Adrian Smith

7 Deadly Sins of Automated Software Testing

When Craig Smith and I were planning our presentation for Agile 2011 – we toyed with the idea of listing 7 anti-patterns for automated testing. I’ve taken these patterns and loosely matched them to the classic seven-deadly-sins. This metaphor also allowed me to include a linocut that my uncle Errol Smith made – pictured here.

Senior management often view automated testing as a silver bullet in reducing testing effort/costs and increasing delivery speed. While it is true that automated tests can provide rapid feedback on health of the system, all approaches to automated testing are not created equal and there are some gotchas that should be avoided.

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STANZ 2011 – Future Tester

Craig Smith and I be presented at STANZ 2011 on The Future Tester at Suncorp: A Journey of Building Quality In Through Agile in Melbourne, Australia. Our presentation was based around work that we have been doing at Suncorp to improve testing capability, skills and approaches. We also included some of the work we’ve done at Ennova on Agile Test Strategies. Read the rest of this entry »


Agile Australia 2011 – Startups

Startup businesses face significant risk in the search for a sustainable, profitable and scalable business model. Consequently, the success rate for Startups is low, making them a typically high risk investment. Agile methods offer a way of reducing the risk for both the technical implementation and the development of customers. This is achieved by increasing the ability for a Startup to adapt to change and to incorporate the lessons learned from early customer engagement. Read the rest of this entry »


Agile for Startups


I presented a session at the Brisbane Agile Academy Meetup group on Agile for Startups.

I discussed some of the Agile principles and practices relevant to a startup and demonstrated some of the tools used by Ennova. Despite numerous technical issues (which rendered the video unusable) the content stimulated heaps of questions.

Craig Smith and Fiona Mullen have reviewed the presentation and the full slide pack is now available on SlideShare.

Thanks to all those who attended.


Designing an Estimation Process

estimate
In many organisations (especially larger commercial or government) it is common for the project governance processes to require an estimate of project costs before funds can be released and the project launched. Therefore, it is necessary to develop an estimate that can be used as the basis of a go/no-go decision.

In the example discussed below, I was asked to create a process for developing an estimate that satisfied the above requirements. Rather than simply creating process flow and swim-lane diagrams, I tried to consider how the process could be adapted and matured over time as the organisation changed over time. In doing so I found the many agile/lean principles were being subtly introduced.
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