Giving Control Back to Software Developers: An Interview with Mike Faulise
Video
In this interview, Michael Faulise, the founder and managing partner at tap|QA, explains how the move toward DevOps and away from release management is giving control back to developers, then details why major companies often need partners to leverage CI, CD, and other modern techniques. |
Better Software Magazine Articles
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Using Agile and DevOps to Achieve Quality by Design When software nears completion, it is the wrong time to focus on quality. Product delivery improves if you invest in a plan, validate in small increments, and focus on continuous testing. |
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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. |
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All Customers Are Not Created Equal Software developers may not think they have much to do with customers, but it is wise to consider the customer in all you do, from collecting requirements to design and implementation. |
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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. |
Conference Presentations
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AI in Testing: A Moderated Panel Discussion
Slideshow
Artificial intelligence is the newest trend in software testing. But what is it, and how will it impact the tester's role, both today and in the future? What do you need to do to embrace this emerging technology? Adam Auerbach and Jennifer Bonine will moderate this panel discussion—which will include Jason Arbon, Dan Belcher, Tariq King, Jeff Nyman, and Jeremias Rößler—to give you an opportunity to hear the opinions of industry leaders about AI in testing. You will have a chance to drive the debate, so come prepared with all your AI questions. |
Adam Auerbach
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Leveraging Kubernetes as a Tester
Slideshow
Kubernetes is one of the fastest growing open source projects in history, and it's taking the DevOps world by storm. With so many resources being poured into this technology, it would be nice if there were some benefits for testing. It may seem that the Kubernetes framework revolves around operations and microservices, but with a little know-how, we can leverage the internet excitement around the project to enhance our own automated testing frameworks. Glenn Buckholz will demonstrate how, with just a little bit of knowledge about Docker and Git, an automated testing team can leverage Kubernetes to keep up with the rapid pace of software development. Glenn will show how Kubernetes allows for testing multiple versions of an application in parallel and with minimal effort. |
Glenn Buckholz
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By the Reader, for the Reader: The Wall Street Journal’s Secrets to Customer-Centric Experiences
Slideshow
Readers of The Wall Street Journal have seen many stories about companies shutting their doors after years of success. These companies failed to adapt to rising customer expectations and new technologies—they lost touch with what their customers wanted. The Wall Street Journal didn’t want to become one of these cautionary tales. Sumeet Mandloi explores how The Wall Street Journal aligned its engineering, design, and product teams to shift to a quality engineering organization focused on customer-centric experiences. As part of this transition to quality engineering, the company started testing technologies like augmented reality with its actual customers across seventy countries. |
Sumeet Mandloi
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Full-Coverage Testing in Small-Business Environments
Slideshow
In small-business environments, testing is often completed in hindsight—or overlooked entirely. Chad Jung, Curtis Severance, and Kaleb Weddle will discuss the struggles and successes of ensuring a quality product from the perspectives of a developer, lead software test engineer, and software engineer in test working together on a DevOps team. They will show how to use an automated build pipeline, how to bring it all together for your team, and how to leverage developers who know the in and outs of the code better than anyone. They will discuss the pressures of releasing faster and the importance of unit testing, including which unit testing approaches work and which do not. They'll speak about how they tackled automation tests for functional and regression testing, as well as the tools they used—those that failed and those that succeeded. |
Chad Jung
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