January 2016 Summaries

Paired Testing is a collaborative approach where two individuals work together to test software, fostering creativity, focus, and better quality code. This method involves one person testing while the other takes notes, asks questions, and spots bugs, similar to paired programming. Paired testing can be applied in various combinations, such as tester-tester, tester-developer, designer-tester, developer-client, and client. By pairing individuals with different skill sets, it promotes creativity, skill development, and higher quality software. This approach has several advantages, including ensuring feature coverage, mastering debugging, stabilizing tests, and improving usability. It also allows for more effective test creation, execution, and automation, making it a valuable tool in the developer marketing landscape.

The development culture needs to shift from relying on QA members to find bugs to a quality-focused approach that involves all team members. This requires top-down support and empowerment of developers and Scrum Masters, who can guide the team towards quality by enforcing unit tests and documenting acceptance criteria. Peer pressure can be created through a strong developer champion who drives change and encourages others to follow suit. Team members can help by educating their peers about the cost of bugs, using metrics from bug tracking systems to drive improvement, and presenting data that shows the benefits of a quality-focused culture.

Designing for resiliency in software applications involves considering the underlying infrastructure requirements to ensure the app can scale and operate well without becoming a "noisy neighbor" to other workloads. A cross-discipline-based approach, inspired by John Rawls' concept of a "veil of ignorance," encourages application owners to design an environment that treats all workloads fairly, regardless of their purpose. This includes considering security controls, logging, and a long-running service manager as standard components. By taking a proactive approach to designing for resiliency, developers can avoid creating technical debt and ensure their applications are happy and healthy in the production environment.

As a tester, considering performance quality is crucial to ensure that software applications meet user expectations. Performance refers to how quickly and stably an application responds to user input, handles data volume, and scales to increased loads. To achieve this, it's essential to consider performance during design and development, including response time, throughput, scalability, and availability. QA teams should conduct various types of testing, such as load, stress, reliability/recovery, and scalability tests, to identify performance issues. By incorporating performance into acceptance criteria and the Definition of Done, developers can build quality in earlier stages, reducing the risk and cost associated with implementing performance fixes later on. This proactive approach ensures that software applications are reliable, efficient, and meet user needs, ultimately driving customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Smartphones have revolutionized the way we live our daily lives over the past 20 years, transforming the way we connect with others and access information. The global mobile broadband market has experienced significant growth, with 3.2 billion people now using the internet and 7 billion mobile-cellular telephone subscriptions in existence. People spend an average of 3 hours and 40 minutes daily on their smartphones, mostly within apps, but also browsing the web through browser apps. The importance of smartphones is evident, with 91% of participants saying they couldn't last a day without them, and even surpassing the need for coffee or basic hygiene items like deodorant and toothbrushes. As mobile devices become increasingly integral to daily life, companies must prioritize creating mobile-friendly websites and responsive designs to reach their target audience effectively.

The future of software development architecture will prioritize automation, scalability, recoverability, and analytics. To build a culture that supports this vision, teams must focus on freedom, responsibility, and accountability, allowing passionate employees to innovate and take risks. Automation strategies should emphasize testing in pre-production and production environments, removing fear and injecting chaos into the production infrastructure. Scalability is crucial, requiring cross-team training, innovation, and deploying new processes or technologies. Repeatedly building environments for development, pre-prod, and production that are identical using tools like configuration management and containerization will be essential. Additionally, real-time analytics will enable teams to evaluate and recalibrate their processes, testing, application, infrastructure, and more, with instantaneous alerts when things go wrong.

Automation and DevOps are essential for re-energizing your QA career as they offer speed, clean builds, Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and Agile development. Manual testing is no longer sufficient in today's fast-paced software development landscape. Understanding automation tools and their benefits is crucial for QA teams to guide developers with acceptance criteria and bring QA concepts to the table. DevOps is also vital, allowing QA teams to develop special server and data setup skills, reducing redundancy, and increasing confidence. To reinvent your career, consider talking to a recruiter, taking classes, and networking with peers. Networking can be intimidating but is a powerful tool for gaining mutually beneficial contacts, seeing tool demos in action, and making real-world connections. Allocating just three hours a week to these activities can lead to significant career growth.