We have all heard that to be successful businesses need to drive down costs, reduce software project risk and increase the speed at which software is delivered to the market. Right now you are probably thinking...  "Great, tell me something I don't know!" The reality is that many companies are trying to continuously integrate,  test and release their software but few are effective in doing so. Those who have figured out the "secret" are winning - beating their competition, increasing their market share, and... [More]

Tags:  continuous-testing urbancode integration-testing servicevirtualization rational continuous-deployment greenhat

You were hired to test software or at least that is what you thought! Why is it that so many of the activities you are being asked to seem to have little to do with actually checking code quality or measuring a products conformance to a set of approved requirements. If you think about where your time goes, you are probably creating reports, setting up or recycling test environments, performing or participating in bug triage, etc.... The list of things you probably do is long. Then and only when you find that sliver of time to test, are you... [More]

Tags:  continuous-testing servicevirtualization quality testing rapid-testing

Earlier this year, IBM commissioned Forrester Research to examine the total economic impact and potential return on investment (ROI) of the IBM Rational solution for Test Automation (Rational Test Workbench and Rational Test Virtualization Server) investigating the results of a customer opportunity. The efforts of the study clearly suggests that companies who invest in service virtualization do increase their productivity and will realize a positive ROI. A positive ROI in a very short amount of time.   The customer opportunity examined... [More]

Tags:  continuous-testing servicevirtualization service-virtualization test-automation

I recently had the opportunity to attend the Agile Alliance conference, for the third straight year, which was held in Nashville from August 5th to 9th. And while it is always a fabulous and worthwhile event, this year the conference just seemed to be a little different to me. Perhaps it was just my perception but last year after talking to many attendees about service virtualization and continuous testing, I left several conversations with the feeling that I missed sharing something in my message. While the person may have gained a new... [More]

Tags:  service-virtualization continuous-testing agile2013 agile servicevirtualization

I had an awesome time last Saturday at CITCON in Boston. Not only were the views amazing but the conversations were thought provoking.  The conference follows open-space technology which means that all the topics are meaningful to the participants (we get to vote!) and there is lots of interaction in every session.   I continue to be thinking about the issues related to test data in the continuous delivery pipeline that was a CITCON topic. It’s typical to create test automation expecting certain sets of data to be available.... [More]

Tags:  automation quality continuous-deployment continuous-delivery test-automation continuous-testing agile

I seem to be talking and thinking about continuous testing, um, continuously lately. I had a little epiphany last week when I concluded that most of the pipeline is for testing. The pipeline starts with a continuous integration build where unit testing happens and a package, installable entity is produced. The pipeline ends when that packaged entity is deployed into production. Every step in between is for testing. Different kinds of testing, but they are all testing. So at a minimum, when there’s only one test stage, 30% of the pipeline... [More]

Tags:  agile testing test-automation continuous-delivery test continuous-testing automation continuous-deployment

You stay in this business long enough and you get to a point where everything old is new again. Seriously, it’s like the fashion industry. I always chuckle remembering my daughter’s shock that I, um, had also worn bell bottoms. And this is exactly what I think about when I hear all the chatter about the fragmentation of testing for mobile applications. There are a billion device combinations.  Yup.  Hasn’t there always been? About 10 years ago, to help choose how to test and to make a point, I did a spreadsheet with... [More]

Tags:  continuous-delivery quality mobile-testing agile continuous-testing test-automation

Have you ever wondered how and why certain individuals get promoted as featured speakers at conferences and events?  Is this the type of attention you would like for yourself? If you haven’t already figured it out, it is because they work very hard at promoting themselves. Their reward; credibility in the industry. They probably have a large number of social followers or their blogs are regularly read by thousands of people - people like you and me. Our reward in listening to them; we might just learn something new and innovative.... [More]

Tags:  quality-management software-quality ibm-innovate thought-leadership service-virtualization continuous-testing test-automation

It’s amazing to reflect back on how far service virtualization technology has come in the last two years since IBM acquired Green Hat.   Back then, when I spoke with customers, they would either say “what’s service virtualization?”, or they would refer to it as a cool new technology that they’ve been meaning to investigate. What a difference two years makes.  The recent report ,... [More]

Tags:  continuous-testing agile service-virtualization agile-transformation