Test Automation - Right on Target
This is a presentation given by one of our customers. Ala’a Shouaib at Target Group at the Butler evnt recently
Archive for the ‘Automated Testing’ Category
The Seven Deadly Sins of Software Test Automation
Just to get into the spirit of Halloween next week, take a look at our new whitepaper, “The Seven Deadly Sins of Software Test Automation,” (cue evil laugh). We do enjoy being original and I am sure you will have a little chuckle to yourselves with this one!
In this whitepaper we explore each of the seven deadly sins as they relate to software test automation. Instances that Original Software comes across time and time again and traps clients have often fallen into because of their earthly vices.
I don’t want to give too much away, so if you would like to download this webform free whitepaper, here is the download link http://www.origsoft.com/whitepapers/seven-deadly-sins/
I am quite eager to see what you think of this piece, so please write back with any comments! If you have a great sense of humour, why not reply back with your own software testing deadly sins!
Great Places to network with other Test and QA professionals
(Part 1 – Linked-In)
Linked-In is fast becoming one of the best platforms to pick up industry related news and network with other professionals. There are literally thousands of Linked-In groups, so much so, that finding the most relevant, biggest, best or most active groups can be a bit of a challenge!
To help you on your way, here is a selection of the groups we’re familiar with and can heartily recommend.
Agile (4,813 members)
Agile Enthusiast (638)
Agile Progect Management Group (3,851)
Agile Testing (595)
Agilistias (2,415)
American Society for Quality (11,054)
Automation Testing (518)
Methods & Tools (822)
QA Automation Architect (664)
QA Test Automation (1,010)
QA/Testing (1,193)
QAGuild Network (5,545)
Quality Assurance and Test Professionals / Analysts (242)
Senior Testing Professionals (1,579)
Software Test & Performance Group (914)
Software Testing & QA (997)
Software Testing & Quality Assurance (19,957)
Software Testing and Quality Assurance (2,561)
Software Testing Club (3,705)
SQA forums (2,366)
Test automation (3,875)
Test Development (552)
Test Management Forum (530)
Test Republic (298)
Test strategy and test management (741 members)
NEWS: AppLabs and Original Software Partner to Help Clients Take the Step from Manual to Automated Testing
AppLabs sees huge value proposition for its clients with agile-friendly automation suite
11 August 2009 – Original Software today announced a strategic partnership with AppLabs, the world’s largest software testing and quality management company. AppLabs has entered into an agreement with Original Software to take to market its innovative quality management suite. The agreement will likewise allow Original Software to position AppLabs’ services into its own customer base.
Scott Andress, Vice President, Global Alliances and Service Lines at AppLabs commented: “As a tool agnostic services company, we focus on putting the right solution into the right project. We’ve spotted a compelling value proposition for our clients with Original Software’s suite, which can be a great fit for most agile developments, can speed up time-to-market and can provide a silver bullet for those clients struggling to make the transition from manual to automated testing.”
The industry analysts agree. A recent Ovum report stated: ‘TestDrive-Assist provides you with a rich environment for manual testing, but the bigger payback is how it facilitates adoption of full automation. Uniquely for any of the guided manual test execution products that we know of, Original can automatically convert a manual TestDrive-Assist test into a fully automated TestDrive test that can be repeated.” “Overall this is a low risk, low cost way of progressively adopting test automation.” “It fits in with classic waterfall processes, and it can also be used in agile processes more easily than other functional test automation suites.”
“TestDrive-Assist cuts the time it takes to manually test in half, with some customers having recorded savings of 75-80 percent” said Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software. He continued: “This partnership not only provides us with a strong route to market, but allows us to add services to our expanding portfolio. AppLabs’ expertise in testing services and its global, skilled resource pool will be a valued addition to our offering, giving customers the option to outsource projects or business functions or take advantage of specialized consultancy to optimize their IT and business quality management and testing capabilities.”
NEWS: Original Software Positioned as a Visionary in Magic Quadrant for Integrated Software Quality Suites
Original Software, the Application Quality Management (AQM) vendor, today announced that it has been placed in the ‘visionaries’ quadrant by leading analyst firm Gartner, Inc. in its recently published Magic Quadrant for Integrated Software Quality Suites, 31 July 2009.
“The total market for test management and functional and load/stress automation is currently valued at just under $1.2 billion, and is growing at more than 8% per year.” said Thomas Murphy in the report1. “Testing software can be an expensive process, but poor software quality leads to user dissatisfaction, as well as increased development and maintenance. Therefore, having a well-defined set of tools and practices to drive software quality will positively affect the overall business bottom line.”
The report evaluates fourteen vendors of software quality solutions based on a rigorous set of criteria that comprise ‘completeness of vision’ and ‘ability to execute’. Original Software has been positioned as a visionary.
Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software, said: “We consider our positioning in the visionaries quadrant to be confirmation of the real value that our approach to solving challenges in the quality process has brought to our users, extending the reach of these solutions within an organization and providing an early return on investment. We are now expanding on the unique work we have done, in reducing script maintenance, supporting manual testing, code-free automation and test data management, with the launch of a radical new ALM solution later this year.”
This report has recently been published by Gartner. More information can be found on the analyst page of Original Software’s website.
NEWS: Original Software offers ‘Escape’ for apprehensive Borland and Compuware customers
Original Software, the Application Quality Management (AQM) vendor, today announced a swap-out promotion for customers of the soon to be engulfed companies, who face uncertainty in the future of their legacy product roadmaps.
Original Software offers market-leading AQM solutions that span the application development life-cycle from requirements, planning and management to complete automated regression testing, including unique solutions for and test data management.
“Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software, said: “Any customer on a current maintenance contract with Borland or Compuware can qualify for the Escape program and swap to one of our comparable solutions, provided they switch the maintenance agreement.” The promotion, which runs until the end of the year, includes preferential pricing on all the company’s other complimentary solutions.
“While MicroFocus has now completed the acquisitions of Borland and Compuware, the future for their customers is far from clear. It is inevitable that one of the solutions will take precedence, leaving the other customer base facing an unpleasant choice. You have to feel special sympathy for the users of the Borland testing products for who this is the second change of ownership in less than three years.”
“The great thing about the Escape program is that companies can remove the uncertainty about products futures and join a company whose vision has been widely recognized by industry analysts like Gartner and Ovum. At the same time they can benefit from great customer service and a modern AQM solution suite that addresses traditional automation and the now widely recognized needs for collaboration, manual test support and test data management”.
A Day of Filming at Original Software
Film crew setting up
‘I am very excited about these videos’ commented Scott, ‘the video medium is an ideal vehicle for us to communication our core messages and value propositions, and we have used these short videos as introductions to whitepapers and specific parts of our website, I am sure they will be very well recieved.’
We used a company called ModComms to do the filming and post editing - a very proffesional bunch of lads. ‘The day has been tiring but definitley worthwhile’ said Peter.
Keep an eye on YouTube and the Original Software website over the next week or so as we work on the editing and get these short video’s live!!
Original Software throws its hat into the SOA ring
Latest News:
Original Software, the Application Quality Management (AQM) vendor, is partnering with Green Hat, specialists in automated testing technology for integration and SOA, to deliver an end-to-end automated testing solution for multi-tiered applications that utilize SOA.
The combined strength and competencies of Original Software and Green Hat will enable customers to take advantage of a total Software Quality solution across the UI, web services and database layers, plus the SOA infrastructure, with all the ease of use and code free functionality that customers of both companies have come to rely on.
Gartner, Inc notes that through 2010, 60% of unplanned downtime for SOA-based, loosely-coupled applications will be the result of application failure, up from 40% for non-SOA-based applications…
To read the rest of this news release, please click this link to open the story in our Press Room!
Good reads that come in 7’s
James Whittaker has recently started a great series of blog posts on the Google Testing Blog - The 7 Plagues of Software Testing.
So far in James’ posts we have encountered The Plague of Aimlessness and The Plague of Repetitiveness.
In The Plague of Aimlessness he asks “Where are the testing spell books? Surely the perilously attained knowledge of our tester forebears is something that we can access in this age of readily available information?” The answer is not. There is a distinct lack of collective knowledge and information sharing within teams. Testers are walking in ever more aimless circles repeatedly suffering ‘the aimless thrashing that we suffered’ already. He urges testers to “Document your successes, scrutinize your failures and make sure you pass on what you learn from this introspection to your colleagues.”
The Plague of Repetitiveness, he argues is caused by just aimlessly ‘doing it’ some more “Developers test but then we retest. We can’t assume anything about what they did so we retest everything. As our product grows in features and bug fixes get applied, we continue our testing. It isn’t long until new tests become old tests and all of them eventually become stale.” He likens it to Boris Beizer’s pesticide paradox. “Pesticide will kill bugs, but spray the same field enough times with the same poison and the remaining bugs will grow immune.”
I’m looking forward to reading more as he posts them.
In a similar vein (we must have been drinking from the same creative juice carton) our very own article – The Seven Deadly Sins of Software Test Automation – is due to be published in the latest edition of T.E.S.T Magazine. In this article we take a light-hearted look at Dante’s Divine Comedy to uncover some home truths about software test automation. We explore each of the seven deadly sins as traps people can fall into because of their earthly vices. I hope you get a chance to read it and would welcome any feedback on it. If you haven’t come across T.E.S.T Magazine already, it is a great read and well worth subscribing.
Just Giving added to our Hall of Shame
Another week, another Software Quality Hall of Shame entry. This time it is the charity donantion website JustGiving.(www.justgiving.com)
They have recently under taken a complete web redesign. In my opinion the design is worse than the old one for numerous reasons, but that is not the point of this blog post. The point is that they didn’t test the website properly before it went live. As a result, the website was practically unavailable for a week in June whilst the problems were fixed retrospectively. This meant millions of people couldn’t donate money to their chosen charities.
In an act of desperate reconciliation, Zarine Kharas, the CEO of Just Giving has publically apologised for this complete disaster, admitting they ‘didnt test it (their website) extensively enough…’ She has compensated all charities the 5% commission her company takes for all donations given during the problems, which on paper is a nice gesture. However, judging by the 100+ comments to her blog post, the vast vast majority of people’s charity sites (including mine by the way - I had numerous people email me to say they had tried and failed to donate) were unable to accept donations so this gesture is practically worthless.
All in all this is a stark warning as to the perils of software quality. If you get it wrong you will have problems. In this case there is a huge financial loss for both Just Giving and the charities that trust them to collect on their behalf (my guess is they collect about £1m a week) but more than the money, there are thousands of angry people out there who have lost trust in this company, many are vowing never to use them again. You just have to read some of the comments on this blog post to get an idea of the feeling that is running high among its customer base. I am sure Just Giving’s competitors are rubbing their hands….
If you need any more convincing on why software quality is an absolute corporate pre-requisite, then why not read our new whitepaper: The Business Benefits of Software Test Automation.
