Emerging Technologies in IoT

My 70-year young Father entered the digital world for the first time last year; he had managed to successfully swerve the internet and associated technology for most of his life, but the closure of his local bank meant he had to become a Silver Surfer and transact online. Now here’s the funny thing, having missed 20 years of painfully developed, lack lustre devices and poor internet speeds, he’s straight into augmented reality, surfing the virtual world like a 13-year-old pimply teenager. Voice browsing was his latest trick, however I did notice he ended each voice search command with a – please and thank you…

Overview of IoT Testing and Security

Over the past twelve months the IoT has been one of the world's most searched and researched topics. This article will give an insight in to what it might mean for you and your company. We all know, and most of us will probably have, a smart phone that is continuously connected to the Internet. In the background every movement, payment and internet search is being monitored and data being assessed (somewhere) to help improve your life and the way that you work and play. It is said some organisations know from your work's security pass when you take a comfort, coffee or cigarette break based purely on your location in the building, also the duration you take. If they were clever then there would be a cup of tea waiting for me in the reception area next time I visit… milk, no sugar please...!

Expectations vs. Reality

For many of you reading this article, you will be sitting down with your peers working out the 2017 budget, considering the change of IT landscape, new applications being developed and of course upgrades to existing functionality. Doing so by employing ROM (Rough Order of Magnitude) and WAG (Wild Arse Guess) techniques to come up with a suitable budget to deliver IT to your organisation.

Introduction to Test Tools

We often get asked ‘what is the best test tool out there?’ and to be fair there’s no real straight answer. Of course there are licenced tools, supported and regularly updated but can be expensive. There are freeware tools, cheap, easy to use but often limited on functionality; and there are tools that will automate, those that will check the performance of your applications and those that will track and manage your defects. There is a lot of choice and a lot that claim to do everything…

Protecting Original Functionality

Optimising Software Testing with Rightsourcing

Over the last decade we've had Outsourcing, In-sourcing, Centralised and Decentralised solutions to deliver projects and programmes of work. Clearly the driver for Outsourcing was to save costs and reduce internal head-count, but in return you hand over a large amount of control to a third party with varying results. In-sourcing, although generally more expensive, does allow organisations to have more control with direct supervision over projects and programmes of work without a secondary management level or third-party organisation to deal with.

Showcasing at DevOps World Event

nFocus are delighted to be showcasing their innovative testing services at DevOps World taking place in London on 2nd November.

Integrating Testing into DevOps

Businesses, Development, Operations and IT teams aim for faster delivery, greater stability and higher quality IT systems to gain a competitive edge.

That’s where DevOps comes in. Having Development, Test and Operations perfectly combine with one another whilst reducing restrictions, barriers between the teams and transitions can lead to high quality products being produced quickly.

DevOps is not about cutting corners, forgetting good practice or reducing quality assurance activities. It’s rather doing things with minimal touch points between separate teams and individuals, automating where both possible and beneficial to do so. It’s leveraging the value of continuous testing and creating build, deploy test scenarios that work.

To ensure high quality products, automated unit testing and Test Driven Development (TDD) (or similar) can be used to ensure that the code works as designed and can be checked in to the latest release. Continuous integration and continuous testing is used to ensure there is no breaking or regression of code. This means that code can be integrated on demand and tested dozens of times a day.

Automated build, deploy test scenarios means the automated regression packs are vital and need to have a good depth and breadth of tests. The selection of what to test and what not to test with what data is where many teams go wrong. A lack of experience with DevOps and trying to apply traditional automation approaches can leave Use Cases and objects untested, opening up quality risks for the product.

It must be recognised that the automated tests must be written in a robust and effective way to ensure quality. This is also where I see many teams failing as the effort required to maintain the tests and the test framework becomes a large overhead because they have not been architected correctly.

Automation is critical in DevOps, but it is important to realise that not everything can or should be automated. This is where experienced DevOps testers play a vital role. Often it is more efficient or more effective to test manually – either using a test script or via exploratory testing. This therefore minimalises cost and maximises efficiency.

The challenge of continuous testing with the right test scope, right test data and optimised amount of both automated and manual tests is a tough one. Getting this right by engaging with a professional testing consultancy, well versed in DevOps can generate a huge return on investment by practical yet helpful advice and coaching.

nFocus are a Microsoft DevOps Gold Partner. If you would like more information or to discuss how nFocus can help you – call us on 0370 242 6235 or visit our contact us page here.

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