TEST– January 2017 by 31 Media

JANUARY 2017

A CANOPY OF QUESTIONS HEALTHCARE IS GOING PAPERLESS DEVOPS FOCUS GROUPS SUPPLEMENT

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Software industry news ................................... 5 THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

The new security culture ............................... 10 To ‘digital’ infinity and beyond . ..................... 12 AGILE

Innovation synergy accelerates agile . .......... 14

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Looking to the future ..................................... 16 A spotlight on the testing manager ............... 20 EVENT PREVIEW

TEST Focus Groups . ....................................... 22 HEALTHCARE SECTOR

Going paperless ............................................. 24 TRAINING AND RECRUITMENT

The software shipyard: building our builders ...................................... 28 Changing the approach to training . .............. 30 CLOUD COMPUTING

Canopy of questions ...................................... 36

A cloud testing case study ............................. 40 COMMUNICATION

Continuous communication (part 2) ............. 44 SPECIAL

The European Software Testing Awards 2016 .................................................. 48 The European Software Testing Summit 2016 . ................................................ 56

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POCKET MONSTERS & MUMMIES W

CECILIA REHN EDITOR OF TEST MAGAZINE

hilst Pokémon Go was the augmented reality craze that enamoured youngsters around the globe last year and proved that the traditionally sedentary activity (online gaming) can be reinvented as an exploratory outdoor activity; is 2017 the year when different, more educational uses for AR become mainstream? Some are hopeful. The Detroit Institute of Arts just announced that it has built an AR interactive mobile tour app to enrich visits to the museum. Built upon Google Tango’s capabilities, the app lets visitors explore a variety of works including peeking inside sarcophagi to view skeletons of mummies. AR has yet to prove itself in education, and it will be interesting to see if it catches on. Google has promised that it will “bring Tango to even more museums around the world.”1 AR and VR are clearly the next big things in the gaming and mobile sectors, as evidenced by the vast amount of new apps and inventions displayed at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this month. One eye-catching example is TILT; a firm offering AR storytelling apps integrated with textiles, effectively bringing characters to life in children’s bedrooms. To me, this invention really encapsulates how IT is infiltrating every aspect of our lives, reshaping traditional activities, and just how large the generational gap will be in the future amongst professionals who can remember Windows 95, and the new generations who grew up with virtual reality at bedtime. As mobile devices are empowered by new AR and VR inventions, one tech group seems to have lost its shine: the wearables sector. Smartwatches in particular took a hit in 2016, with the Apple Watch posting the second largest year-over-year decline among the leading vendors in the third quarter of 2016.2 That is not to say that the industry is pessimistic – there has been a torrent of new devices on the market. It seems like if anything can move then add a tracker to it. Simplicity might be the key to success, as straightforward fitness trackers remain the most popular offerings in the market.

Sports enthusiasts have always tracked and measured their performance, but with today’s technology offerings, consumers en masse are forming new habits: putting on devices, submitting intimate data to be analysed, and sharing on social media. These new habits will be hard to break, and when we’re all able to use apps to view our own skeletons in real-time, it will feel like a natural progression. All in due time. For now we’re kicking off the January 2017 issue of TEST Magazine with great pieces on training, tester development and a spotlight on supporting women in IT. The issue also celebrates the winners from The European Software Testing Awards 2016 (p. 48), explores cloud testing, agile, and much more. You’ll also see a DevOps Focus Groups supplement alongside this issue, sharing the outcomes and learnings from the roundtable event that took place last year. This event will be returning this autumn, and coming up next is the National DevOps Conference on the 24-25th of May, which will bring senior IT professionals together for two days of high value sessions. 2017 is shaping up to be an exciting year! We’re looking forward to continuing to serve the European (and further afield) software testing and QA industry with a multitude of publications, news, events, conferences and more. As always, I’m only a phone call or email away if you’re interested in getting more involved. Please get in touch if you would like to submit an article, a presentation or just have some feedback. Happy New Year!

cecilia.rehn@31media.co.uk 1. 2.

‘Explore museums in a new way with Tango’, https://blog.google/products/google-vr/ explore-museums-new-way-tango/ ‘Smartwatch Market Declines 51.6% in the Third Quarter as Platforms and Vendors Realign, IDC Finds’, https://www.idc.com/ getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS41875116

JANUARY 2017 | VOLUME 8 | ISSUE 6 © 2017 31 Media Limited. All rights reserved. TEST Magazine is edited, designed, and published by 31 Media Limited. No part of TEST Magazine may be reproduced, transmitted, stored electronically, distributed, or copied, in whole or part without the prior written consent of the publisher. A reprint service is available. Opinions expressed in this journal do not necessarily reflect those of the editor of TEST Magazine or its publisher, 31 Media Limited. ISSN 2040‑01‑60 GENERAL MANAGER AND EDITOR Cecilia Rehn cecilia.rehn@31media.co.uk +44 (0)203 056 4599 EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Jordan Platt jordan.platt@31media.co.uk ADVERTISING ENQUIRIES Anna Chubb anna.chubb@31media.co.uk +44 (0)203 668 6945 PRODUCTION & DESIGN JJ Jordan jj@31media.co.uk 31 Media Ltd, 41‑42 Daisy Business Park 19‑35 Sylvan Grove London, SE15 1PD +44 (0)870 863 6930 info@31media.co.uk www.testingmagazine.com PRINTED BY Pensord, Tram Road, Pontllanfraith, Blackwood, NP12 2YA softwaretestingnews @testmagazine TEST Magazine Group

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d CLOTHING MAY BE ABLE TO ILLUDE FACIAL RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY A Berlin-based artist called Adam Harvey is at the helm of a project titled ‘Hyperface’ in which he designs a camouflage, in the form of clothing, that aims to confuse facial recognition software. It does so by providing the software with hundreds of hits, thereby overwhelming the system. Hyperface has been described as an extension of the artist’s previous “Dazzle” project, which saw the use of hairstyling and make-up as a way of blocking detection. Both projects were produced due to Harvey believing that facial recognition software poses a threat to individuals’ privacy.

NEW NHS INTELLIGENCE APP In an effort to lessen the strain on Accident & Emergency units, a new 111 scheme will see NHS patients assessed by robots.

Over one million people will be able to access a free app that will allow them to consult with a chatbot instead of a member of staff. The app has been developed by Babylon Health, and will see its first launches happen in Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey and Islington later this month.

THE WORLD’S FIRST SOLAR PANELLED ROAD France has become the world’s first country to make use of solar energy in their roads. Within a small village in Normandy, solar panels have been placed within the ground in order to help power street lamps. The high-tech road covers a 1 km route

ZUCKERBERG TAKES INSPIRATION FROM IRON MAN As if it was taken right out of Marvel’s Iron Man, Mark Zuckerberg spent 2016 building a Jarvis-style AI to run his home. The AI can control lights, temperature, appliances, music and security. The software uses several different

and cost €5 million. The construction will have a two-year test period, which will determine whether the road is actually capable of generating enough solar energy in order to power the village’s street lamps. The project was financed by the French state, which hopes to build 1000 km of solar roads throughout the course of the next five years.

artificial intelligence techniques, such as: natural language processing, speech recognition, face recognition, and reinforcement learning. "For assistants like Jarvis to be able to control everything in homes for more people, we need more devices to be connected and the industry needs to develop common APIs and standards for the devices to talk to each other," Zuckerberg said.

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LONG LIVE THE VINE In October 2016, it was announced that the short-form video hosting service Vine was no more. But a new announcement has revealed the app isn’t being scrapped, just changed. Twitter, which acquired the application in 2012, has stated that come the new year,

THE CYBORG EVOLUTION Cyborg Nest has developed a small implantable silicone gadget that allows the user to ‘sense’ where North is. The gadget operates by delivering the wearer a quick vibration every time the user is facing north. The gadget pairs with an app, and does not need any internet connection in order to work, but it does require recharging. The North Sense has external

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Vine will be reinvented as a pared-down Vine Camera app, which will allow users to still create six-second videos, and either store them on their mobile devices, or upload them directly to Twitter. Although users won’t be able to view video content on the new app, they can still replay old vines via the website vine.co.

titanium bars that sit just under the skin and are advised to be implanted by a professional piercer. Nothing different to what you can achieve with Google Maps or any other locating service is being offered, but it’s a step towards a more tech enhanced future.

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AMAZON GO TAKES SHOPPING TO THE NEXT LEVEL Amazon has registered a UK trademark for its Amazon Go format, suggesting the retail giant will be bringing checkout-free food shopping to the UK.

Amazon Go is a new retail experience that will allow Amazon Prime members to enter a shop using their account, take items, and simply leave, with all food items picked up being charged to their account. Sensors that monitor customers and the items they select accomplish this. A store already exists near Amazon’s HQ in Seattle, but is only open to employees. The store will open to the public early this year.

Thank you TEST Magazine for supporting Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity Great Ormond Street Hospital is one of the top five paediatric research hospitals in the world. We treat children from all over the UK and abroad who are diagnosed with the most complex, life-threatening

conditions. But it’s only thanks to people like you that we can provide our patients with the specialist care they need.

Your donations will make a huge difference. Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity. Registered charity no. 1160024.

For more information an d to make a don ation, please visit

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SNAPCHAT BOOSTS THE UK’S TECH INDUSTRY Bringing a post-Brexit boost to the UK’s tech industry, Snapchat has chosen London to setup its international headquarters. The company will use its UK base to book sales outside of the US.

The company currently employs 75 people within the UK, and is looking to expand its workforce in the near future, providing more tech-related jobs. This move comes after Facebook and Google came under criticism due to them moving sales from the UK to Ireland as a result of the country's low corporation tax rate.

THE NOKIA IS BACK AFTER THREE-YEAR ABSENCE Nokia smartphones have been noticeably absent from the market for three years, but that all ends with the recently unveiled Nokia 6. The new smartphone has not been developed by the company itself, but by a former employee’s Helsinki-based company called HMD. The company now has exclusive rights to the Nokia name for the next decade when it comes to smartphones. The new Nokia 6, made from a single block of aluminium, will run Android and has a 5.5-inch screen. The device will only be available for sale in China, but HMD have announced that further Nokia devices will be released in the near future.

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FITBIT EXPANDS WITH VECTOR TAKEOVER A giant in wearable technology, Fitbit has now acquired the watch-making company Vector. The amount Fitbit acquired Vector for is undisclosed. After acquiring Pebble in November, Fitbit is setting a trend of bringing onboard various

WINDOWS 10 WILL NO LONGER FORCE UPDATES The Insider Build of Windows 10 will now allow Windows users to defer updates to a later date, instead of the updates being instantly enforced when becoming available. Users will be able to pause all updates for up to 35 days, choosing when's best for them. Furthermore, users will now have the ability to choose whether or not to include

talents that are already established in the smart watch, wearable, and fitness device space. Vector has said that there will be no more products bearing the Vector name put into development, but current products will continue to work effectively, and this was the same for Pebble; showing that Fitbit is more interested in how they can incorporate the software/design teams of these companies into their own, rather than the products they actually produce.

driver updates in new Windows 10 updates. Both of these new features, developed for the users, will be included in the Education, Enterprise and Professional editions of Windows 10.

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INDUSTRY EVENTS www.softwaretestingnews.co.uk

www.devopsonline.co.uk

TIGA MOBILE QA Date: 2 February 2017 Where: London, UK www.tiga.org/events/openlondon ★★★

SOFTWARE BUG AFFECTS USA CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION DURING HOLIDAY SEASON Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has confirmed that a recent software update caused a four-hour Customs computer outage on the 3rd of January, which led to massive lines across US airports during the busy holiday period. The glitch, which caused the systems shut down, was caused by changes the agency made on the 28th of December to software used to process travellers.

read more online

WHICH COMPANIES ARE ADOPTING DEVOPS – AND WHY Fresh insights into who is adopting DevOps are revealed in a new State of Database DevOps survey. Chief among the findings is that 47% of respondents have already adopted a DevOps approach to some or all of their projects – and a further 33% plan to adopt it during the next two years. Notably, rates of current adoption increase with company size, reaching 59% among companies with over 10,000 employees.

read more online

TEST FOCUS GROUPS Date: 21 March 2017 Where: Park Inn by Radisson, London, UK www.testfocusgroups.com R E C O M M E N D E D

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MOBILE DEV + TEST Date: 24–28 April 2017 Where: San Diego, CA, United States www.mobiledevtest.techwell.com ★★★

NATIONAL SOFTWARE TESTING CONFERENCE Date: 22–23 May 2017 Where: Millenium Gloucester Hotel London Kensington, UK www.softwaretestingconference.com

CYBER PREDICTIONS FOR 2017 What can we expect in 2017 from a cybersecurity perspective? Personally, I believe 2017 and early 2018 will be the most exciting years in terms of evolving our cybersecurity capabilities as businesses prepare for the May 2018 deadlines imposed by upcoming EU legislation changes. This is a rare opportunity to step back and take stock of our capabilities.

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TECH RECRUITERS WILL STOP CARING ABOUT QUALIFICATIONS While article 50 has not yet been triggered, the prospect of a post-Brexit Britain raises concerns about a shortage of skilled technology workers. At the same time, digital disruption and a growing interest in VR and AR mean that tech employees are in higher demand than ever.

read more online

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NATIONAL DEVOPS CONFERENCE Date: 24–25 May 2017 Where: Millenium Gloucester Hotel London Kensington, UK www.devopsevent.com R E C O M M E N D E D

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THE NEW SECURITY CULTURE Colin Domoney, Senior Product Innovation Manager, Veracode, reviews how a DevOps culture brings security and QA together.

’ve recently been presenting at conferences on DevOps and the challenges the rapid adoption of DevOps poses to security professionals. Similarly, I am sure that many QA test teams feel daunted by the prospect of testing within a DevOps environment. I want to discuss some of the common challenges organisations are facing as the move to DevOps accelerates. DevOps is first and foremost a change to traditional cultures and practices within an organisation. Consider the developer, whose primary concern is delivering value to the business by being innovative and creative. The operations team is primarily concerned with stability and avoiding any production outages. And then there is the security team. Traditionally, security teams are used to performing manually intensive security testing, which presents a real challenge as the delivery process is optimised to reduce time to market. Finally, how does the QA team fit into this shift in mindset?

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WHY SECURITY TESTING IS DIFFERENT FROM QA

CREATING A CULTURE OF SECURITY AWARENESS

Traditionally, QA has been concerned with testing for the presence of features or the expected functionality according to the requirements, e.g., the user can retrieve records. Security has traditionally been about testing for the absence of an unexpected or undesirable behaviour, e.g., ensuring a user cannot view records without being logged on. This has typically meant entirely different mindsets separating these teams. However, my experience in both QA and security teams, working on medical embedded systems and trading platforms, has taught me that a product with poor security characteristics (measured by security scanning tools) is often deficient with respect to its overall quality and fit for purpose.1 Indeed, many organisations I have worked with have incorporated vulnerabilities from security tools into their defect tracking systems – security issues are quality issues!

In building a security program at one of the world’s largest banks, I was struck by the lack of awareness of basic security considerations within the application development teams – even with respect to basic OWASP Top 10 flaws. It was also apparent that QA testing was happening very late in the release cycle and that the teams performing this testing had no security knowledge themselves. How can security professionals create broader awareness of the need for security? One of the tenets of DevOps is the creation of the “third way,“ according to the DevOps guru Gene Kim. Kim writes that DevOps creates “a culture that fosters two things: continual experimentation, taking risks and learning from failure; and understanding that repetition and practice is the prerequisite to mastery.”2 A pro‑active security team should empower their development and QA partners by

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equipping them with knowledge and tools, and creating an environment where they can test and learn in a safe environment. The creation of an eLearning program coupled with a bespoke instructor‑led curriculum can be highly effective in educating the organisation. The development of so‑called security champions helps to create individuals across the breadth of the organisation that can take responsibility for security. The security team, by virtue of their training and experience, are the experts in matters relating to security. However, it is possible to create highly effective individuals within other parts of the organisation. To detect security vulnerabilities within an application it is not necessary to perform a full manual penetration test (only with the capability of a few select individuals) when the abundance of excellent open source and commercial security testing tools places this ability within the hands of any motivated individual. And QA staff is likely to be well versed in the deployment and utilisation of automated test tools (think load test and browser automation). A security tool can be seen as simply another arrow in their quiver. It is the remit of the security professional to ensure the correct selection of tools appropriate to the organisation, and to specify the governance and operation such tools, and to provide the expertise to remediate deficiencies.

SELECTING THE CORRECT SECURITY TESTING TOOLS DevOps creates an environment where experimentation and learning are encouraged and there are many excellent open source test tools available to an aspirant QA test team wishing to introduce security testing to their process. Both the Burp Suite and the OWASP ZAP Proxy are available as open source and provide a rich API to facilitate completely automatic security testing of software. Commercial vendors (such as Veracode) provide static code analysis and dynamic analysis products that can be incorporated into a test pipeline. The major benefit of deploying a SaaS product is that it can be made available for consumption at any point within an organisation. Key considerations when selecting a tool include the ability to enforce a security policy across the breadth of the organisation ensuring appropriate governance.

Centralised reporting is essential in being able to demonstrate the continuous improvement of the organisations security posture. Perhaps the most important characteristic in the selection of a tool is a low false positive rate since every flaw discovered should ideally be tracked as defect affecting quality.

NEW APPROACHES TO SECURITY TESTING AUTOMATION Traditional software security testing techniques such as test driven development (TDD) and behavioural driven development (BDD) are well understood and practiced with rigor in most modern enterprises. BDD expresses a given requirement or expected behaviour in a natural language in the following template: Given some initial condition, when an event occurs, then ensure some outcomes. A typical test case could be to ensure that a user retrieves their profile when they log in. It is possible to transcribe a set of business requirements into a suite of BDD test scripts to allow fully automated testing of functionality. Several open source projects exist to encapsulate standard security test tools (such as NMAP, Burp Suite, Nessus, etc.) within a suite of test scripts using a BDD framework. The three most popular frameworks are Mittn, Gauntlt and BDD‑Security. The key benefit to adopting a security testing framework is being able to equip a QA or test team with a security tool which functions in a manner with which they’re familiar, i.e., these frameworks act as a level of abstraction between the security tool and the tester writing or executing the scripts.

WORKING TOGETHER The move to DevOps provides a unique opportunity to incorporate security testing into the overall product testing process. QA testers can be at the forefront of automating the security testing process. At the same time, the security experts can create an environment conducive to a greater awareness of security. Together these two seemingly dissimilar teams can work jointly to reduce security vulnerabilities and improve quality.

DevOps creates an environment where experimentation and learning are encouraged and there are many excellent open source test tools available to an aspirant QA test team wishing to introduce security testing to their process

COLIN DOMONEY SENIOR PRODUCT INNOVATION MANAGER VERACODE

Originally an embedded systems developer, Colin has over 20 years of development and security expertise in the telecommunications, consumer, medical and financial service industries. At Veracode, Colin is responsible for driving new product innovation across the product line; as well as evangelising the AppSec category and advising customers on how to build

References 1. 2.

“Predicting Software Assurance Using Quality and Reliability Measures”, Software Engineering Institute (Dec 2014). Kim, Debois, and Willis, The Devops Handbook.

and run an AppSec program. Prior to joining Veracode, he led a large‑scale application security programme in a large multinational investment bank.

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TO ‘DIGITAL’ INFINITY AND BEYOND The IT industry is still relatively young as an engineering discipline, but in the 70 plus years since its inception it has gone through many evolutionary changes, Ian Howles, Executive Director, UK Testing Board, explains. T E S T M a g a z i n e | J a n u a r y 2 01 7

initially started as a mechanism for computerising back office systems. These were predominantly walled gardens, replacements of paper‑based systems, and tended to be either mainframe or midi systems that were expensive to develop, test, deliver and maintain. The next set of major shifts in the industry were the ‘down’/’right’ sizing of infrastructure systems. Industry in the main focused on doing the same things as before but for less money, smaller systems and outsourcing, with offshoring becoming the norm. Another seismic shift happened with the introduction and adoption of PCs. Out went the dumb terminals and green screens; in came GUIs, client‑based processing and the rise of the office PC expert who could ‘knock up’ some code to help automate a process.

Then came the Internet age: the ability to interconnect systems and devices, to bring IT back‑end systems to the masses. Coupled with new devices such as laptops, tablets, phones etc., we started to see the rise of the World Wide Web while email became the standard business communication tool.

WELCOME TO THE DIGITAL AGE Now we’ve entered the digital age, where digital‑only companies are disrupting whole industries. Take Uber for example, which has recently been valued at US$56.2 billion but does not own a single taxi! Although we’ve only just entered this era we’re already seeing businesses that don’t or can’t adapt falling to

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the wayside with new challengers appearing everyday. But digital is more than just changing the way we work. IT has now truly entered the world of consumerisation: users want access to services wherever and whenever they want, and they expect them to work on the device of their choice. Simply put, IT is now core to business; it’s not an add‑on. Therefore, IT is far too important to fail – every business is now a software company first! Businesses today look at the value brought via holistic digital assurance services, not just a resource or output play; it’s now about blending all the options and delivering business‑focused value. As additional channels for interaction become available the integration between the old and the new continues. As testers, we all know that issues are often found at the boundaries and we now have a massive explosion of boundaries – something unlikely to slow down in the future.

THE IMPORTANCE OF TRUST UX is particularly important today but let’s not forget all the other attributes of quality. A quality brand equals trust, and if lost a consumer will move on. This became evident with the recent backlash against a major TV, mobile and telephone line provider, which had a massive data breach and lost thousands of customers. It’s important to remember the six main points that lead to customer trust: • Safety: the ability of the software to operate without harmful states. • Reliability: the ability of the software to deliver services as required. • Availability: the ability of the software to deliver services when requested. • Resilience: the ability of the software to transform, renew and recover in timely response to events. • Security: the ability of the software to remain protected against accidental or deliberate attack. • Functionality: The ability to deliver the function that is required.

KEY EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES But what is beyond digital, what’s likely to happen in the next five to 10 years? I am not a futurologist or fortune teller, but in

my opinion there are several emerging technologies that should be watched closely and their challenges considered. Take for example autonomous machines. Self‑driving cars are a prime example and there are several concerns already raised about the risk of crashes. Could they happen and if so who would be to blame – and have to accept liability? Then there’s autonomous machine‑to‑machine communication. In the future your car could be able to decide from sensor data that new tyres are needed, check your bank account for funds, order the tyres and even book itself into the garage to get them fitted. Another interesting technology is self‑healing and self‑learning processes, systems and machines. This can take the car analogy even further: based upon heuristic data, the car can decide what services need to be applied to the engine, IT systems, etc. and learn how you drive and adapt to your individual style. Looking forward, one of the biggest discussions is around AI and robotics: we’re not talking about Wall:E or Terminators here, but rather code robots that undertake repetitive tasks and activities within the digital world, making informed decisions and learning what works and what doesn’t to complete the desired outcomes.

THE CHALLENGES AHEAD One of the main questions we all need to be thinking about today is how do we check, prove and assure the functionality and ethical behaviours of these yet to be developed autonomous solutions and technologies? We also need to think about the impact these technologies will have on consumption models, businesses and the consumers themselves, and very importantly, decide how we test these new paradigms. These are all issues that we’re looking to address in society today and the UKTB is no different in thinking about how these technologies will affect testers in terms of the profession and careers. Models and methods are evolving, changing the way that we look at technology and increasing our vision from a business and consumption perspective. Change is ‘a‑coming’ and we’re keen to make sure the software testing community is ready to embrace the next age as it speeds towards us.

Businesses today look at the value brought via holistic digital assurance services, not just a resource or output play; it’s now about blending all the options and delivering business‑focused value

IAN HOWLES EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR UK TESTING BOARD

A seasoned ICT professional with over three decades in the industry, Ian is a founding director of the UK Testing Board as well as the Trustworthy Software Foundation, which serves as custodians of UK PAS754 standards and associated body of knowledge. A UK representative on the International Software Testing Qualifications Board (ISTQB), Ian is also a BCS Certified IT Professional (CITP) Fellow.

The UK Testing Board is a strategic partner with BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT. Find out more about the partnership: http://partner.bcs.org/ strategic-partner-uktb/

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INNOVATION SYNERGY

ACCELERATES AGILE Barclays and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) synergised their banking and IT capabilities, and instituted a futuristic, ‘digital banking future proofing‘ programme, which besides accelerating speed-to-market, also took the cloud’s popular ‘as a service’ model a notch higher.

ased in London, and spread across Europe, Middle East, Africa, and the Americas, Barclays Bank, with a heritage of over 325 years, leads through innovation – from launching the world’s first ATM, to providing innovative mobile banking solutions. Barclays and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) – both value driven organisations known for their legacy, heritage, and innovation, synergised their banking and IT capabilities, instituted a futuristic, ‘digital banking future proofing‘ programme, which besides accelerating speed‑to‑market, also took the cloud’s popular ‘as a service’ model a notch higher.

DIGITAL ACCELERATION FOR MARKET DOMINANCE By bringing banking functionality to smart phones, digital and mobile technologies have truly enabled ease of banking. Accelerated digital transformation is the basis of Barclays’

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market dominance and growth strategy. Its 8‑year, strategic partnership with TCS fuels this digital acceleration. Focused on digital and DevOps, and spread across geographies, the Barclays‑TCS partnership entails application development and maintenance, testing and software quality assurance, and production support. In an industry first move, Barclays’ banking expertise and TCS’ robust IT capability ensured reduction in app development downtime and accelerated time‑to‑market.

FULL THROTTLE STRESSES ON‑PREMISE SERVICE VIRTUALISATION Barclays was not new to early testing with service virtualisation (SV). However, it’s existing, on premise SV solution had inherent drawbacks. First, it entailed high capital expenditure and recurring maintenance cost. Then, most importantly, it wasn’t scalable

on demand. The rapid, monthly scrums and releases put pressure on development and testing teams, as well as the on premise, internally hosted SV solution. There was a strong need for a cost‑effective SV solution that wasn’t capital intensive; could support automated testing; facilitate on‑demand scalability with minimal disruption to the existing dev‑test framework; reduce pressure on development and testing teams; boost productivity and release frequency by ensuring continuous systems availability; even when computing resources were being upgraded or provisioned. The ‘as a service’ line of thinking was beginning to set in and soon dominated strategic discussions at Barclays‑TCS relationship review meetings.

THE VIABLE PROPOSITION For Barclays, TCS proposed an innovative, ‘Service Virtualisation as a Service (SVaaS)’ solution. Hosted on the TCS cloud, the

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proposed solution supported all differentiators of the cloud model: pay‑per‑use pricing, on‑demand infrastructure provisioning, and most importantly, no upfront capital investment. With its envisaged benefits – accelerated deliveries, minimal disruption, and reduced business risk, the proposition was well worth a try. Moreover, with its shift‑left techniques, the solution would enable Barclays to manage the demanding, techno‑finance domain. The two teams were excited to deploy the solution and reap its benefits, but they also knew that successful deployment required rigorous planning and execution. Soon, TCS’ technology experience, domain expertise, process maturity, learning and best practices were at play with Barclays’ knowledge of specific business nuances, complex contexts and challenging situations. The stage was set for a truly best‑in‑class, industry‑first virtualisation solution.

BARCLAYS‑TCS SYNERGY AT PLAY As part of the planning, discovery and scoping phase, services to be virtualised were prioritised and identified. The prioritisation was based on a service catalogue, which classified the services as simple, medium and complex, based on their costing and utilisation. Working in close co‑ordination, the TCS and Barclays teams gathered requirements and artefacts for the identified services. Application‑critical unavailable dependencies and key constraints such as back‑end system and test data unavailability were also identified. The project’s objectives were based on the bank’s business needs, proposed benefits and envisaged business value. A well‑defined governance model supported the project – from requirements to maintenance. With optimal staffing, comprising the right onsite‑offshore mix, quickly ramping up teams was never an issue. Hosted on TCS cloud, and based on the CA LISA agile platform, the SV infrastructure involved provisioning of application‑specific, virtual service end points, which received requests from consuming applications and responded as configured. It covered six out of 10 Barclays’ defined strategies. Besides developing and validating virtual services such as messaging queue protocols

for standard messaging formats, TCS QA and testing teams also developed custom code for handling virtualisation of Barclays’ proprietary message formats for which the SV tool did not have out‑of‑the‑box support. TCS managed procurement and installation of the platform, as well as virtual machines with the required hardware configuration, operating systems, anti‑virus software, and supporting tools for version control, defect and requirement management, and content management. In line with Barclays’ security guidelines, a virtual private network (VPN) secured connectivity between TCS cloud and Barclays network and ensured data security and confidentiality. All data was routed through the secure VPN tunnel.

SVaaS DRIVES RELEASE ACCELERATION SVaaS improved quality and speed of regression testing across delivery teams. With multiple environments, development and test teams could now work in parallel, reducing dependencies on upstream and downstream processes. In the first year itself, 70% regression testing was automated, which in turn, positively impacted release speed and quality. Continuous environment availability reduced application development downtime. With SVaaS’s flexible resource model and the TCS cloud’s ability to scale on‑demand, Barclays’ teams could now focus on their core activities without worrying about back‑end systems, resources or environments. They now had access to a future‑ready infrastructure. With maintenance and upgrades being managed on the TCS cloud, the workload of Barclays’ in‑house IT department was significantly reduced. Hours spent on manually provisioning and configuring multiple instances of development and testing environments were reduced to logging a few requests. The solution’s bottom‑line and measurable benefits also included 25% productivity upscale and 50% reduction in capital expenditure. SVaaS’ on‑demand virtualisation scalability makes it a truly innovative, best‑in‑class solution. Barclays is now expanding this industry‑first move to other channels and platforms, such as mobile and online banking, investment banking, corporate functions, and payments.

With SVaaS’s flexible resource model and the TCS cloud’s ability to scale on-demand, Barclays’ teams could now focus on their core activities without worrying about back-end systems, resources or environments

KIRUTHIKA GUNASEELAN BFS ASSURANCE LEAD TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES (TCS)

Kiruthika Gunaseelan leads the assurance strategy and solution for BFS customers in the UK . She has considerable experience in consulting and problem solving ground up, leveraging contemporary technical style to help customers unlock phenomenal value from testing estate.

This article was written under the guidance of Andrew Brown, Director, Barclays UK – Channel Engineering – Mobile Payments – Pingit.

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LOOKING TO THE FUTURE Arylee McSweaney, QA Manager, Etsy, discusses how we can help young girls chase a career in STEM.

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often feel conflicted when I’m asked to share my thoughts on encouraging young girls to go into STEM. While STEM career fields would definitely benefit from greater diversity, my concern is that careers in STEM don’t allow women to support themselves or their families without first requiring significant time and financial investment. Perhaps a better question to ask is, “how do we support young girls to become financially self sufficient, so that they have the appropriate resources to effectively pursue a career in STEM?” I was exposed to varying technologies during my childhood, but the moment I knew I wanted to work in tech, was when my father brought home a computer and I discovered Microsoft Office©. I found myself in awe at the creativity of Microsoft Access©, Publisher©, and how much they fed my imagination and entrepreneurial spirit. I created newspapers to sell at school, I wrote screenplays for school assemblies, and I loved the ability to record macros in each program just to see the Visual Basic© code they generated. But the most significant factor in my decision to pursue a career in tech, was the role my mother played in our household. She never let anyone hold her back or deter her from her goals. She embodied self‑sufficiency. Until this moment, I have never realised how much of her spirit has rubbed off on me. The example she set, both at home and in her career, imparted onto me a powerful sense of personal capability. Having access to a strong female role model, and exposure to the tools/technologies through which my parents earned their livelihood, served to encourage me to become financially self‑sufficient. Generally, and in the absence of social factors like these, thorough career coaching and advisement at the pre‑college stage can help women weigh their career interests more carefully, which can support long‑term planning. When I was in high school, my interests were torn between music performance and computer science, and I benefited greatly from an adviser who helped me to research starting salaries and career trajectories in both fields. Ultimately, I chose to study computer science and graduated just in time to enter the job market during the financial crisis in 2008. My first role as a QA Analyst was for a consultancy that customised software products for mid‑sized and large corporations. Having a dedicated, in‑house test role was new for the company, and there was little in the way of guidance on how to be successful there. Nevertheless, it was a great

opportunity for me to develop my technical QA skills. Thinking of it now, women in similar roles and situations often abandon their ambitions to work in tech altogether. For instance, start‑ups and smaller firms find it efficient to hire just one QA Analyst. This decision may seem advantageous to the company in the short‑term, but can unintentionally leave QA Analysts with the impression that they are in a dead‑end job. Over time, and without opportunities to grow, the sole tester will eventually burn out and disengage from the role. They’ll also likely spend several years doing repetitive, uninspired work, and consequently find themselves unable to compete for jobs with professionals who have been given opportunities to grow and adapt their QA skills to different environments. Since barriers to entry are relatively low for women in tech when they apply for entry‑level test roles, it’s also highly probable that once they’re in that role, they’ll remain the sole tester for an extended period of time. Therefore, tech companies with a sole tester should encourage the tester to participate in the testing community, network with peers, and take advantage of online QA resources. And for tech companies that are reaping the benefits of an established QA practice, they should take care to increase the visibility of the positive contributions made by the QA team. Often, focus on the QA team comes as a result of bugs found in production. Simply thanking the QA team for the stellar work they do, including QA personnel in planning meetings and providing career development training would promote – as I have yet to encounter a QA team lacking representation from women – and encourage women in testing. With regard to career development, strong leadership and communication skills are necessary for career advancement, and without the cultivation of these talents women in testing will find it challenging to move forward. The QA industry can also contribute to the effort of promoting women in testing by having more women participate as speakers and panellists at their conferences. Despite the breadth of women in this industry, QA conferences often lack diverse speakers, lecturers and panellists. The QA industry can work to fill this gap by hosting breakout sessions focused on 'Women In Testing' at test conferences. Another avenue for the QA industry to promote women in testing, is by accommodating space for new testers on the program schedule. New testers can contribute insights and ideas that

Thorough career coaching and advisement at the pre‑college stage can help women weigh their career interests more carefully, which can support long‑term planning

ARYLEE McSWEANEY QA MANAGER ETSY

Arylee has been a software tester and QA maven for over eight years. She has done full QA of desktop applications, business intelligence dashboards, web, mobile web and apps. She is currently focused on e-commerce QA at Etsy where she serves as a Product Quality Manager to Etsy centralised QA function. This role challenges her to steer the team, develop innovative solutions to short term and long term needs, mentor and coach QA analysts, and foster synergy between product and product quality teams.

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In April of 2016, Etsy reported that roughly 54% of its staff identified as women, and that half of the leadership and management positions were held by people who identified as women

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more seasoned professionals overlook. Although the QA industry offers certifications, it could further engage with women in testing by offering certification grants or scholarships to women in testing. The more visibility and support awarded to women in testing, the more likely tech companies will be successful at attracting and retaining diverse talent. Etsy, where I work, has made significant strides in its efforts to achieve its vision for all identities and expressions to be welcomed, represented and rewarded in its workforce. In April of 2016,1 Etsy reported that roughly 54% of its staff identified as women, and that half of the leadership and management positions were held by people who identified as women. This is an impressive achievement compared to the tech industry’s overall record in gender equity. The company’s work to increase gender equity helps support people of all gender identities, through leadership, mentoring and coaching resources. Advances in gender equity are also visible within Etsy’s QA team (product quality), where our leadership and overall team is comprised primarily of women. Team members can attend QA conferences and participate in the testing community through knowledge exchanges, giving talks and writing for publications. Training resources for technical skill development is also available to members of the QA team who wish to build their technical skillsets. The exposure to these resources has greatly contributed to how we plan to test and align ourselves in the long term. As technology continues to disrupt and streamline our daily lives – via mobile phones, IoT technologies and social platforms – tech companies will find it increasingly necessary to develop a clear, quality vision, early on.

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As more countries gain access to the internet, increasingly varied user and client needs will surface, demanding the need for more diverse perspectives on the test team. Among other glitches, consumers have already been subjected to technologies that overheat, facial recognition tools that don’t work for all races and news feeds that also report false news. These are testaments to the speed at which tech companies feel pressure to release new products. To match this speed, test teams will find it necessary to function additionally as quality advocates, program managers, and change agents. Test trends already suggest that more companies are increasing mobile testing efforts through the use of alpha and beta programs. These are very effective for providing testing coverage on mobile devices and a program manager will be needed to monitor the engagement of beta testers, verify bugs and communicate to stakeholders. Quality advocates and change agents will help companies to involve all employees in the quality effort. The risk of underestimating the benefits could result in a disconnect between tech companies and the consumers they target. I’m excited about the potential to forge even stronger partnerships between engineering and quality leadership, where both groups can collectively work toward the same vision rather than as groups with disparate goals. Reference 1.

'Diversity and Equality at Etsy', https://blog.etsy.com/news/2016/diversityand-equality-at-etsy/

A SPOTLIGHT ON

THE TESTING MANAGER Managing a diverse team of testers is a rewarding role for this award-winning testing manager. Isabelle Magnusson, Lead QA, Ticketmaster, discusses running her QA department and working for the world's leading live event ticketing company.

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sabelle Magnusson, Lead QA, Ticketmaster, won Testing Manager of the Year at The European Software Testing Awards 2016. Fresh from her win, she sat down with the Editor of TEST Magazine, Cecilia Rehn, to discuss her career, women in testing and QA at Ticketmaster Sweden. How did you first get started in testing/QA? Was this always your planned career? I have a bachelor degree in cognitive science with an alignment in human computer interaction and it was a former classmate that introduced me to testing. When I applied for the positions as a trainee at a consultant company I had barely heard of the profession before! Describe your role at Ticketmaster, and the team you manage. I manage a diverse team of testers with different backgrounds and experience. At Ticketmaster you are first and foremost a member of a development team and then you have your specialty, e.g. testing. I coach the teams in test techniques and focus my work towards improving our test and development processes. I have a lot of contact with different stakeholders outside the teams and am responsible for bug co-ordination. When I’m needed I join the development teams to help out. You won Test Manager of the Year at the 2016 European Software Testing Awards, where your colleagues nominated you for your hard work and attention to detail. What is your management style? I try to coach my team based on the individual's need. I see all testers in agile teams as test leads and I want to give them the tools to do their best. We are still quite a small team and have a very common understanding of how we want to work and what we want to achieve. How do you feel testing and QA departments are changing? For better or worse? I don’t see departments at all. We have proven over and over again that testers working separate from the development team is not just inefficient, it also results in lower quality end products. I’m actually not

a fan of calling testers QA at all. It paints a picture of testers as the gatekeepers of bugs and as the only ones responsible for assuring quality. We need a commitment from all team members to assure the quality of a product regardless of their specialty. How do you feel about diversity in testing/QA/IT in general? Do you think it’s different in Sweden? Women in IT is an important topic for me personally. We need diversity in IT and gender is a sensitive question. Being a woman myself I have never experienced a team with men only but I think it would be a mistake not to appreciate the diversity and characteristics ascribable to the gender of a person. Within the testing community I believe men and women are quite evenly distributed but we are still in minority among the recognised top brass. When attending a large test conference last year, for example I was surprised to see that only a few women were amongst the speakers. I have my ideas of why that is but that’s another story. Ultimately, I think that our industry needs to continue to push for more women in visible, senior positions to help inspire a more equal future in IT departments.

I’m actually not a fan of calling testers QA at all. It paints a picture of testers as the gatekeepers of bugs and as the only ones responsible for assuring quality

ISABELLE MAGNUSSON LEAD QA TICKETMASTER

Isabelle has worked in testing for eight years. Beginning as a consultant, she has worked in a number of different testing projects and is now working as a QA lead at Ticketmaster. When not testing, Isabelle spends time with friends and family and is expecting her second child in March.

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E V E N T

P R E V I E W

e spend a lot time speaking and listening to our readers. And we often hear that cross‑sector discussions on software testing and QA are rare and increasingly valuable. This knowledge led us to launch the annual TEST Focus Groups, to allow senior professionals to discuss their challenges in a meaningful and structured manner with their peers.

WHO WILL ATTEND?

Held at the Park Inn by Radisson – London Heathrow on 21 March 2017, the TEST Focus Groups promises to be a dynamic event that provides a solid platform for professionals in the testing industry to discuss and debate their issues, voice their opinions, swap and share advice, and source the latest products and services.

Prior to the event each delegate will pre‑select their preferred sessions, and space will then be allocated on a first come first served basis. Adopting this approach ensures each delegate is in control of their itinerary which then ensures highly interactive and lively debate sessions.

Over 100 senior professionals in testing and QA departments will gather to learn from each other.

RESULTS TO BE PUBLISHED IN TEST MAGAZINE

12 ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSIONS

After the event, the results of the Focus Groups will be published in a specially designed Syndicate Supplement that will be distributed to the entire subscription base of TEST Magazine to help share knowledge and good practices to the wider community. The articles will also be published as stand alone pieces on www.softwaretestingnews.co.uk

Attendees will be able to partake in three different roundtables during the day, with topics ranging from testing requirement; automation; outsourcing; big data; training; and much more.

The TEST Focus Groups are open to senior software testing and QA professionals from across end user organisations.

HOW DO I SELECT MY SESSIONS?

Register today for only £199 + VAT Seize the opportunity to join other professionals and register at: www.testfocusgroups.com/register

For sponsorship opportunities please contact: Kadi Diallo | Sales Manager kadi.diallo@31media.co.uk +44 (0)203 668 6942

THE SESSIONS A

Test data management The shift to an increasingly flexible and dynamic development process requires rapid access to the appropriate test data. How can streamlined test data management aid continuous delivery?

Qualifications, accreditations, and exams While it is important to have standards and benchmarks, which qualifications are the most credible and useful to testers?

The value of testing requirements Getting the requirements right can be half the battle, but getting them wrong can be fatal to a testing project. What exactly is required?

Identifying testing related risks If testers are involved at an earlier stage of the project does this enable a better understanding of the project and if so can the related risks can be identified and resolved?

User experience trends The most code-perfect piece of software may be no good at all if it’s not fit for purpose. Sometimes it takes the users’ eyes to spot serious issues with the interface. How important is the end users’ input? .

Event sponsor’s subject choice This session is to be decided by the event sponsor

Agile testing What is agile, how does it work and what are the alternatives? And is an agile approach always the best way to test?

Tester training People are the most valuable asset to any business so keeping staff educated and motivated is a sure-fire way of improving productivity. With testing becoming such a skilled discipline, is regular training a necessity and if so what are the key areas to focus on?

Crowd testing How do you weigh up the pros and cons of having a dedicated inhouse QA department, versus engaging crowdsourced testers? How can the crowd be leveraged if you’re testing sensitive data?

Testing strategies for mobile applications As the mobile app market evolves, how can you ensure continuous quality given the large and growing number of different devices and operating systems?

Outsourcing Outsourcing, be it onshore or offshore, can offer significant financial benefits, but what risks, if any, are involved?

Does test automation mark the end of manual testing? What are the new trends in test automation, and should we be aiming for 100% coverage? How do you implement modern manual testing to compliment automation efforts?

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GOING PAPER LESS Jas Singh, CTO, Medelinked, focuses on mHealth and the challenge of digitisation in the healthcare sector.

H E A L T H C A R E

Recent research found that more than two‑thirds (68%) of UK citizens believe the NHS could – and should – use technology more in order to improve patient outcomes and the overall patient experience. Yet the NHS is currently struggling to meet its existing digital targets

ost of us in the UK have reason to use the services of the NHS. And in doing so, it can’t have escaped our attention that the way services are offered and accessed have changed little since its foundation and are now very much out of step with the way that we lead the rest of our lives. But we could be on the edge of significant change in this respect. The government recently announced that over £4 billion will be spent on improving the use of digital technology in the NHS over the next five years. This should create new opportunities for innovation in mhealth and digital healthcare in general. The laudable aim is that the cash will help to get closer to the government’s vision of a paperless NHS, improving the speed of diagnoses and enhancing services across the country. Crucially, it should result in time saved so doctors and nurses can spend more time with patients rather than managing outdated systems and the administration that goes with that.

A DIGITAL HEALTHCARE SYSTEM

JAS SINGH CTO, MEDELINKED

Jas is responsible for product development and delivery of cloud and mobile services for consumers and enterprises. Previously, he held CTO

The cash is expected to be spent on introducing systems that enable patients to book services and order prescriptions online, access apps and digital tools, and choose to speak to their doctor online or via a video link, very much like they consume services in virtually all other walks of life. Yet many of the targets are still modest. As part of its digital drive, the government has a target of at least 10% of patients to use computers, tablets or smartphones to access GP services by March 2017. Yet there is a big job to do. Recent research found that more than two‑thirds (68%) of UK citizens believe the NHS could – and should – use technology more in order to improve patient outcomes and the overall patient experience. Yet the NHS is currently struggling to meet its existing digital targets. The same research revealed that 96% of British adults either didn’t have online access to their records, or didn’t know if they did.

roles at a number of ISVs and start‑ups and founded tekasco Ltd, a technology services consultancy. Jas is also a Visiting Lecturer at the Health and Life Sciences Department of DeMontford University, specialising in the use of technology in healthcare.

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THE GROWTH OF MHEALTH The use of mobile phones has disrupted and transformed many industries in the past few years. While retail, travel and the media industry have been the first to

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adopt the use of smartphones to improve customer engagement, the healthcare industry has watched from the sidelines. Yet the ubiquitous mobile phone and mhealth technologies have the potential to transform many aspects of clinical practice and be a crucial part of systems that deliver healthcare more effectively and efficiently. One of the main reasons for this is that the need to access information quickly and accurately is more urgent in healthcare organisations such as the NHS than in any other industry because the bottom line is that value of time here is associated with lives and not money (although its potential to make better use of the latter is also huge). And the ubiquity, ever increasing power and ability of mobile phones to transmit important information anytime, anywhere is leading to serious consideration of their adoption as key technologies in clinical settings and revealing a huge potential for future implementations. One of the areas where mhealth can have the greatest impact – assuming the healthcare system is ready to embrace real change – is in restructuring administrative processes. One of the challenges in delivering joined‑up healthcare is that the working of hospitals is often highly dispersed because it involves the separate and joint functioning of various departments, for instance inpatient wards, outpatient clinics, emergency departments, pharmacies, operating theatres and labs. However, the constant challenge is in getting these departments to collaborate seamlessly together and deliver timely patient care. The problem gets magnified when a healthcare provider such as the NHS may use different departments in multiple hospitals in any one treatment regime and certainly during the patient’s lifetime. Mobile apps linked to open platforms can break down geographical and communication barriers and help patients, doctors and other hospital staff to communicate and collaborate with people in different locations. In case of emergencies, it helps in saving critical time and reacting quickly to the needs of the patient. But clearly there are numerous hospitals today where the quality of care provided is not optimal and one reason for this is the lack of time available for healthcare professionals to spend with patients. The same is true for GP surgeries where consultation time is limited to eight minutes, once you have managed to secure an appointment, that is.

H E A L T H C A R E

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MANUAL ADMIN SLOWS DOWN 21ST CENTURY HEALTHCARE One of the major reasons for this is that in the case of primary and secondary care from referral to registration to discharge, many parts of the process are executed manually. Sometimes aided by obsolete technologies and systems such as fax and post, this causes time to be wasted on administration, finding and retrieving documentation and fixing problems that could be devoted to patient care. Clearly, there is an opportunity to invest in and build mobile apps that manage time and information more efficiently. Patients, as partners in their own healthcare, should be able to identify healthcare professionals, view doctor information, fix appointments and transmit relevant information to doctors and other health professionals directly through their mobile devices. Individual doctors could use the same such apps to track appointments, meetings, call schedules and other clinical obligations and make themselves available in a timely fashion and even communicate with other clinicians and, with their patients' permissions, share relevant clinical data. Of course, one of the enablers of restructuring administrative processes is that of the introduction of more effective and efficient digital patient personal health records. Documenting and accessing health records of patients and their relevant medical data is one of the most significant activities that underpins both primary and secondary healthcare. These are pretty much permanent and grow like topsy with additions are made to existing records time and again. But they are fundamental to the ability to deliver healthcare services. Storage and retrieval of this information has traditionally been regarded as a huge challenge in clinical settings. But using cloud storage, secure mobile apps to file and retrieve relevant health records streamlines this process and can put the patient right at the centre of healthcare.

Using open platforms such as Medelinked, doctors and patients alike can access easily patient information such as medical history, vital numbers, lab reports and discharge summaries as well as DICOM imaging scans, xâ&#x20AC;&#x2018;rays and a host of other potentially diagnostic information over a secure server. This information can be augmented by a host of readily available wearable and fitness technologies that all help track the patientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s health state, and encourage better health state management from familiar vendors such as Apple, iHealth, Garmin, Microsoft, Fitbit, Jawbone, Nokia/Withings, Omron and Samsung, to name but a few. The platform also enables physicians to transcend the thing which constrains their ability to act immediately or deliver best judgement in a case, by ensuring that access to information from any connected remote location is possible as and when needed and very quickly in case of emergency.

CONCLUSION

Patients, as partners in their own healthcare, should be able to identify healthcare professionals, view doctor information, fix appointments and transmit relevant information to doctors and other health professionals directly through their mobile devices

So the healthcare industry has pressing issues that need to be addressed in order to improve the quality of care for patients and quality of working life for healthcare professionals yet the NHS in particular is still in the very early stages of a true digital transformation. But mobile devices, apps and open platforms will be the key to moving forward as they have the potential, serve as sensors, aggregators and displays, to enhance overall operational efficiency, streamline patient care delivery and lead the much needed transformational change where operational, clinical and financial benefits will flow throughout the system. And helping make that happen is a challenge that any systems developer should relish.

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THE SOFTWARE SHIPYARD:

BUILDING OUR BUILDERS Software engineering as a career is an exciting world to be part of. As the oceans cover most of the earth and adventurers of old risked their lives exploring and hunting for treasure, so today software practitioners sail seas of innovation and discovery into the glorious unknown, says Johan Steyn, Senior Manager: Enterprise Testing, Nedbank.

s in the day when seafarers were the explorers of an earlier age, so the software engineering world we live in now is being forced to change, modernise; and we are called to go to the edge of the known world. We are more like the explorers who sail the endless void of outer space: it is an ever-expanding universe we inhabit, and for the rest of humanity's finite future we will never be able to satisfy our thirst for discovery.

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T R A I N I N G

A N D

R E C R U I T M E N T

THE RISK OF FAILING In centuries past the maps used by sailors often had curious annotations which read "here be dragons." Superstitious and paranoid, people often believed that there was only so far you could go on your adventure before you would inevitably reach an untimely death. The dragons represented the unknown that you dare not disturb. Many believed that the earth was flat, and although you may cunningly escape the clutches of the dragons, you were bound to drop off the edge of the world eventually. The oceans of software engineering we are challenged to discover today are filled with treasure but also with storms, danger and the risk of failing faster than ever before. More and more we are forced to rethink the quality of our ships and the skill of our sailors. Quality management and testing has often been the ‘stepchild’ of the software development lifecycle: our peers frowned upon us as testing is seen as a ‘thing you do at the end’ (if there is time and budget left). Those who sail the safe harbours of their local shores are not in need of better ships and more quality. The risk of disaster is small as the shores are near. But those buccaneers who are drawn to the smell of new oceans are forced to build better vessels to sail in. They are compelled to have a larger component of quality engineering sailors. They have to have a team who can work fast, smart and automate their manual tasks. The conundrum we face is that we have so many new ships to build, that we do not have enough shipyards to cater for the need. We also struggle to find ship builders and sailors who are skilled and experienced enough to join us on our journey. So we are forced to build more good quality ships faster than ever before. We are also in need of growing our own teams of ship builders and nurturing our own crews.

FINDING, GROWING AND TRAINING TEAMS But where to find good team members? With the rapid expansion of assembly lines in global software shipyards, the shipbuilders are all fighting for good engineers in the same limited talent pool. And the bigger that supply and demand is, the more labour costs increase. So we are left with one option: find and grow our crews. But how to train them? We are under immense pressure to deliver oceanready vessels faster and faster, and the luxury

of time to take newbies under our wings just does not exist. The other question is around certification. Many shipyards send their new builders on training to gain levels of certification. But one may find that most of the current training on offer lacks relevance to the world of shipops. Oh yes, ship-ops, not sure if you heard about this? Rather than checking the quality of the ships on the assembly line at the end, there is a trend nowadays to regularly check quality right through every step on the assembly line. Shipyards also try to find ways of automating many of the manual tasks – and importantly – to automate from the beginning. However, this new world of ship-ops (and its devious sister agile ship building) means that we need a whole new breed of crew members. We can certify our crews until the cows come home, but they may just not keep up. Our crew members long for certification to make their resumes look better: you have them certified and then they are off to another shipyard. I am also concerned about the relevance of the shipyard training providers. Many of their teachers were excellent ship builders years ago, but they have been training others for so long that they inevitably lose their relevance of where the new breed of ships is heading. So every shipyard needs to find its very own newbies. We need to train them – not in theory – but with getting-your-hands-dirty on the job training. The planks of the new ships must make marks on their hands. They need to be seasoned builders. And to make things easier (not!) ship-ops is often forcing us to combine the roles of ship builders and ship testers.

The conundrum we face is that we have so many new ships to build, that we do not have enough shipyards to cater for the need. We also struggle to find ship builders and sailors who are skilled and experienced enough to join us on our journey

SUMMARY

Johan is a business development

So the clarion call goes out to the ship building community: we have to find ways to grow our crews. Do not think this is someone else's problem – it is our problem. Do not just ship off this responsibility to a vendor ship builder. Yes, they may be able to offer some help and point you in the right direction. But we have to be the owners of this extraordinary journey. With the right mindset it will be an exciting adventure!

technology products and services in

JOHAN STEYN SENIOR MANAGER: ENTERPRISE TESTING NEDBANK

specialist who has been selling South Africa and in Europe over the last 20 years. Over the last eight years his focus turned to the software testing market. He worked in senior roles for consultancies like SQS and Accenture, and is currently working at one of the largest banks in South Africa.

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CHANGING THE APPROACH TO TRAINING Steve Watson, Test Manager, Reed Business Information, details how tester training needs to evolve.

T R A I N I N G

hen you think about training for testers, it probably falls into two categories – certification (such as ISTQB or Certified Agile Tester) or technical (a programming language or a specific tool). In a study I made of 50 Test Analyst roles I noticed that a lot of the tester job ads focus on the technical skills needed and a lot less on other areas. Almost half (24) wanted ‘automation’ experience, 19 wanted ‘Selenium’, 15 wanted ‘Specflow/Cucumber’ and 13 wanted ‘Java’. At the other end of the scale only 3 wanted someone with a ‘passion for testing’, 1 listed ‘good communication skills’ and 1 wanted someone with a ‘good attitude’. As important as they are, technical skills and certifications are only a part of what makes a good tester, and we can easily fall into the trap of overlooking the other skills that are needed. For example, a certificate can tell us that the individual has passed an exam to understand elements of testing or agile etc., but cannot tell us how good their testing ability is day‑to‑day and what their softer skills are actually like. It can't tell us whether they can review a user story, look at the confirmations and find any gaps, and ask those questions which no‑one else has considered. We naturally focus our training and learning in areas that we feel are valued, so if we work for an organisation which places little value on the softer skills, then there is little incentive for us to focus on improving in those areas. As an industry, we need to change our approach to training. I believe that to be a well‑rounded tester means having skills in three different areas: 1. Analytical thinking – attention to detail, problem solving skills and an inquisitive nature – termed as ‘the tester's mindset’. 2. Interpersonal behavioural and communication skills – termed as 'soft skills'. 3. Technical skills – those needed to actually perform the job!

Tester’s Mindset - Analytical thinking

R E C R U I T M E N T

TESTER'S MINDSET Attention to detail is an important skill – spotting a typo doesn’t sound that important, but what if the website of the company you work for is selling widgets for £10.00 rather than £1000.00 because no one noticed? It’s a small decimal point in the wrong place, and may be hard to spot, but it would put a huge dent in the company profits if missed and sales were made! In October 2013, Asda withdrew a voucher that accidentally offered shoppers £50 discounts on their shopping. The voucher was intended for one use only but a glitch meant shoppers could use it repeatedly. A tester with an inquisitive mind might have tried to test using the voucher more than once. (Note – whilst researching examples of mispricing, I uncovered a number of websites where individuals share how they actively look for incorrect prices in order to exploit them.) The core skill for a tester is not just an ability to write code or pass an exam – it’s an ability to assess and define the positive and negative test scenarios needed to ensure that the delivered software meets the functional and non‑functional requirements.

We naturally focus our training and learning in areas that we feel are valued, so if we work for an organisation which places little value on the softer skills, then there is little incentive for us to focus on improving in those areas

SOFTER SKILLS To be an effective tester means being able to communicate and plan well. In an agile world, this means discussing user stories and test estimations with the team in sprint planning, outlining yesterday’s and today’s tasks in daily stand‑ups, explaining a defect to a developer, discussing test coverage with a product owner, supporting end users with user acceptance testing queries and doing so on time. Working with distributed teams is very commonplace, and for many testers, verbal and written communication is not performed in their native language. Therefore good clear communication is vital to ensure that individuals understand their roles,

Technical skills

Softer skills - Behavioural and Communication

STEVE WATSON TEST MANAGER REED BUSINESS INFORMATION

Steve is a Test Manager with 28 years’ testing experience. He manages a team of nine testers, and co-runs a QA Chapter to create a global test community within RBI. Steve also regularly talks at conferences, writes magazine articles and blogs. He is going to be speaking at The National Software Testing Conference in May.

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Working with distributed teams is very commonplace, and for many testers, verbal and written communication is not performed in their native language. Therefore good clear communication is vital to ensure that individuals understand their roles, tasks and deliverables

T R A I N I N G

tasks and deliverables. For example when communicating in English, this means avoiding slang terms which non‑native English speakers may not understand. Attitude is an important element in communication. A tester with an abrasive attitude or an impolite way of approaching colleagues will cause friction and mistrust, which will have an adverse effect on the team’s morale. Good time management shows the ability to handle pressure, allocating time effectively through the day to complete the tasks at hand, and meeting deadlines. A good tester needs to be approachable, friendly, able to deal with different types of people – those with a technical background, and those from a business area who are less technical and more process focussed – and be able to interact with them on their level, whilst balancing their daily tasks. This requires adaptability.

TECHNICAL ABILITY Technical skills are of course important, and must not be overlooked. There is a need to learn automated testing tools and programming languages for functional and non‑functional testing, as manual testing will only take us so far. We also live in an ever changing world where new technologies and tools are emerging all the time – for example the internet of things throws up a whole host of new testing challenges.

CAUTION

However, the important thing is to develop technical skills in addition to the other areas, not instead of them. Technical training should not be the main focus at the expense of the tester's mindset and softer skills.

MAINTAINING A GOOD SKILLS BALANCE In the '70:20:10 Model for Learning and Development', it is acknowledged that as individuals we gain 70% of our knowledge from job‑related experiences, 20% from interactions with others, and 10% from formal educational events. So it would make perfect sense to start nurturing all three areas as part of your day job, adding in more formal training where appropriate, and here are some ideas to get you started.

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R E C R U I T M E N T

IMPROVING YOUR TESTER'S MINDSET THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX – BECOME A THOUGHT LEADER

Identify an area that you are interested in where there is a gap in knowledge or understanding in your team. It could be something such as load testing or security testing, where you can investigate the types of tests that should be performed, the tools and test approach to be taken, and share that knowledge with your team members. If you work with other testers, you can all take on a subject and share the learning between you.

ASSESS AND IMPROVE YOUR TESTING PROCESS

Step back and look at how you do testing. Do you have the right environments for testing? Up to date test data? Are your tests automated or manual? How much coverage do you have with your regression testing? Are you covering non‑functional testing? How effective is your testing – are there bugs being uncovered in production? By asking these questions, it focusses the mind on the bigger testing picture and the overall test approach, rather than just focussing on testing each individual requirement within a sprint.

WHAT ARE THE INSIGHTS THAT YOU CAN OFFER USING A TESTERS’ MINDSET THAT OTHERS MISS?

Start with the user story or requirements document, and verify whether the acceptance criteria is complete, that it is testable (ask questions, fill gaps, challenge assumptions), write the test scenarios, and run exploratory tests – have a play with the application. Look at other stories that could affect it or be affected by it. Think of other parts of the application, and interactions with other applications. What about edge cases?

LOOK AT THINGS FROM AN END USER PERSPECTIVE

Think about what is being delivered from an end user viewpoint, not just from a technology perspective. Although user stories are generally written in a ‘As a <role/person>, I want to do something so that I can see something else’ format, it is still easy to forget that an end user may not follow the paths through the application in the way that a business analyst anticipated.

T R A I N I N G

R E C R U I T M E N T

Put yourself in an end user’s role and ask if the delivered functionality is usable. An example could be an amend data function, with a requirement for the user to confirm that they want to save any changes by showing a dialog box asking ‘Confirm Update’ with Yes & No buttons. If the user clicks ‘Yes’, it may seem a good idea to add a failsafe by showing another dialog box asking ‘Are you sure? Yes/No’, but this would be extremely annoying to an end user if they need to perform this second action many times during a day. Is a secondary confirmation really needed? Here is an example of where a tester’s mindset can help. Imagine that there are two agile teams involved in building a car. (I know it’s not strictly software, but I claim artistic licence here as modern cars do have a lot of software inside them.) Story A1 = Chassis Bob in team Alpha builds a car chassis for a 5‑door car as one story. He completes it,

checks it, sees that it passes the acceptance criteria and signs it off, moving the task to the ‘Done’ column on his tracking board. Story B1 = Car door Sally in team Bravo builds a door for a 3‑door car chassis as a story. She completes it, checks it, sees that it passes the acceptance criteria and signs it off, moving the task to the ‘Done’ column on her tracking board. Separately both pass, but put them together and they both fail, as the door does not fit the chassis. Things cannot always be delivered and tested in isolation, without considering the wider picture, so don’t underestimate the importance of having a tester’s mindset. I know that it is an extreme example, but sometimes you need something highly visual to illustrate the point that testers need to actually talk to one another. My team work on numerous applications, where data flows through a central database so there are many

interconnecting points. One of my lead testers had the brilliant idea of a Friday afternoon Test Team Stand‑up, where all the testers discuss upcoming releases and any integration testing that may be needed. This means we no longer ask a tester to do some integration testing with just a few minutes notice, and with no time allocated within their sprint – it is baked into the process.

IMPROVING YOUR SOFT SKILLS Start off by doing a self‑assessment of your own soft skills. Think about your written and verbal communication and time management. What do you feel works well? What are the types of interactions where you feel uncomfortable and wish you could be better or be more confident at? Where do you struggle with managing your time and tasks?

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Things cannot always be delivered and tested in isolation, without considering the wider picture, so don’t underestimate the importance of having a tester’s mindset

T R A I N I N G

Introspection is not always an easy thing to do, so ask colleagues and line managers for constructive feedback – and keep an open mind.

WRITTEN COMMUNICATION SKILLS

A good starting point is to research self‑help articles. One that I found pointed me at something called the 5 Cs rule for writing emails, and recommends that they should be Clear, Concise, Complete, Courteous and Correct. There are different variations of the Cs, depending which site you go to (one has Compelling rather than Correct), but they all give you the same message. Write an email, then check to see if it meets those criteria before sending. If you are still unsure, then as long as it isn’t confidential, ask someone else to sense check what you have written. This applies to any types of written documents, for example reports and slides decks. Contribute to online forum discussions – it’s a good way to get to know others and build up a dialogue. Be polite and non‑confrontational with your replies. Read blogs to see how others write their thoughts and ideas, and respond with your own comments to encourage dialogue.

R E C R U I T M E N T

VERBAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Start by performing small presentations – maybe to just a few team members to help you gain experience and receive valuable feedback. Demo a story to the team in a sprint demo meeting to gain exposure to a wider audience. From there, as confidence grows, you could perform a ‘lunch and learn session’ on a topic that you have researched. You can also try tester or developer pairing to practice sharing your thoughts and discussing the ideas and opinions of others. Practice your listening skills, something that is overlooked as a soft skill, but we can learn a lot by listening to others. Your organisation may have training courses to help you with things like communication skills, time management, etc. – larger organisations generally do, so it would be worth checking with your line manager or HR team.

TIME MANAGEMENT

One of the most useful tools that I have used is ‘The 18 Minutes Daily Template’ by Peter Bregman1. He advocates planning out each day by listing out tasks that you need to complete, checking at periodic intervals that you are on track, and then reviewing at the end of the day what you achieved, challenges you faced and what you have learned.

VS Growth Mindset

Fixed Mindset

Believe that they can learn anything if they put in the work, practice, and effort to learn it.

Think that they cannot increase their skill and knowledge in a particular area.

Figure 1. Discerning the differences between a 'growth mindset' and a 'fixed mindset'.

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T R A I N I N G

R E C R U I T M E N T

I highly recommend this tool if you are struggling to manage your daily tasks, especially if you are being distracted by incoming emails and the needs and demands of others.

IMPROVE YOUR TECHNICAL SKILLS Technical skills still need to be honed, and it is important not to become complacent with current techniques or approaches. Technology is constantly evolving and software development practices evolve with changing trends. The question we need to be asking ourselves is, “How do I keep up with these trends?” One way to keep informed is by embracing social media outlets such as online blogs, LinkedIn, Twitter, and online forums. This will enable you to share experiences within a wider community of testers, discuss ideas and learn from them.

How can you do this? Start by actively looking for opportunities to learn something new. Put yourself forward to try out new types of testing – if you haven't tested APIs or mobile before and they are of interest and relevant to your organisation, then offer your services and do your research. Nurture your growth mindset, and spread your training and learning across these three areas: the tester’s mindset, soft skills and technical. Be careful not to neglect any of them, no matter how good you believe you already are. Once you have acknowledged your skills gaps, work out how you will plug them and then take action. I hope these suggestions will help you to get started on your continuous improvement journey. Where will you focus your efforts today?

Technical skills still need to be honed, and it is important not to become complacent with current techniques or approaches. Technology is constantly evolving and software development practices evolve with changing trends

GROWTH MINDSET – CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT Having the self‑motivation to continuously improve yourself is the key, and fostering a ‘growth mindset’ underpins that. Figure 1 highlights the difference between a ‘growth’ and ‘fixed mindset’. A 'growth mindset' creates the right attitude to learning, giving you the self‑belief and motivation so that you can improve your skills and knowledge in any given area if you apply yourself, and to reap the benefits from doing so. You are in control of your own learning path. In his book House Harkonnen, part of the Dune series, Brian Herbert states "The capacity to learn is a gift, the ability to learn is a skill, the willingness to learn is a choice”. We all have the choice to learn, and should exercise that choice in order to maximise our potential.

Reference 1.

http://peterbregman.com/18minutes/

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A CANOPY OF QUESTIONS “Can you test cloud?” Antony Edwards, CTO, TestPlant, dives into the answer.

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“C

an you test cloud?” is one of the most common questions I’m asked, and each time it makes me think of Larry Ellison’s expletive laden rant at the Churchill Club: “What does ‘cloud’ mean, it’s still a server, a network, and a client!”. Wikipedia famously used to define ‘cloud computing’ as “a jargon term without a commonly accepted non‑ambiguous scientific or technical definition" (though it seems to be a little kinder these days). So ‘cloud’ always seemed to be something that belonged in press releases, marketing collateral, and keynote speeches; not in a test plan. But over the last two years I’ve been involved with hundreds of ‘cloud testing’ projects, typically in the ‘digital business’ areas (e.g. consumer finance, ecommerce, and media), but also for internal enterprise applications (e.g. human capital management systems), and systems engineering applications such as CAD/PLM. Despite the variety of these projects, there are definitely some core common attributes, and I have to admit that the term ‘cloud testing’ does now mean something to me.

CLOUD TESTING STRATEGIES So what are the common attributes of ‘cloud testing’ projects? What should you consider when writing a test strategy or plan for ‘cloud testing’?

FORCED UPGRADES

New versions of cloud‑based applications are deployed by the vendor and forced on users. Even with app‑based applications, where the user has some control over upgrades, the vendor will usually stop users accessing the service from old app versions. If you are forcing updates of critical software such as digital banking and CRM those updates better work, almost perfectly, first time. My favourite example of ‘forced upgrades’ is Bloomberg; few people realise that all Bloomberg terminals are all force‑upgraded every month (and consider how much money is dependent on Bloomberg terminals). This is why Bloomberg are a fantastic testing team.

GEOGRAPHIES AND LOCATIONS

Cloud‑based applications are typically shared far more widely than their on‑premise cousins which would typically be replicated in each region. Cloud‑based applications are also likely to be used from a huge variety of locations – office, home, coffee shop, and train platforms. Most importantly this implies

a huge variety of network conditions that your users will be accessing the application over. Anyone who has worked on moving an internal enterprise application ‘to the cloud’ knows that remote regional offices always have major issues.

LACK TRADITIONAL ‘PERIMETER’ FIREWALL PROTECTION

Because cloud‑based systems are accessed from so many locations they typically lack the same perimeter protections that on‑premise had. This pushes a lot more of the responsibility for security back onto the application. As a simple example, consider an enterprise video‑conferencing system. Inside a corporate firewall the system does not need to worry about nuisance calls or port scanning; but a cloud‑based video‑conferencing system, where users may be calling in from anywhere, suddenly needs a mechanism to ensure your system isn’t continuously ringing with bots.

CLIENT FRAGMENTATION

Almost all cloud applications are web and mobile app based. Users access these services from a huge variety of devices, operating systems, and browsers. A digital banking team will typically test at least 60 different client configurations. Even employee‑facing applications, where the user environment can be ‘controlled’ by the organisation, will typically test at least 20 client configurations.

MULTI‑TENANTED

Cloud‑based applications tend to be multi‑tenanted, i.e., different customer organisations are using the same resources (e.g. database, hardware, application). Virtualisation and containerisation can enforce some boundaries, but there will almost certainly be some shared resources, and you need to prevent any possible leakage.

COMPRISE MULTIPLE EXISTING AND THIRD PARTY SYSTEMS

Cloud‑based applications are never built from scratch. They bring together a combination of existing in‑house cloud services (e.g. account management in a digital bank), existing in‑house non‑cloud services (e.g. transaction systems and warehouse management), and external cloud services (e.g. payment gateways, storage, authentication, messaging, maps). The technology stack will not be homogenous, developers and testers will not have full access to all the systems, and interfaces always have quirks.

ANTONY EDWARDS CTO TESTPLANT

As CTO, Antony leads the company’s product vision, implementation and deployment, and helps ensure customer success. He studied computer engineering at the University of South Wales, Australia and worked as a developer in Sydney before joining IBM Research in New York. After moving to London, Antony joined mobile operating system builder Symbian, becoming a VP and member of the executive team before moving to TestPlant.

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One of the most frequent reasons for ‘moving to the cloud’ is to be more scalable, i.e., to be able to quickly respond to increased usage by increasing the capacity of the application

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VIRTUALISED HARDWARE

Cloud‑based applications typically run in virtualised environments and our experience is that these environments are frequently changed in terms of configuration and underlying physical hardware.

•

EXPECTATION OF SCALABILITY

One of the most frequent reasons for ‘moving to the cloud’ is to be more scalable, i.e., to be able to quickly respond to increased usage by increasing the capacity of the application. But of course, all ‘the cloud’ can do is throw more (virtual) hardware at the application, more CPU, more memory, more network; if the application itself is not scalable (e.g. those dreaded database locks) then these extra physical resources won’t get you very far. Given that Amazon report a 1% decline in revenue for every 100ms increase in response time, and it is estimated that John Lewis lost ~£3 million due to their crash on Black Friday in 2015, scalability is clearly something that all digital businesses need to be investing in. I’ve worked with a lot of retailers post‑Christmas (or Black Friday) who were trying to understand why their cloud infrastructure hadn’t helped them keep on‑line response times low (or even prevent catastrophic crashes) over the peak shopping seasons. As you can see, ‘cloud computing’ now means quite a lot to me from a test perspective. Clearly many of these attributes are not inherently ‘cloud’, cloud is simply infrastructure, and there’s no reason you couldn’t have ‘forced upgrades’ or ‘expectation of scalability’ on non‑cloud infrastructure; but when people ask me “Can you test cloud?” almost always they are asking if we can test an application with the above characteristics.

CREATING A CLOUD APPLICATION TEST PLAN So what does this mean for someone creating a test strategy or test plan for a ‘cloud application’? These are the key points I encourage people to consider: • Test environment management: We frequently see projects treat environment management as an afterthought. In any test project this is a mistake, when testing a cloud application with a complex client test matrix this is a catastrophe. Setting up a robust test environment and defining

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•

C O M P U T I N G

clear change control processes is critical and should be done early. Compatibility testing: Given forced upgrades compatibility testing is essential. Third party systems are in scope: From a user’s perspective those third party systems (e.g. payment gateways and content feeds) are part of your product, so you need to treat them like part of your product. These systems need to be tested, monitored, and you should have proper end‑to‑end test cases which ensure that all the services are working together as expected. In‑sprint automation: Given the size of the typical cloud‑application test matrix, automation is clearly required, and that automation needs to be delivered in‑step with new functionality, i.e., in‑sprint. Load/performance testing and network emulation: Load/performance testing, including under different network conditions, is clearly required to ensure performance and scalability. This should not be a one‑off exercise at the end of the v1.0 project, it should be part of your standard testing cycle, and part of your continuous integration environment. Security: It’s so obvious it’s almost embarrassing to write, but still we see many cloud application testing projects which do not seriously consider security. That’s just crazy.

SUMMARY While it’s natural to focus on the challenges – there are also exciting benefits of testing cloud‑based applications. Advanced monitoring solutions such as Dynatrace, AppDynamics, and NewRelic, provide full visibility into the live production system and user experience, and analytics tools are amazing opportunities for testers. This is a whole topic on its own – but it’s important to see the opportunities that cloud presents too. Now when people ask “Can you test cloud?” it’s exciting. It means that a team has realised that its current testing practices are inadequate and they need to take a major step forward. That’s always a fun project. Technically speaking there’s little that’s really inherently ‘cloud’, but if that’s the label we use for people who want to start doing proper load/performance testing, in‑sprint automation, compatibility testing, and so on, I’m happy. As Humpty Dumpty said – “[a word] means just what I choose it to mean neither more nor less”.

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A CLOUD TESTING CASE STUDY Deepak Sahu, SDET Lead, AFour Technologies, discusses testing in the cloud.

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C O M P U T I N G

‘S

oftware testing’ has two words but itself is a big engineering domain. Earlier it could be carried out by anyone but as technology is evolving and developing, it needs good testing engineers and well‑defined processes. These days, software testing is not limited to functional accuracy checks; it has a number of dimensions including scalability, performance, persistence, automation, security, usability, accessibility and more. Along with technology advancement, platform coverage for testing has broadened a lot. Now testing cannot be considered as complete just by writing test cases and executing them on few browsers. Now testing must be covered on a number of operating systems (Windows, Linux, Android, iOS etc.) and different devices (desktop, laptop, tablets, mobiles, embedded devices etc.). Increase in scope and platform coverage demands more human resources and larger testing budgets. The software industry has come up with a number of solutions to balance these demands. Now automation testing is widely used to reduce human effort and speed up the testing on diversified platforms.

MOVING TO THE CLOUD Cloud computing is offering a number of options for quick, cost‑effective, high quality, high scalability and 24X7 availability for testing. There are a number of start‑ups and established organisations offering testing services on the cloud. Some of them are

SauceLabs, Xamarin, BlazeMeter, OpenStack and much more. These organisations allow you to run automation and performance scripts on desired platforms without owning them on your premise. We just need to pay what we use.

THE BUSINESS IMPACT In the last few years, a large number of devices, operating systems, and their different versions have come in market. This count is increasing every day and results in applications needed to be tested on more and more devices and operating systems. Having all of them on the local premise can be prohibitively expensive. Cloud testing requires zero investment, no maintenance costs for hardware and software tools and a lower number of IT staff. SauceLabs provides access to almost 700 desktop browsers and mobile platforms for testing. As an example, some collected stats highlight cloud computing’s importance to ROI:1 • Companies who move to the cloud save, on average, 21% per year. • Companies that use cloud, spend 25% less on personnel. • 84% of CIOs report that they have cut application costs by moving to the cloud. • 70% of companies reinvesting savings back into their business. • 94% of SMB cloud adopters report that they have experienced security benefits. • 50% of cloud users have reduced their IT spend by 25%. • 82% of companies reportedly saved money.

Cloud testing requires zero investment, no maintenance costs for hardware and software tools and a lower number of IT staff

DEEPAK SAHU SDET LEAD AFOUR TECHNOLOGIES

Deepak has five years of experience in software quality assurance. He has experience of functional and white box testing for different domains including data centre security, ecommerce, and healthcare. Providing best QA solutions to the client is his passion and he loves Figure 1. Case study: product deployment and Blazemeter on cloud. All the product components are

to work on automation, performance

deployed on an AWS environment.

and security testing.

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The software testing industry is shifting to cloud computing due to flexibility, scalability and low cost. On‑premise testing looks set to almost vanish in the future

C L O U D

The testing environment is getting more complex and unpredictable with every day. An organisation needs a wide range of technical competencies and management capabilities to fulfil the service obligations. A cloud testing service takes care of this with ease and ultimately it saves time. Some benefits of cloud testing include: • Paying only for what you use. • Easy/Fast deployment. • Monthly payments. • Encourages standardisation. • Reducing in‑house personnel costs. • Latest functionality upgrades. • Simplified sharing systems.

CASE STUDY Here at AFourTech, we are using cloud computing extensively in the software testing process. This article will outline a case study where we used AWS and BlazeMeter for performance testing. This case study shows how cloud computing helped and made the testing process easy and cost‑effective (Figure 1).

BACKGROUND GOAL OF TEST

To reach a response time of 1 ‑ 5 seconds across the product modules and functionalities with targeted 1000 concurrent users and to define the most optimum deployment architecture.

LOAD DISTRIBUTION PATTERN

This is the load percentage distributed among different workflows. Each workflow has different steps and performed by different user types. All workflows run simultaneously as happens in real life.

Workflow

Load (%)

User registration

Program subscription

Dynamic form downloads

PLANNED LOAD PROFILES

These are the number of tests performed with a different number of users. Before moving to each next test #, pass criteria must be fulfilled.

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C O M P U T I N G

Test#

Users

Ramp-up (sec)

Test1

Test2

100

Test3

200

Test4

500

120

Test5

1000

180

Test6

2000

180

Test7

5000

300

Test8

10000

300

PASS CRITERIA

• No error in response (i.e., response code 200 ‑ OK). • Response time is less than expected SLA. • No assertion error in script, response should match as per expectation. • No error or exception occurs in application log file. • No error or exception occurs in database log file. • No error or exception occurs in load balancer log file. • No data loss observers after execution of script.

CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS We started testing with JMeter on local premise but faced following problems, to solve them we moved towards cloud computing (BlazeMeter and AWS).

TRAFFIC FROM MULTIPLE IPS

AWS’ load balancer was used to distribute the traffic to multiple web servers. As the sticky session was enabled on the load balancer, traffic from one IP was always routing to one web server. To test a real life scenario where traffic would be coming from different IPs and load balancer distributing them properly, we needed to generate traffic from different sources having different IPs. Solution: If we generate traffic from local environment then we need at least two public

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AWS instances, their hardware configuration upgraded or downgraded easily as per requirement. Downtime was really low and change process is very easy. This also made the test cost‑effective as we paid only for what we used.

DEBUGGING OF FAILURE

Development team and QA teams were in different geographical locations. If we used conventional approach of on‑premise testing then debugging of failures would be difficult, as sharing of the complete test environment is not very easy. Solution: Resources on the cloud are easy to share with the team. Both AWS and BlazeMeter provide access to resources from anywhere, anytime.

Figure 2. Jmeter script uploaded on BlazeMeter.

IPs and two VMs or physical machines (as load generator) and IP Spoofing on JMeter script. By using BlazeMeter we achieved this easily and quickly. We just uploaded JMeter script on BlazeMeter account and set the required number of engines in load configuration section (Figure 2).

JMETER INSTANCE CRASH FOR HIGH LOAD GENERATION

During the test, we found that JMeter instances started crashing after a load of a certain number of threads. As the number of threads increased, JVM goes out of memory which causes JMeter to crash. Even though we allocate more memory to JVM and run JMeter in non‑UI mode, we faced this issue in further tests having more number of threads. Solution: We can setup JMeter master and slaves and run scripts from multiple instances of JMeter. This requires at least three VMs or physical machines with good hardware configuration, JMeter master‑slave configuration setup will also take some time and resource. All these could easily be achieved using BlazeMeter. We just need to specify the number of threads and ramp‑up time. Rest are taken care of by the tool.

for this purpose. We can connect all required hosts with this plug-in and monitor them.

CHANGES ON HOST CONFIGURATIONS

Host hardware configuration need to be changed multiple times based on the test results’ analysis. If we go through conventional way of on‑premise testing where physical devices need to be purchased and configured then the test would have become too expensive, time‑consuming and complex. Solution: As target product was hosted on

CONCLUSION The software testing industry is shifting to cloud computing due to flexibility, scalability and low cost. On‑premise testing looks set to almost vanish in the future. Testing is a periodic movement and new requirements should be met for future trends. The future is going to be cloud computing solutions for large as well as small and medium business environments.

ONE PLATFORM TO SEE PERFORMANCE MATRIX FROM DIFFERENT HOSTS

During the test and after test, multiple performance counters need to be monitored and captured. It is a tedious process to start, monitor and gather performance counters on individual hosts. Solution: There was a need for an application which can give a combined view of all performance counters at one place. AWS provides a BlazeMeter plug-in ‘CloudWatch’

Reference 1.

‘The State of the Cloud 2015: Supply Chain Adopters Reaping ROI Rewards’, irms|WM Warehouse Management, http://www.irms360.com/blog_post/state_cloud_2015_supply_chain_adopters_reaping_ roi_rewards

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CONTINUOUS COMMUNICATION PART 2 Kaspar van Dam, Consultant, Improve Quality Services, follows up his first article on the importance of communication in agile with practical guidelines.

n this article I intend to set out some ideas and methods, I think helpful to improving communication in agile teams. I consider them to be mere guidelines instead of hard rules and I will certainly not claim this to be a complete list of everything needed. But it’s my experience and the experience of many colleagues that these are things that could help to make software development a lot more efficient, and in the process also a lot more fun.

customer to require certain functionality we need to understand the world in which the customer lives. Thus, we should speak the same language the business speaks, creating a ubiquitous language – one of the most important pillars of domain driven design. Only when one understands both the business needs and the technological challenges can one give an optimal advise on how to effectively create the most value for the business.

KNOW YOUR DOMAIN

SHORT LINE, LESS NOISE

Times when IT only needed to know how to program or test are gone. If we truly want to understand what drives the

We probably all know the game from elementary school where one kid whispers a story to his neighbour who in turn passes

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it on to the next kid in line, etc. The last kid in line tells the story out loud and everyone laughs because it’s a completely different story than the one the game started with. Always. The same applies for software development. The longer the line, the more noise you’ll get. Whenever possible try to get information directly from the source and use the opportunity to ask any questions you might still have directly to this source. Also make sure you’ve understood what they said. Summarise what has been said in your own words and ask for confirmation that this really is what the other party wants. Prevent situations where everyone interprets things their own way resulting in miscommunication and developed software that turns out to be

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something completely different than what the business thought they were asking for.

BE IN THE SAME ROOM Continuing on the short line principle: face‑to‑face communication always works best. Preferably including a white board or piece of paper and some markers. There’s a hype around working location independently. However, quite often this is more something to cut costs than something born out of necessity. No matter what, it’s simply not working! Real teamwork is only possible when you’re together as a team. At least, most of the time.

PAIRING Besides sitting in the same room it could also be a good idea to sit behind the same desk every once in a while. Most programmers are familiar with the term pair programming. Coding together means two pairs of eyes and two brains. Thus less chance of making mistakes and less chance of continuously overlooking that one, not so obvious, error. Within an agile team the principle of pair programming can be extended to not only apply for programming and programmers, but also for testers and other team members. For instance, as a tester, join forces with the programmer when he’s writing his unit tests. And in return, let the programmer sit next to you to think along when writing automated tests. It’s a case where one plus one equals three.

DON’T ASSUME It’s a well known saying in the business: don’t assume unless you want to make an ASS out of U and ME. It is very tempting to assume things when someone’s not present at a certain important meeting. Especially when your under stress because of an upcoming deadline. But even when you’re almost certain what that certain stakeholder would say, never forget to get this confirmed. Also get it confirmed before you start working on it, and when it’s not possible to get it confirmed because the stakeholder in question has no time? Then there’s only one assumption you can make: apparently it’s not that important, so no need for the team to put any effort into it, yet. Don’t forget to get this assumption confirmed or refuted as soon as possible.

DARE TO SAY ‘NO’ Within software development we have grown to treat important stakeholders with kid gloves. However, keep in mind that we as developers and testers are the specialists. The business really appreciates it when we dare to say ‘no’ whenever we know something will just not work technically or when we know there are other ways to create the same or even more business value with less effort. At least, they should appreciate this. There’s no shame in pointing out that something simply isn’t possible, even when this is the result of a lack of time and/or the lack of certain knowledge. Try to create an open atmosphere where there’s room to be honest and also room to criticise. However, ‘no’ should never be the final word. There should be argumentation why something can’t be done or shouldn’t be done. Whenever possible offer some alternatives as well.

Prevent situations where everyone interprets things their own way resulting in miscommunication and developed software that turns out to be something completely different then what the business thought they were asking for

#NOESTIMATE During a recent Cuke Up! Conference agile specialist, Dan North asked the audience two questions about estimation: “How many of you ever made an estimate on how long a project would take?” Everyone in the room raised a finger. However it was quite shocking to see all fingers disappear after the next question: “Did any of you ever get one of these estimations right?” It’s a simple fact that it’s mere impossible to give accurate estimations for software development. Even though we know this, we still often tend to give very precise estimations on how long something will take. Sometimes even as detailed as man hours or FTEs. Everything to get it fitted in that one planning spreadsheet. But what’s the value of an estimation when we know for a fact that’s it’s near 100% certain that this estimation is wrong! We already know we will run into certain ‘Unpredictable Bad things’ as Dan North calls it. Bad, because they will cost us time and/or money. We can’t put an estimation on how much time or money they will take simply because we don’t know in advance what these bad things will be: they are after all unpredictable! The solution seems simple: #NoEstimate. However, it won’t work to just start work and see where we’ll get and when this will be. So #NoEstimate does not mean you have to abandon estimation and planning all together. It’s about making it more valuable. For example, by working with ranges instead of man hours. A range I personally find

KASPAR VAN DAM CONSULTANT IMPROVE QUALITY SERVICES

With over 10 years of experience in IT, Kaspar advises colleagues and clients on matters concerning testing and/ or collaboration and communication within (agile) teams. He has published a number of articles on test automation, agile ways of work and continuous communication and is a speaker on these matters at events.

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We tend to forget that communication, effective communication, is really quite hard! You have to work for it

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very effective is the range between ‘it might be possible to have it ready, but only if everything goes well’ and ‘we would be quite ashamed if we haven’t finished it by then!’ In other words: a good case scenario and a bad case scenario. If management still requires an estimate in man hours then ask them if they really prefer an estimation in hours that’ll almost certain be wrong or an estimation in the form of a range in time that’ll almost certain be right.

BRING YOUR OWN TEAM We all know the ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) principle. The idea behind ‘bring your own team’ is basically the same. Every new team needs time to get up to speed. You need to get to know the people, you need to create a safe environment in which you can trust each other and where you have room to ask for help without being afraid of being laughed at. Given that a team needs time to get started, why not bring a complete team that’s already passed this stage? Or at least let the team itself decide who should join the team. This does mean a lot of responsibility for the team, which could be a risk if the team isn’t up for it though. For instance, if they value personal friendship over creating a well‑oiled team, and the best result for the customer, then this principle might backfire. Therefore the next point:

TEAM RESPONSIBILITY

Editor’s note: Part one of Kaspar’s article was published in the November 2016 issue of TEST Magazine.

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If a team feels responsible for what they do (or don’t do!) then the team members will likely feel more involved in the project and tend to work more efficiently while having more focus on quality. They don’t build and test good software because the manager wants them to. They don’t fall back to ‘mortgage driven development’, or working just because it pays the bills. They actually want to make something good for themselves. Because they’ll feel proud when they deliver something good and are ashamed when they don’t. This is all about intrinsic motivation. However, a team can only feel responsible if they actually get responsibility. This means that management should give the team a lot of freedom on how they want to do their work. However, do keep in mind, giving a team responsibility is no guarantee that they will also feel responsible. This is dependent on

the team and its members. It’s a matter of giving and taking.

HAVE FUN Possibly one of the most important but least understood things within an agile world, is how valuable it can be to have fun while working. Everyone knows that people will work more efficiently and actually harder when they are having fun. Everyone would like to have fun at work (right?). Especially when working in a team it’s really important to not just work from 9 to 5, but also to just have a good time as a team. So, invest in a football table, a dartboard or a game console on the working floor. Take an hour off and go to the pub together or some other fun ‘teambuilding’ activity. A company that understands this principle well is Google. I strongly advise you to Google the Google offices and see how they brought the principle of having fun at work to the next level! You want people to want to go to work.

CONCLUSION I very much doubt anyone reading this article is in awe about hearing loads of new things. I actually hope most people reading this article are wondering if they really did see anything new here. Communication within any project is something so obvious, so logical. It shouldn’t be something to even take the trouble talking about. Right? That’s just where things might go wrong. We tend to forget that communication, effective communication, is really quite hard! You have to work for it. Not just during the stand‑up or in that one specific meeting. But all the time. Thus, continuous communication. It’s good to take a step back and look at our ‘agile processes’. The communication structured in some predetermined meetings and the lack of communication often visible outside these meetings. Have we forgotten what the Agile Manifesto told us in the first place? Has agile actually failed? I think it hasn’t, but I do think we should take that step back and look from a distance at what we’re doing in our work. Then conclude that we often neglect the importance of communication. It is however something worth investing time (and money) in. Because continuous communication can make software development (or basically any type of work) a lot more efficient, as well as a lot more fun. So, let’s do it! Let’s talk.

W I N N E R S

The winners of The European Software Testing Awards 2016 were announced at the Gala Dinner on the 16th of November

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