The term Shift Left refers to a practice in software development where teams focus on quality, work on prevention instead of detection, and begin testing earlier than ever before . The goal is to increase quality, shorten long test cycles, and reduce the possibility of unpleasant surprises at the end of the development cycle—or still worse, in production. In many organizations, automated testing of today’s composite applications is being executed via the user interface, once the complete application has been developed and deployed.... [More]

Tags:  shift-left integration-testing service-virtualization continuous-testing api-testing

Just a short note to make all aware of some upcoming webcasts. The content to be presented during these events should really help teams address their continuous testing and continuous deployment challenges.   Shift Left to better business results: Speed delivery of higher quality software. October 15, 2014 - 1 pm ET Many of today's organizations struggle to deliver quality software at the speed their users demand. Successful organizations are moving to a DevOps approach and shifting testing to the left. But what does a shift left... [More]

Tags:  test-automation continuous-deployment continuous-testing devops continuous-delivery shift-left integration-testing

IBM can notify you when useful technical activity occurs  - for example, TechNotes are published or APARs are opened (or closed).  It's can be a bit difficult to find it (there are no links from any TechNote page, oddly enough),  so here's a tip on how to subscribe. You can set up the notifications at https://www-947.ibm.com/systems/support/myview/subscription/css.wss/folders?methodName=listMyFolders You want to click 'subscribe' then click 'Rational' - my subscription to 'Rational Test Virtualization... [More]

Did you hear the news? IBM Innovate is on the move for 2015. After nine great years at the Swan and Dolphin resort in Orlando, Innovate is leaving the land of children theme parks and headed back to Vegas - the adult playground in the desert. And with planning already underway, I am sure this will be a very exciting event for all who decide to attend. Why not join us? Now, if you weren't aware, the  InterConnect  website is up and running providing the most recent event information. The latest announcement is that the... [More]

Tags:  pulse ibmrational innovate service-virtualization quality-management interconnect devops impact test-automation

Recently, on August 28, 2014, Gartner, Inc. positioned IBM as a leader in the published 2014 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Integrated Software Quality Suites (ISQ) report. For the report, Gartner evaluated 14 worldwide vendors, recognizing IBM moving to the number one spot in the leaders quadrant based on its completeness of vision and ability to execute. Testing is one of the key processes in the software development life cycle. The market has been steadily maturing to deliver improved user success,... [More]

I spent last week working with a technology firm that depends on web services offered by healthcare.gov. It was very interesting to peek behind the curtain.  We' ve all seen the congressional hearings, and heard the talking heads shouting at each other. But in the real world where we bring technology to bear on real problems, I found that Rational Test Workbench & Rational Test Virtualization Server could help this customer in many ways! We see problems with SOA implementations at many customers - but rarely do we see all the... [More]

Have you ever wondered how much time is lost to non-productive work and how test teams struggle to deal with these lost hours? Particularly when their managers believe that they are continuously testing the software being developed for the benefit of the company they work for.  If you are like me, perhaps you want to know the impact of these testing interruptions - adhoc meetings, processing email, etc? Were some tests being deferred or ignored entirely because the Testers were addressing these "busy work" requests? How... [More]

Tags:  testing-bottlenecks service-virtualization test-automation software-quality quality-management

Yesterday I was tuned into a popular music station for youngsters in the Netherlands. On that radio show they called the Vice-President of the European Commission Neelie Kroes. She is a well-known, highly rated, person in the Dutch politics and already for years she is a high profile European Commission member covering the Digital Agenda which includes ICT. As US regulations touch us here in Europe, you must have noticed that Windows provides you with a selection of browsers. A very visible result of her work, Kroes demanded that Microsoft... [More]

Tags:  commision ec coding european kroes business

The definition of a Test Centre of Excellence (TCoE) can be quite varied. Some are all about governance and some are more concerned with being resource pools and central areas for providing tooling. Here are some thoughts on the former approach. I’m not a fan of bureaucracy, or more accurately, rules that I don’t want to follow. In my career as a software tester, it always gave me great frustration when I had to test in a fully prescribed, “best practice” fashion. I really hate the term best practice. Yes, there are... [More]