1. The Power of Continuous Performance Testing

One of the key tenets of continuous integration is to reduce the time between a change being made and the discovery of defects within that change. “Fail fast” is the mantra we often use to communicate this tenet. This approach provides us with the benefit of allowing our development teams to quickly pinpoint the source of an issue compared to the old method of waiting weeks or months between a development phase and a test phase.

For this approach to work, however, our development and QA teams have to be able to run a consistent suite of automated tests regularly, and these tests must have sufficient coverage to ensure a high likelihood of catching the most critical bugs. If a test suite is too limited in scope, then it misses many important issues; a test suite that takes too long to run will increase the time between the introduction of a defect and our tester raising the issue. This is why we introduce and continue to drive automated testing in our agile environments. Continue reading

2. How to Test an Application without Requirements?

Technically there are no applications without requirements. Imagine software that does nothing specific but is simply line after line of code stretching on. It will be like a stair case leading nowhere.

All software has requirements and is targeted at a particular task; specifically it is a solution to a problem. So requirement-less software isn’t a possibility.

However, software without documented requirements is a reality that unfortunately most of us face more often that we like. The only thing worse could be that, the documentation is insufficient, inaccurate or terribly outdated. Sadly, this happens too. Continue reading

3. Building an Effective Lean Testing Strategy

Organizations are constantly under pressure to streamline their operations and ensure that they are using their assets as effectively as possible. However, this is often easier said than done. For example, if a new vulnerability comes up in an app, more time may be spent fixing the issue than normal due to additional steps required to ensure that the software runs as expected.

To reduce wasted resources, businesses have adopted lean practices that consider the expenditure of assets to be wasteful if they’re used for anything other than creating value for the end customer.

Here are a few strategies quality assurance professionals should concentrate on to implement an effective lean testing strategy. Continue reading

4. Discussion: Taxonomy of Software Testing Terms

If you frequent TEST Huddle, now is the time to provide some feedback. The TEST Huddle team is looking to create a taxonomy of terms which it will use to make resources on the website easily discoverable by relevant subject matter.

“The goal is to create a bank of content that can be efficiently searched by testers trying to solve a particular problem – whether directly related to testing or indirectly e.g. advice from others on managing people; communicating to stakeholders etc.”
Have any terms in mind? Contribute your ideas here!