What Are the Best Practices for Release Management?

DevOps, although not a new concept, is increasing in popularity; and as its adoption rate increases across the globe there are becoming some worrying signs that although a great concept there are some shortfalls in the process. Our observations from many DevOps engagements conclude that the following are the key indicators which suggest you need to refine your release management process:

• Everyone in the DevOps team is stressed, or worse still burnt out.
• Releases mainly happen out of core hours and often on weekends and Bank Holiday.
• Your team relies on a single ‘Go To’ person, the only one who knows how to get the code deployed.
• Users are often negatively affected by new releases – bugs in live.
• You might not be superstitious, but your project manager brings into work a lucky black cat, a rabbit’s foot and hangs a horse shoe above the server room door for every software release…!

Maximising Your Results with a Digital Test Strategy

By the time you have read to the end of this article, you can be very assured that someone somewhere has either launched a new app, created a new phone, put their services into the Cloud or Internet enabled a ‘Thing’. This gives us a problem; an advancement of digital tech is forcing every company to rethink their testing strategies, leave it too late to change and you risk being left behind in the market place and that’s not a place you want to be, nor does the board and shareholders…

Customers and End Users alike want high quality applications that seamlessly integrate first time. Testing was once a project supporter, now it’s the driving force of key strategies and the way in which projects are delivered. Ask yourself the following three questions, and if you have one moment of doubt then you need to rethink the way you address this digital disruption:

Load Testing Tools Comparison: Nine Essentials Of A Load Testing Tool

With multiple Performance & Load Testing (LT) tools in the marketplace, the motivation behind this article is to highlight what the key functions that make up the ideal tool are. I will use my experience of working with open source and premium LT tools to highlight what I believe the key offerings are that makes them relevant in this competitive market. These nine essentials of a load testing tool can then be used when undertaking a load testing tools comparison. 

How to Maximize Test Automation Benefits

Adoption of new working practices and methodologies has meant that organisations are constantly challenging themselves to get products and services to market faster than ever and in doing so are now having to think very hard how this can be achieved. We all know that first to market get the spoils, so there is a lot at stake getting the delivery model right. Test Automation is just one way of speeding up your project delivery and in doing so building up a regression pack of test scripts that can be run with little effort in little time.

Unleashing the Power of a Test Plan Template

Firstly, a test plan, in simple terms, is a testing project plan for all the testing works that need to be achieved during any of the test phases; the test plan will not address test design, nor detail the low-level details of say a Test Case or Test Script. It is however vital that you have a good test plan template so that you always start right and have the required sections in the template to allow you to: 

1. Be thorough
2. Use the latest version of the document thus giving you the best opportunity to cover of all the details required for that Testing Phase.

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…

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.