Top 10 Automation Tips from STP Online Summit

I had the pleasure of hosting the second Online Summit, delivered by Software Test Professionals: Achieving Business Value With Test Automation.  The online summit format consists of 3 sessions each for 3 consecutive days.  The sessions for this summit were:

• Software Test Automation, Where's the Value? – Scott Barber
• Achieving Value with Automated Acceptance Tests – Linda Hayes  
• Developer Level Automation Value from "Velcro" to "Velocity"  – Rob Sabourin  
• The Simple and Powerful Build Verification Tests (BVT) – Alan Page  
• Functional Automation is the Gateway Drug to Continuous Delivery – Adam Goucher  
• Test Automation at the API Layer...Why Bother? – BJ Rollison 
• Experiences with Adding Value Through Test Automation – Mark Fewster  
• Test Automation Misconceptions and Money Pits – Hans Buwalda  
• Top Tips for Addressing the Challenge – Scott Barber  
• Speaker Panel – Scott Barber, Linda Hayes, Alan Page, Adam Goucher, Mark Fewster & Guest Panelist Griffin Jones 

One of my duties as host was to try to summarize the most valuable nuggets of information from across all of the presentations into a "top tips" list.  This is what I came up with:

Scott's Top 10 Automation Tips from:

Web Load Testing for Dummies: Book Announcement

"More so now than ever before, your company’s website and web applications are critical to the success of your business initiatives. Think of all the business generated or sustained via the World Wide Web today compared to any other time in history — in today’s digital culture, a business with any sort of crucial web presence needs to make sure that its website is working hard for the business and not against it. That’s what web load testing is all about.

"Key to success on the web is customer experience, which means that web application performance is a priority. Not convinced? Spend a few moments thinking about the impact to your business (in other words, think about how angry the CEO and/or investors would be) if:
  ✓ Your new application launch is delayed due to performance problems
  ✓ Your site breaks under the load of your successful marketing promotion
  ✓ High-traffic volume causes such poor web performance on your busiest online shopping day that abandonment skyrockets and conversions plummet
  ✓ Your new infrastructure is configured improperly, grinding the website to a crawl

"Managers and executives of organizations that derive significant portions of their revenue from web applications realize that they need to focus more on protecting revenue, reducing risk, and ensuring that customers have great experiences. They see how web applications that perform well on release day and throughout their production lives strengthen the company’s brand and reputation, creating customer loyalty. In other words, web load testing is a critical component to any risk management plan for web applications."

Get the eBook version free here.

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Scott Barber
Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
About.me

Co-Author, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
Author, Web Load Testing for Dummies
Contributing Author, Beautiful Testing, and How To Reduce the Cost of Testing

"If you can see it in your mind...
     you will find it in your life."

Is Junosphere the world's first cloud testing environment? Not really - IT in Context

Is Junosphere the world's first cloud testing environment? Not really - IT in Context

I don't get too irked by companies coining new phrases to make subtle marketing distinctions in services, but when they do it so they can make first/best claims flips my bozo bit. Seriously, if your service is so bland or weak that you need to invent a new term so you can claim that it's the "best the best thing called blah" without being called out for fraud, maybe you should just improve your service.

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Scott Barber
Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
About.me

Co-Author, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
Author, Web Load Testing for Dummies
Contributing Author, Beautiful Testing, and How To Reduce the Cost of Testing

"If you can see it in your mind...
you will find it in your life."

An overview of Performance Testing for Agile/Lean teams

I'm going to be giving a short webinar on Oct 20 titled "An overview of Performance Testing for Agile/Lean teams" as part of a really cool recurring online mini-conference/webinar series call "Bathtub Conferences"  Check out the website for more information.

http://bit.ly/nWIvzk
 
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Scott Barber
Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
About.me

Co-Author, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
Author, Web Load Testing for Dummies
Contributing Author, Beautiful Testing, and How To Reduce the Cost of Testing

"If you can see it in your mind...
     you will find it in your life."

Stop Cheating and Start Running Realistic Tests

I did a webinar with SOASTA on 9/29/2011, in case you missed it, I've copied the description and links from SOASTA's Info Center so you can have a look.  If the twitter-verse is to be believed, it didn't suck.  :)

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Stop Cheating and Start Running Realistic Tests

Constrained by inflexible test hardware, poor tool scalability, exorbitant pricing models, and lack of real time performance information, performance testers have been forced to cheat for too long! Cloud Testing opens up elastic, full-scale load generation from global locations at affordable cost, rapid and accurate test building, and real time views of internal and external performance metrics.

• Stop removing “think times” to work around technical or license issues
• Build tests using real business workflow, not just a flood of page hits
• Run tests that preserve session states and accurate timings, end-to-end
• Inspect every component as tests run, not just from the outside-in

Watch the Webinar | Download the Webinar

 
--
Scott Barber
Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
About.me

Co-Author, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
Author, Web Load Testing for Dummies
Contributing Author, Beautiful Testing, and How To Reduce the Cost of Testing

"If you can see it in your mind...
     you will find it in your life."