alikhalid

Don’t write code just good enough for releasing today,

But so it’s usable & maintainable a year later.

There are quite a few short cuts teams take under the pretense of Agile, this is one of them

Agile does not mean to release work which will have to be redone again, or with tech debt

Smaller release cycles never meant bad quality, and yes bad coding practice IS bad code quality

#RedefiningSoftwareQuality #Programming #CodeQuality

Job Seekers, Here’s what I call a “Unicorn employee”:

1. Hands on technical skills

• Has sufficient technical background and exposure to the job that needs to be done.
• Ability to demonstrate that knowledge

2. Is a Natural leader

• Mostly ends up leading people
• Ability to rally people behind a cause, not through authority, but by motivating them

3. Can communicate

• Ability to express themselves clearly to engineers and senior management (two very different set of skills)

I know, as engineers we dislike too much talking, or leading people.

From employers perspective: at certain level you need people with these skills, and are extremely rare to find

Unlike unicorns, these people do exist. so:

Become them, search for them, hire them and look after them , they are the drivers of your company.

#RedefiningSoftwareQuality #Hiring #JobSearch #CareerAdvice

“Testing IS a technical skill”, if there is no code involved, does not mean it’s not technical..

There are two extremes, one says testing is a mystical unique art which you are born with, either you have it or not

The other extreme says it’s not really a skill, it’s more of a chore you do, no learning required

IMHO both ends of the spectrum are wrong, it’s a technical skill which MUST be LEARNED and EXPERIENCED in (I call this #TestingAcumen).

So, if your a developer and will be involved in testing activities: testing is a skill you have to LEARN and PRACTICE, you don’t just wing it.

And for testers, more than half of them I meet are horrible at testing. If you’r a tester, just having ‘tester’ in the title does not mean you might be good at testing.

Testing is not an innate gift you were born with. It’s again a skill you have to lean & practice.

I’m all for agile transformation, that’s what I do on a daily basis, but not building your team’s testing skill and hoping your CI/CD is going to do some AutoMagic is a fallacy..

#RedefiningSoftwareQuality #QualityTransformation #Testing #AgileTransformation #DevOps #ContinuousTesting

For teams operating in DevOps ways of working, test code needed to be written sometimes can be as much as production code itself.

Still having someone to build and advise on test code architecture & automation seems like an alien concept to many teams.

I’ll be talking about our transformation journey and developing this role at the #TestLeadershipCongress 2020

Event link

What would be the most effective test automation KPI?

Few candidates in my opinion:

• % (Flaky scripts / total scripts)
• UI tests vs API tests ratio
• % stories with automated tests for the acceptance criteria (BDD / ATDD)
• % (Tests running in CI / total tests)

What others can you think of?

#TestAutomation #Testing #KPIs

There is a lot of good content out there on writing good use stories,

• Here are few things I try to look out for:
• Example mapping / Three amigo sessions – VITAL. This will crystallize your acceptance criteria and pointers for tests
• Ensure the business objective & value is clear
• Try to assign business value points when possible
• Estimate relative to other work – Scrum poker helps
• Definition of Done – Automation scripts, especially on services layer should be a part

The list can surely be longer, with these actions you should be able to write decent user stories resulting in highest value features delivered quickest.

#RedefiningSoftwareQuality #Agile #UserStories #Automation

Complex problems necessarily don’t require a complex solution..

Often a simple simple solutions work best

This is crucial to understand as a programmer, we often love to over-complicate things

This doesn’t just take more time to implement, but way more time to upkeep and maintain.

#RedefiningSoftwareQuality #Programming #AlgorithmDesign

“A problem well stated is half solved”

If we use that in the context of shift left:

Half of testing is really asking questions and re-hashing the problem statement properly BEFORE coding is complete.

#RedefiningSoftwareQuality #ShiftLeft #AgileTesting

Agile does NOT mean no documentation, most teams run into this trap.

It ‘values’ interactions over documentation – so interact with people then document the decisions from the interaction.

For instance, defining service contracts – white board the points, producers and consumers discuss what’s needed,

And after decision is made, then ‘document’ it.

#RedefiningSoftwareQuality #Agile #Testing

Coding a feature is not the bigger problem –

It’s everything ‘around’ that development is what’s hard:

Effort that goes into:
– Making sure we’re building the right thing,
– Adequate testing of what’s developed
– Automated checks to test the functionality across tech stack
– Infrastructure to support development and testing
– Automating deployment across environments
– Observability & alerts to detect any anomalies

So you see, it’s not just ‘writing production code’ anymore. To be truly agile and having DevOps practices there is a lot more that has to be done.

#RedefiningSoftwareQuality #Transformation #DevOps #ContinuousTesting