A Tale of Testing

A story about the journey of testing a large legacy code base.

Transcript

1. A Tale of Testing A story about automated testing by @trevorgowing hosted by @jembi_hs
2. Story time!
3. Setting the scene • Application began life as internal product • Unresourced developers left to make additions/alterations at will • Pervasive custom frameworks with tightly coupled client server architecture • Sold and extended for use by large corporate • 20+ developers have already worked on the application over time • Few 100 000 lines of code • +- 5 year old code base with multiple patterns present • Massive model redesign changing core entity recently completed • Next to no automated tests exist
4. Learning time... • Some of the team went to a conference or two and learned some more about automated testing etc • One of our senior engineers spent some time researching and designing a new development methodology including thorough automated testing.
5. A little bit of theory
6. It’s all about feedback loops https://agileinsights.wordpress.com/tag/agile-developmen t/
7. What do we want from our tests? • Failure reliability • Coverage • Maintainability • Readability • Pass reliability • Performance https://watirmelon.blog/2016/03/16/ama-ranking-automated-testing-attributes-in-order-of-importanc e/
8. Testing Triangle http://jonkruger.com/blog/2010/02/08/the-automated-testing-triangl e/
9. The Challenges and Principles
10. Start with the lowest barrier to entry https://astrobites.org/2015/04/03/what-is-the-meter-size-barrie r/
11. Risk vs Reward https://www.trinityp3.com/2013/11/performance-based-agency-compensatio n/
12. Boy scout principle http://www.jonathancarl.org/2013/06/a-christian-perspective-and-reflection.html
13. Subcutaneous tests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model%E2%80%93view%E2%80%93present er
14. Gotchas
15. Dates and times http://axenblogs.azurewebsites.net/datetime-in-sql-azure/
16. Synchronicity http://www.wakingtimes.com/2015/07/04/the-magic-of-synchronicity/
17. Shared fixture construction & destruction http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/construction-destruction/cover-art/gameCoverId,20551 4/
18. Default values in builders http://etoonzplus.etv.co.za/shows/youth-entertainment/bob-builder
19. Single responsibility acceptance steps http://marchoeijmans.blogspot.co.za/2012/05/single-responsibility-principle.html
20. Something to think about
21. 3X - Explore, Expand, Extract - Kent Beck https://andela.com/blog/kent-becks-product-development-triathlo n/
22. How do I decide how much testing I need? • How long is my code going to live? • What is the impact of code defects? • How long does it take to manually test my code? • Are there any external systems or integrations relying on my code? • How often is my code likely to change post initial release? • How many people are going to be working on the code? (Concurrently and over time) • How many people are going to be using my code?
23. Ancillaries
24. Local Conferences • Scrum Gathering • Scaleconf • Rubyfuza • DevOpsDays • Pycon • BSides • I Code Java
25. Recommended Resources • Joe Colantonio • Kent Beck on 3X - Explore, Expand and Extract • 3X with Kent Beck
26. Keep in touch and thanks! • Twitter - https://twitter.com/trevorgowing • Google - https://plus.google.com/+trevorgowing • Linkedin - https://za.linkedin.com/in/trevorgowing • Meetup - http://www.meetup.com/members/113029642 Special thanks to Alex Steinberg for creating this group and allowing me the opportunity to speak. Another special thanks to Jembi for hosting and sponsoring food & drinks!