TaaS @Agile2013

[UPDATE] Final update: The slides AND the audio recording (mp3) of my talk in Agile2013 are now available.

[UPDATE] Slides for the presentation are now available here.
 
So close, yet so far .... dreading the 15.30 hour non-stop flight from Mumbai to Newark, yet super excited to speak in Agile 2013, Integration testing in Enterprises using TaaS - via Case Study, on 5th August, from 2pm-3.15pm. Complete schedule is available here.

TaaS and BDT - back to back at WCNGT, Bangalore

I had a great time talking about TaaS and BDT at WCNGT conference in Bangalore on 11th July 2013.

Here is more information about the talks:

Integrated Testing in Enterprises using TaaS:

http://essenceoftesting.blogspot.in/2013/07/taas-in-wcngt-bangalore-and-agile-2013.html
The audio recording of the talk is available here.
The slides for the talk are available here.
TaaS is available on github and as a gem on rubygems.org.

Building the "right" regression suite using Behavior Driven Testing (BDT)

http://essenceoftesting.blogspot.com/2013/07/building-right-regression-suite-using.html
The audio recording of the talk is available here.
The slides for the talk are available here.

Building the "right" regression suite using Behavior Driven Testing (BDT)

As a last minute surprise, I have been requested to talk about Building the "right" regression suite using Behavior Driven Testing (BDT) in the World Conference on Next Generation Testing on 11/12 July 2013 in Bangalore. This is another of those topics I feel very strongly about and am very excited at this opportunity.

What this does mean though is that I have back-2-back 2 1-hour sessions at WCNGT2013 - first - Integrated Testing in Enterprises using TaaS, and immediately post lunch - the BDT talk. 

Should be fun ... and hopefully I don't mix up the content in the talks :)

Here is the high-level agenda of the topic: Building the "right" regression suite using Behavior Driven Testing (BDT):

• Overview of Agile Testing
• The Test Pyramid
• Different flavors of TDD
• BDD – Behavior Driven Development?
• ATDD – Acceptance Driven Development?
• BDT – Behavior Driven Testing?
• Difference between BDD and BDT
• Tools that support BDT
• The value proposition for the team - live documentation, business rules, onboarding, etc.

TaaS in WCNGT, Bangalore and Agile 2013, Nashville, USA

A busy couple of weeks for me as I talk about TaaS in World Conference on Next Generation Testing in Bangalore, on 11/12th July 2013, and in Agile 2013 in Nashville, USA, on 4-9th August 2013.
 
My session details are as follows:

In WCNGT - Integrated Testing In Enterprises Using TaaS, on 11th July, from 12pm-1pm. Detail program is available here.

In Agile 2013, Integration testing in Enterprises using TaaS - via Case Study, on 5th August, from 2pm-3.15pm. Complete schedule is available here.

vodQA mobile in July

July will see a strong dose of vodQA - focusing on Mobile Testing.

We start off with vodQA Gurgaon - Agility in Mobility on Thursday, July 11 2013 – 5.00 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Then, we have vodQA Chennai - Served on Mobile on Saturday, July 20 2013 – 09:30 AM - 4:30 PM.

Help share the word, and see you there!

A very intense BDT workshop in vodQA Bangalore

I, with the help of my colleagues, ran a BDT workshop in vodQA - Get, Set,Test! at Bangalore on 18th May 2013.

It was a very intense workshop, and challenging for us to execute as well for various reasons:

1. When we had run this workshop as part of vodQA Geek Night in July 2012, we had the opportunity to have a couple of dry runs - which allowed us to fine tune the content + pace ourselves better
2. The vodQA Geek Night session was 2.5-3 hours in duration
3. This time around, for vodQA Bangalore, all volunteers driving the workshop were in different locations. After the workshop was selected for this vodQA, we all met face-2-face directly on  the day of the event. So there was no question of a dry run before the event
4. The duration of the workshop this time around was 1.5 hours.

Despite all the challenges, I think we managed to deliver a good, solid content workshop and all the participants seemed very engaged, and there were a lot of good discussions.

Here are all the photos from vodQA - Get, Set, Test!

The slides used in the workshop are available here. Videos will follow soon.

For more info on past and upcoming vodQAs, please join our vodQA group on facebook.

I will be speaking about TaaS in Agile 2013 in Nashville, TN, USA

Very happy and excited to say that my talk on "Integration testing in Enterprises using TaaS - via Case Study" has been selected in Agile 2013. This conference is scheduled from 5-9th August in Nashville, TN, USA, and I get to present it as the 2nd talk on the 1st day of the conference!

Dartboard - Are you on track?

In Agile Projects, we use the swim-lanes to track the status of the card life-cycle in an iteration. Unfortunately, the swim-lanes depict a sequential work-flow. Something has to come first, second, ... last. That puts the thought in a lot of minds that what is first is indeed first, and what is last, well, is last in the scheme of things.

That depicts testing being done towards the end - which is very anti-agile!

 

Testing starts off way before development is completed on any card. See the "Agile QA Process" for one way to do Testing on Agile projects.

On Agile projects, r

eality is that testing is going on in some fashion or the other right from the beginning. To help bring that visibility into the work-stream, I tried creating a grid (physically on a board, also in mingle) - with the rows representing the state of testing in each swim lane ... but that too was not as appealing as the image shown below. I chose to call it the Dartboard.

Dartboard - Are you on track?

Some explanation on how we used this:

Each triangle can represent your individual swim lanes. From testing perspective, we chose to club together "ready for Dev", "in Dev" and "in UI" in the same category.

There is a specific in Testing triangle - because there is some amount of work that definitely needs to be done from testing perspective AFTER development and BA signoff is complete.

The RED triangle means the card is blocked from ALL perspectives in the iteration.

The GREEN tringle means the card is completed from ALL perspectives (analysis, dev, testing - manual + automation)

In each of the triangle (except RED and GREEN), the different colors mean specific things:

- BLACK band = Testing not yet started

- RED band = Testing is blocked (maybe for additional info needed, etc)

- BLUE band = Testing is in progress. Could be identifying test cases, doing manual / exploratory testing, setting up test data, automation, etc.

As the card moves between triangles, the testing state of each of the card is very visible. 

Add to this a simple time line on top / bottom of the card to indicate where you are in the iteration, and you know if your "state-of-panic" is justified or not at a very quick glance at the dartboard.

Some swim lane states we have used:

> Backlog / Spillover?

> Ready for Dev / In Dev / In UI

> Ready for BA Signoff / In BA Signoff

> Ready for Test

> In Test / In Integrated Test

> Done

> Blocked

We also tracked each type of card separately:

Defects = RED cards / stickies

Story cards = Blue / Yellow cards / stickies

Tech cards = White cards / stickies

TaaS is available on rubygems.org

I have finally created and released the TaaS gem to rubygems.org. You can find it here.

To know more about TaaS - see all related blog posts here, or refer to the github project for the same.

Introducing Test Trend Analyzer (TTA)

The statement "I have a dream" is a very famous quote by American activist Martin Luther King Jr.

I resonate very closely with that. Here is why and how ...

Almost 2 years ago, I had a dream ... a vision about a product that can help those working in large organizations understand the health of their products / projects at a quick glance, instead of having a team of people manually scrambling frantically to collate and collect the information needed to get a sense of quality about the products they support. I chose to call this product Test Trend Analyzer - TTA

Given that Automation is a key factor in ensuring the success, quality and time-to-market for products, I took that as a baseline requirement and came up with a basic high-level diagram for TTA:

TTA - first diagram

Finally, a couple of months ago, I found a bunch of passionate people, who also had some time, to try and implement this tool.

We came up with this vision for TTA:

TTA Vision

Accordingly, we planned, prioritized, spiked, did some prototypes, did demos and showcases and got a base usable product completed.
This is a open-source project, available on github with more information about it on the github wiki.

The technology stack used is: RoR with mysql db. 

TTA falls in the Big Data + Visualization space - specific to Testing.




Watch this space for more information about TTA and the currently supported features. Email out to me if you need more specific information, or have questions on how can you use TTA, etc.

How can you contribute?

Given that we have implemented only a few basic features right now, and there are many more in the backlog, here is how you can help:

• Suggest new ideas / features that will help make TTA better
• Use TTA on your project and provide feedback
• More importantly, help in implementing these features