How Can You Be Sure Your Business Will Survive a Disaster? Test Your Plan

Published on September 14, 2018 by Kathryn Nest

Most organizations have Disaster Recovery Plans (DRP) and Business Continuity Plans (BCP), but few can claim that they are confident the plans are complete. Will your plans be up to the challenge of a major disruption or disaster? Do your employees know what to do and when? The only way you’ll know if you’re ready is to test your plans. In this article we’ll introduce an effective way to test your plans and educate your personnel – without facing a real disaster. This process will give you real insight into how well your DRP/BCP will work.

Continue reading →

How to Get Regression Defects Under Control

Published on September 12, 2018 by Kathryn Nest

Regression defects can be the most frustrating thing in the software world. Regression defects occur when a change you make to the software actually creates a problem. Sooner or later, you will encounter a regression defect in any piece of non-trivial software. But if you find yourself buried in an avalanche of them every time you ship software, something is wrong. Lets take a look at a variety of strategies to reduce the regression defect count.

Continue reading →

Tester’s Diary: A New Workflow for New Team Dynamics

Published on September 6, 2018 by Kathryn Nest

There are some big changes happening on my test team. With three testers in the team and a change in Product Manager, we needed to rethink our workflow. Spearheading a new way of working was exciting, but I wasn’t sure how it would scale with more testers working in the team room. Based on the changing situation, here’s how we’ve decided on a development process that includes the product manager, and reduces the amount of individual attention we need from the lead developer to carry out our testing.

Continue reading →

The Hidden Performance Testing Problem in Edge Computing

Published on September 4, 2018 by Kathryn Nest

Edge computing is becoming more prominent in application design, particularly with the growth of the Internet of Things. Making IoT devices responsible for some aspects of application logic reduces operational costs. This is good, but it also creates a hazard. Most performance techniques are browser, native, mobile and server based. You cannot use these techniques when it comes to performance testing hundreds of smart refrigerators distributed world wide, or a city full of video cameras designed to transmit only on movement. This is the new world of edge case performance testing.

Continue reading →

5 Elements of Good, Maintainable Unit Tests

Published on August 31, 2018 by Kathryn Nest

While specific methodologies such as TDD still attract a lot of controversy, I think it’s fair to say that unit testing itself is a lot closer to a consensus. We’re clearly not there yet, but we’re getting closer and closer. With that in mind, what can a unit testing novice do to ensure their unit tests are good, maintainable, and reliable? Here are five simple tips you can follow to improve the quality of your tests.

Continue reading →

Humility: The Lost Value in Agile Development

Published on August 29, 2018 by Kathryn Nest

Scott Ambler proposed an additional value to the “agile modeling” process (a subset of XP focused on design modeling for software)- humility. He argued that the best developers have the humility to recognize that they don’t know everything, that their fellow developers, their customers, and in fact all project stakeholders also have their own areas of expertise and have value to add to a project. How Does Humility Help?

Continue reading →

Integrating Testers into Modern Agile

Published on August 24, 2018 by Kathryn Nest

For the longest time I thought there was no place in XP shops for a test specialist. Developers in this environments are careful craftspeople that make very good code on the first try. I have since changed my mind and think there is definitely a role for test specialists. Today I am going to discuss how testers fit into this new, fast-paced workflow.

Continue reading →

Testing In Production Isn’t a Sin Anymore

Published on August 21, 2018 by Kathryn Nest

What do you think about testing in production? If you count yourself among the ranks of those who still see testing in production as an unforgivable sin, we’ll try and convince you it isn’t so. When done correctly and under the right circumstances, testing in production can be the final piece of the puzzle of awesome software.

Continue reading →

Release Criteria at All Levels: Turtles All the Way Down

Published on August 16, 2018 by Kathryn Nest

You might know what done means for a story. Do you know what it means for an iteration, a delivery, a release and a project? Let’s explore various release criteria and discuss how they might work for you.

Continue reading →

Ransomware: How to Avoid Becoming a Statistic

Published on August 14, 2018 by Kathryn Nest

Today’s news feeds are ripe with fresh examples of ransomware victims. According to Verizon’s 2018 Data Breach Investigation Report, ransomware was the most common type of malware in attacks last year. We’ll describe what ransomware really is, and more importantly, cover the most effective ways to avoid becoming the next victim.

Continue reading →

Featured Articles