Part of the Pipeline
Nobody /really/ likes change, its human nature. Testers have a special relationship with changing tools and techniques, they change and we tend to flounder a little and end up very nervous about our place in the new world. Continuous delivery is one such circumstance, I see and speak to many testers really struggling. However, with a significant shift in outlook and a chunk of personal development, testers can excel in environments such as these. Its time to start to get out in front of a changing world, rather than always battling to catch up. I want to share my experience of adding value as a tester in a continuous delivery environment, what new technologies and techniques I've learned, using your Production environment as an oracle, advocating testability and most crucially, not overestimating what our testing can achieve. Testing is not the only form of feedback, its time to let go of some the aspects of testing we cling to. Continuous delivery adds richness and variety to our role as testers. To me, it is a facilitator for the autonomy and respect that testers have craved for a long time, so lets get involved...
Part of the Pipeline
- 1. Ash Winter Short stuff here: @northern_tester Long stuff here:
- 3. Part of the Pipeline @northern_tester
- 5. What a time to be a tester! Each pipeline step = lens on quality Your steps, your context, your choices @northern_tester
- 7. Key skills Risks mitigated less by testing (alone) Limited impact area Scale is a problem @northern_tester
- 8. Signpost Context Personas Strategy Illusions Canaries @northern_tester
- 9. Recognising the signs Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn. ~ Kurt Vonnegut @northern_tester
- 10. The context Mobile first Mixed infra estate Multiple daily releases Feature flagging & trials Sad testers @northern_tester
- 11. Persona #1 Alone and bypassed Only test end to end Lacks architectural appreciation @northern_tester
- 12. Persona #2 The Blocker Right hand side Big queue @northern_tester
- 13. Persona #3 Automates what the code does ≒Happy Path @northern_tester
- 14. Persona #4 Trust feature flags completely Forgets what it currently does @northern_tester
- 15. No Strategy You may not be interested in strategy but strategy is interested in you. ~ Leon Trotsky @northern_tester
- 17. Go beyond it Reached its limit? Need something more? @northern_tester
- 18. Illusion Busting We dont break the software. We break illusions about the software. ~ James Marcus Bach @northern_tester
- 19. Illusion Busting Retiring desktop website Building another website May not fix your too many websites problem @northern_tester
- 20. Illusion Busting Hypothesis: Desktop users hate mobile sites on desktop sized screens Reasonable ButHOW MUCH 贈贈贈贈贈? @northern_tester
- 21. Illusion Busting Released to the 1% Found out why, expanded trial Desktop website retired @northern_tester
- 22. Canary Deployment Nothing succeeds like success. Get a little success and then just get a little more. ~ Maya Angelou @northern_tester
- 23. Canary Deployment Database driver change Every app, most functions Efficacy of testing at that scale @northern_tester
- 25. Canary Deployment Low(er) risk app Limited hosts Info, Debug, Compare @northern_tester
- 26. Summary Context Personas Strategy Illusions Canaries Takeaway for you @northern_tester
- 27. Key takeaway for you Learn Source Control Primary team artefact Show respect @northern_tester
Editor's Notes
- #4: Continuous delivery is an opportunity for skilled testers* to demonstrate their value and add (even more) variety to the tester role *Continuously doing anything tends to have a habit of continuously exposing bad testing with little mercy.
- #7: Continuous delivery is an opportunity for skilled testers* to demonstrate their value and add (even more) variety to the tester role *Continuously doing anything tends to have a habit of continuously exposing bad testing with little mercy.
- #29: NO QUESTIONS, HAVE A BEER.