Phases of the Software Development Life Cycle

You’re probably familiar, to one extent or another, with the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). You may not, however, be familiar with the SDDC approach to software development. Although, I can almost bet that every person reading this blog has either used it or has purchased software from someone who does.

Aligning Testing Strategies with Digital Transformation Goals

Unless you’ve been hibernating for the past couple of years then you’ll be fully aware that digital transformation and artificial intelligence are at the top of every IT Directors list of things to do. Companies today are facing a couple of big challenges, staying ahead and on top of new digital technologies as well as providing outstanding customer experience. To be clear, digital transformation is the process of using new or modified business models, processes and customer expectations to meet changing business and market requirements by use of new and advanced technology.

Defect Triage Process Steps

The purpose of a defect triage meeting is to review and prioritise open defects and provide stakeholders with the opportunity to track progress, review and take action based on the information available.

Why Is Automated Security Testing Necessary?

IT teams and testers have been challenged by automated testing for decades now.  It seems to me that many organisations haven’t really cracked the nut yet with regards to functional automation and many (too many) automated testing efforts fail to meet their objectives, budget and stakeholders’ expectations. Expectations seem to be lower for load and performance testing. I’m not sure if this is because it’s perceived to be more difficult or the risk is perceived to be lower or both. Either way I don’t think that’s true, but that’s for another post. There isn’t much conversation happening yet about automated security testing - yet. I find this strange considering 47% of companies surveyed for this year’s World Quality Report said that enhancing security is part of their IT Strategy. The number of security breaches is increasing – the 2018 Cyber Security Breaches Survey shows 43% of businesses in the UK experienced a security breach in the past year.

Human-Robot Collaboration in the Workplace

We’ve all seen sci-fi movies where robots take over the world, that is until Will Smith (or similar) steps in at the eleventh hour and saves the day. But like a lot of movies made, they do have a good knack of portraying what the future might hold, whether that’ll be a home robot for doing the daily chores to an all singing all dancing fully autonomous home.

From ALongBit to AShortBit: Enhancing Test Efficiency in DevOps

Even today, in the modern world of DevOps, I see this all too often in automated test code for regression tests:

A How-To Guide For Test Planning

Test planning, it’s that task testers are often asked to perform at short notice and frequently without enough information. It’s something that sounds like it should be easy, but all too often turns into something more challenging. As testers, we also find that we sometimes become accountable based on a test plan that was formed in a hurry without enough information to begin with. Is there anything we can do to avoid this?

Emerging Tech and Quality Assurance: Key Trends for 2019

As another year starts, we can look ahead to what will be trending in 2019. We all know that ankle gracing trousers, wearing brogues without socks, growing a hipster beard (again) and heading to Greggs for a vegan sausage roll will all make the headlines, but with tech trends it’s a little different. A few years ago, we predicted Multi-Cloud (now commonly called Connected Cloud), Big Data (Data Analytics), AR and Cyber Security would be prominent, which to be fair they are still front runners for making the top five, but the way in which they are adopted and implemented has somewhat changed due to other factors that complicate but enhance the IT landscape.

Introduction to User Acceptance Testing (UAT)

If we were to visit the town where I grew up, I could take you to any place in that town without having to use Sat Nav. I wouldn’t even have to glance at Google Maps to find my way.

You can probably say the same about where you grew up. However, if you hop in my car and we go to a city I’ve never been to before, then I’m going to need some help. Sat Nav, Google Maps, directions, post code…and still, there’s a chance I’ll make a wrong turn along the way.

Where is the Value?

As we know, we cannot test everything. This is especially true for End to End testing. This activity is often carried out at the end of the Implementation phase after System testing has completed. There will be many paths through the software and to test them all will be a large task. So only critical paths are tested through the system that provides an acceptable level of test coverage. Add automation into the mix, and this can become extremely challenging at the end of the delivery cycle. Teams often accept that the effort required for automating the End to End tests is too much of a risk to a timely delivery. Often, it is cut down to small manual End to End tests as an afterthought that adds little value to the overall quality or post-release teams. Ironically, this is where it adds the most value!