Accelerate classified the capabilities into 4 categories:

Technology & Automation capabilities:

Product and Process Capabilities:

Lean Management and Monitoring Capabilities:

Cultural Capabilities:

In next couple of articles, we will go over these capabilities one by one.

Faster software development is important because it saves time and money.

In a business world that is more competitive than ever before, it’s important to be able to develop software as quickly as possible. Today’s software developers need to be able to build out new features for the company’s product or service, and they need to do so quickly. The faster that this can happen, the less time is wasted, which means that companies will be more prepared and have a higher chance of success in this competitive market.

What Practices Will Help You Speed Up Your Software Development?

1. Shift Left through Automation
2. Implement CI/CD
3. Automate as many tasks as possible – coding, data entry, testing, etc.
4. Make defects visible so they can be fixed early and often – unit testing, nightly builds, etc.
5. Know what you want before you build it – are requirements clear? does the design make sense? are there risks or side effects we should know about?
6. Do things in parallel wherever possible – running multiple tests, running multiple code reviews at the same time, etc.
7. Be responsive to changes in requirements and design from stakeholders and teammates
8. Limit your work in progress

The test pyramid has four layers – unit tests, service tests, integration tests, end-to-end or acceptance tests. By dividing up the different types of tests into these levels, it becomes easier to decide what type of testing needs to be done when building and maintaining software.

At the bottom are unit tests. Unit tests are “white box” tests because they interact directly with product code. They typically perform operations on functions, methods, and classes. Unit tests should be concise, to the point, and focused on a single object/variation. They should be devoid of external dependencies and should instead rely on mocks/monkey-patching. These tests took less time to execute.

Integration tests are located in the center. Integration tests examine the point at which two distinct entities come together. They should be “black box” in nature, interacting with actual instances of the product being tested, rather than with code. Integration tests include service call tests (REST, SOAP, and others).

End-to-end tests are at top level. End-to-end tests trace a system’s path. They could be argued to be a multi-step integration test, and they should also be “black box.” Typically, they interact with the product in the same way that a real user would. Web UI tests are an example of integration tests, as they require the entire stack to run.

And manual testing is the cherry on top. Certain types of tests, such as exploratory or usability testing, cannot be automated, but we should always strive to minimize the number of manual tests.

You should be aware that as we progress up the pyramid, three factors begin to increase:

• Costs associated with the development and maintenance of tests
• Time frame for execution
• Possibility of erroneous negatives

Key aspects relating to the software testing pyramid include the following:

Avoid conducting duplicate tests at multiple levels. There is no reason to conduct the same tests at various levels. For instance, if boundary values were validated in unit tests, they should not be repeated in the GUI – you will not obtain any new data.

One should strive to reduce the difficulty of tests whenever possible. For example, you can verify interest calculation on a negative sum at a “medium level” or even at the unit test level. Therefore, why should you do it at the UI level? Lower-level test automation is more efficient; it enables you to identify defects earlier and saves you time and money.

Click here to download the slides.

Author: James Shore, The Art of Agile | First published at: PNSQC 2019

https://faun.pub/8-habits-of-highly-successful-continuous-testing-teams-e9aabc861708

In addition to automated tests, organizations using continuous integration typically use build tools to implement continuous quality control. In addition to running unit and integration tests, such tools can run additional static and dynamic tests, measure and profile performance, extract and format documentation from the source code, and facilitate manual quality assurance processes. This continuous application of quality control aims to improve the quality of the product as well as reduce the time taken to deliver it by replacing the traditional practice of applying quality control after completing all development.

Build tools can be linked to automatic deployment tools, which can fetch the appropriate build from the continuous integration or build server and deploy it into one or more development, test, staging, or even production environments. This reduces the errors and delays associated with relying on specialized staff or programmers to install releases in these environments.

Continuous integration can provide the following benefits:

• Allows earlier detection and easier root cause analysis of integration problems and conflicting changes
• Gives the development team regular feedback on whether the code is working
• Keeps the version of the software being tested within a day of the version being developed
• Reduces regression risk associated with developer code refactoring due to rapid re-testing of the code base after each small set of changes
• Provides confidence that each day’s development work is based on a solid foundation
• Makes progress toward the completion of the product increment visible, encouraging
• developers and testers
• Eliminates the schedule risks associated with big-bang integration
• Provides constant availability of executable software throughout the sprint for testing,
• demonstration, or education purposes
• Reduces repetitive manual testing activities
• Provides quick feedback on decisions made to improve quality and tests

However, continuous integration is not without its risks and challenges:

• Continuous integration tools have to be introduced and maintained
• The continuous integration process must be defined and established
• Test automation requires additional resources and can be complex to establish
• Thorough test coverage is essential to achieve automated testing advantages
• Teams sometimes over-rely on unit tests and perform too little system and acceptance testing
  
  

Continuous integration requires the use of tools, including tools for testing, tools for automating the build process, and tools for version control.

Following the developers’ coding, debugging, and check-in of code into a shared source code repository, a continuous integration process consists of the following automated activities:

• Static code analysis: executing static code analysis and reporting results
• Compile: compiling and linking the code, generating the executable files
• Unit test: executing the unit tests, checking code coverage and reporting test results
• Deploy: installing the build into a test environment
• Integration test: executing the integration tests and reporting results
• Report (dashboard): posting the status of all these activities to a publicly visible location or emailing status to the team

An automated build and test process takes place on a daily basis and detects integration errors early and quickly. Continuous integration allows Agile testers to run automated tests regularly, in some cases as part of the continuous integration process itself, and send quick feedback to the team on the quality of the code. These test results are visible to all team members, especially when automated reports are integrated into the process. Automated regression testing can be continuous throughout the iteration. Good automated regression tests cover as much functionality as possible, including user stories delivered in the previous iterations. Good coverage in the automated regression tests helps support building (and testing) large integrated systems. When the regression testing is automated, the Agile testers are freed to concentrate their manual testing on new features, implemented changes, and confirmation testing of defect fixes.

[Click here to Read Part 2]