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Test Automation for Legacy (and Modern) Apps--Better Strategies for Long-Term Reliability |
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Rob McNeil, SmartBear Senior Product Marketing Manager, and Mel Gage, SmartBear Solutions Engineer II |
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| Organizations usually have a mix of legacy and newer applications – and both app types present their own challenges when it comes to test automation. Newer applications, especially those still being developed, often receive the bulk of attention and investment, even though critical business operations are still largely reliant on legacy apps Keeping these apps functional and reliable is becoming harder, with outdated interfaces, rigid architecture, and mounting performance demands making test automation especially challenging. And while "digital transformation" is a popular buzzword, a complete overhaul isn't always practical—or necessary. Additionally, by employing the same types of strategies and tools with newer systems, starting as they're being developed and continuing through production, higher quality systems can be implemented and maintained more easily over longer production lives. Join our upcoming session, and bring your toughest testing questions as we discuss topics like?
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About the Speakers. . . Rob is Senior Product Marketing Manager with a passion for building go-to-market strategies and client enablement - and looks forward to any opportunity to connect with customers about their needs and the ways SmartBear can help. He has spent his SmartBear tenure working closely with product, development, sales, and marketing leaders to bring our product visions to life - and is most excited about the upcoming launch of the SmartBear Test Hub which will give software testing professionals new, more advanced ways of delivering high quality releases. |
| Mel is a Solutions Engineer II embedded with the sales organization at SmartBear as a valuable technical resource on the Test Hub product suite. Working closely with Support, Marketing, Sales, and Product teams, he helps enable customer success with SmartBear solutions, and partners with internal teams to drive quality and improvements in the product lines. With an extensive background in hardware testing, customer support, and solutions sales, he has a breadth of experience to assist our customers in finding and implementing testing solutions for their continued and improved success. |
March Speaker...
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| In March, Darrell Fernandes, Executive Advisor at our new host site, Scrum.org, presented a most-informative "The Quality-Value Equation: Enhancing Impact in Scrum Product Delivery." Darrell started with an overview of Scrum.org, including that they've issued more than one million scrum-related certifications! Some current research is reacting to the realization that popular AI tools give numerous inconsistent and incorrect answers to simple questions, such as, "who must attend daily stand-up meetings?" The problem stems from the AI tools "learning" from whatever they find on the Internet, without adequately recognizing the source's reliability. That is, Scrum.org is the voice of authority about scrum; but the AI tools also listen to the many other sources' misunderstandings. Much of Scrum.org's focus now is on its "Product Operating Model." Darrell clarified that the model is not about how a Product produced via scrum operates, but rather how the process producing the product operates [perhaps better called the "Product Production Model"?]. This is very much in line with other popular "project vs. product" themes. The premise is that project-based organizations focus on individual projects in ways that often lose sight of bigger-picture intended results. In contrast, product-based organizations keep focused on the intended product and can adapt quicker to deliver the needed product, which is a key essential to producing quality and achieving value. Integral to the model is maintaining small business accountability, where everyone knows why the product is valuable and bases decisions on what is needed to survive. This pushes accountability down to each manageable component. Darrell shared an anecdote of when this doesn't happen: product owners and product teams may not be incented to understand the entire impact of a product. By driving broader accountability, in one case, it enabled a product team to create multi-million-dollar savings through technology migration without impacting headcount. Darrell also shared his experience trying to introduce test-driven development. The QA folks resisted because they perceived coding to pass tests as "cheating." They were accustomed to viewing their role as catching developers' defects, perhaps even being measured by their "pelt count." They could only win when developers lose. [The better metric is not how many defects testers catch but how many defects developers and testers together miss.] |
Grateful thanks to sponsors Microsoft and mabl for making SQGNE possible. Please let us know of any additional prospective sponsors.
Link to SQGNE Community Links Page
Aug 2024