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Volume 14, Issue 4 July/August 2012
18
C O N TENTS
features
14 BUILDING HIGHLY PROdUCTIVE TEAMS USING A COMMITMENT-TO-PROGRESS RATIO, Part 1
COVER STORY
Part one of this two-part article proposes a measure that helps calculate the throughput of an agile team by comparing work committed to work actually done. Part 2 focuses on factors and skills critical to achieving a high ratio between committed and delivered items. by Aleksander Brancewicz
14
18 REGULATION, COMPLIANCE, AND DELIVERY
Regulatory compliance may seem daunting, and penalties for non-compliance can be severe. What is the QA professionals role in making it work? by Paul Fratellone
22
MAKING BEAUTIFUL MUSICTHE ART OF SMALL TEAMS

In a jazz combo, each member of the team has a specialty. As the members play individually, they create a tapestry of music that becomes much greater than the sum of the individual contributions. A small development team also works best this way. by Steve Ropa
22
in every issue
4 Contributors 8 Editor's Note 9 Virtual Resource Shelf 12
Mark Your Calendar From One Expert to Another 13 Coming Soon: The New TechWell.com 25 Product Announcements 28 FAQ 35 Ad Index 37
Better Software magazineThe print companion to TechWell.com brings you the hands-on, knowledge-building information you need to run smarter projects and deliver better products that win in the marketplace and positively affect the bottom line. Subscribe today to get six issues. Visit www.BetterSoftware.com or call 800.450.7854.
columns
10
HOW TECHNICAL SUPPORT IS LIKE A PAIN IN THE NECK by Payson Hall A strategic planning session and a recent injury combine to provide insights into challenges associated with changing negative perception of technical support services.
MANAGEMENT CHRONICLES
36
THE LAST WORD

PERIPHERAL TESTING: A TYPE OF SYSTEMATIC EXPLORATORY TESTING by Faisal Qureshi Faisal Qureshi discusses a new test technique called peripheral testing that implements a systematic method that allows exploratory testing while maintaining a balance to traditional test case-driven testing. He explains how to test without the drawbacks of exploratory testing and widens test coverage compared to following test cases from a test plan.
www.TechWell.com JULY/AUGUST 2012 BETTER SOFTWARE
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Publisher Software Quality Engineering, Inc. President/CEO Wayne Middleton Vice President of Communications Heather Buckman Publications Manager Heather Shanholtzer Editorial Managing Technical Editor Lee Copeland Online Editors Joseph McAllister Jonathan Vanian Community Manager David DeWald Production Coordinator Cheryl M. Burke
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Design Creative Director Catherine J. Clinger Advertising Sales Consultants Daryll Paiva Kim Trott Production Coordinator Desiree Khouri
CONTACT US Editors: editors@bettersoftware.com Subscriber Services: info@bettersoftware.com Phone: 904.278.0524, 888.268.8770 Fax: 904.278.4380 Address: Better Software magazine Software Quality Engineering, Inc. 340 Corporate Way, Suite 300 Orange Park, FL 32073
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7
Contributors
Aleksander Brancewicz helps agile teams achieve outstanding results. In his career, he has coached teams comprising agile newbies as well as very experienced agile team members. Besides agile team building, his areas of interest are new media product management and software architecture. He lives with his wife and daughter in Amstelveen in the Netherlands.
Rick Craig has a wide range of experiences as a tester and test manager. Currently a consultant with SQE Training, he specializes in metrics, management, and process improvement. Rick has spoken at conferences around the world every year since 1984, including the Better Software conferences and every STAR conference. He is the co-author of Systematic Software Testing, a regular columnist for Better Software magazine and StickyMinds.comand a Colonel in the USMC Reserve.
Paul Fratellone is program director of quality and test consulting in the testing business unit of MindTree. Pauls career of more than twenty-five years in information technology has been concentrated in testing, compliance, and quality management. He strives to achieve consistent execution to attain a predictable level of quality that is commensurate with the investment, and he enables leadership to objectively measure the success and continuous benefits from these investments.
Payson Hall is a consulting project manager for Catalysis Group, Inc. in Sacramento, California. Payson consults on project management issues and teaches project management. Email Payson at payson@catalysisgroup.com. Follow him at twitter.com/paysonhall.
Erik Petersen is a consultant based in Melbourne, Australia. He's helped build software systems across applications, telecommunications, and infrastructure for more than twenty years. Erik has become an encyclopedia of software and test process, strategy, automation, and tools. Contact him at ecp@testingspot.net.
Faisal Qureshi currently works as a senior test engineer at Motorola Solutions Inc. He has published testing articles in Professional Tester and in Testing Experience. Faisal is ISTQB certified and has completed digital Six Sigma courses. Prior to working at Motorola Solutions, Faisal worked as an associate professor teaching game and simulation programming. His contact is: fizzq@ hotmail.com.
Steve Ropa has been developing software for twenty yearseleven of which were in the agile worldand he's been a jazz trombonist for thirty years. Currently, Steve is an agile coach and consultant at VersionOne Software (http://www.versionone. com), where he specializes in helping teams merge the technical and team-oriented aspects of agile transformations. Steves blog can be found at http://steveropa.wordpress.com/.
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Editors Note
Better Software
and
So Much
more
Software Quality Engineering publishes a ton of great content every month both in Better Software magazine and online at StickyMinds.com, Agile Journal, and CM Crossroads. So, for this issue, I decided to showcase some of the authors who write for our websites. Go online to read more from these authors or sign up for one of our website-affiliated newsletters to have great articles delivered to your inbox weekly or monthly. Whats New Gram is a weekly recap of new testing-focused content that appears on StickyMinds.com, the monthly Agile Journal showcases the newest agile-related articles from AgileJournal.com, and CM Journal spotlights a months worth of new configuration management articles from CMCrossroads.com. Our cover story this issue, Building Productive Teams Using a Commitment-to-Progress Ratio, originally appeared on Agile Journal. Its the first part of a two-part series that introduces methods to build a team that embraces required work and delivers robust software by tracking how much of the committed work is actually being done. From StickyMinds.com, we have Regulation, Compliance, and Delivery, which explains the QA professionals role in ensuring compliance in regulated projects. Finally, from CM Crossroads, we have Making Beautiful MusicThe Art of Small Teams, which compares the dynamics of a small team to the workings of a jazz combo. Also in this issue, youll find a peek at our soon-to-be-launched curated site. We are looking for software professionals who are passionate about their craft and who love to write. If that sounds like you, then check out page 25 to find out how you can get involved. As always, I hope you enjoy this issue of Better Software magazine. Well have a lot of exciting new updates in the coming months, so stay tuned!
Happy reading,
hshanholtzer@sqe.com
Management Chronicles
How Technical Support Is Like a Pain in the Neck

A painful real-life experience led Payson to challenge an organization's perception of "bad" versus "good" technical support.
by Payson Hall | payson@catalysisgroup.com
were frustrated and skeptical of ITs ability to deliver and I dont know exactly what caused the problem. I may have hesitant to allocate more resources. Meanwhile, shrinking crashed into a wall harder than usual while playing racquetbudgets and expanding scope were stressing the IT support ball. I vaguely remember the hatchback of my car lightly hitorganizations ability to recruit and retain staff, and service ting the back of the head while I was unloading something. was continuing to decay. The bottom line was that resource I may have slept on it wrong. All I know is that about a relief was not expected in the near term. month ago, I woke up with a stiff neck. The new CIO had been working to improve governance I didnt think much of it. It was a little uncomfortable, and with the business executives and had succeeded in getting the range of motion was slightly restricted. I had to turn my a list of the current IT projects prihead slowly to avoid discomfort. But, it oritized. The business execs, though was a busy time, and I charged on with Good servicethe skeptical at first, quickly embraced the my day. notion of prioritizing ITs work when As the day wore on, I became more occasions when help is they realized that this might influence uncomfortable. I couldnt turn or elthe level of service they received. evate my head at all. I learned that From a planning perspective, the taking aspirin or drinking out of a cup timely and efficient challenges boiled down to the folwithout being able to tip my head back lowing questions: was painful (and a little funny). By the may often go unnoticed, 1. How can we successfully address evening, I was not a happy camper. It the top ten projects as prioritized by became very difficult to lie down. I was but bad service gets the business executives? really appreciating the fifty-three prior 2. How can we improve the level of years I had enjoyed without ever innoticed and reinforces service we provide to our clients? juring my neck. 3. How can we improve our clients Twenty-four hours and a fist full of expectations. perception of the quality of the seribuprofen later, I was fine. vice we provide? A few days later, fully recovered from my neck lock incident, I facilitated a planning session Several people in the room were initially surprised when with senior IT staff of a local organization. We reviewed the I emphasized the distinction between items two and three. thirty-year history of the outfit. Many of the people in the Engineers and technical people often leap to the conclusion room had been there fifteen years or more and had a longthat the best way to improve the perception of service is to term perspective on some of the challenges. In reality, this is a necessary but insufficient improve service. In this organization, IT mostly consisted of application, approach. Marketing people often assume that if you address desktop, and network support (application development was perception, actually improving service levels isnt important outsourced), and the past few years had seen a procession but lets not dwell on those evil impulses. of frustrated IT leaders with differing visions. The scope of People who receive occasionally poor service are used the support work performed by IT had expanded with the to complaining (justifiably) about it. Poor service and jokes growth of the organization and the addition of new appliabout poor service become an expected part of the culture. cations, but IT headcount had been frozen and budgets had Good servicethe occasions when help is timely and effibeen shrinking for the past eight years or so. IT wasnt highly cientmay often go unnoticed, but bad service gets noticed valued, and their budget had languished as a consequence. and reinforces expectations. This gives expectations a great The group seemed honest in their assessment: The support deal of inertia, because they have been reinforced over a long organization had earned its spotty reputation for service. As period of time. we discussed the kernel of the problem, it became apparent When I began to explain my recent neck lock as an exthat there was danger of a deadly embrace. Business users
10
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Management Chronicles
ample of changing my perception and helping me appreciate a well-oiled neck, one of the meeting participants asked, Do you mean we should go on a campaign of providing really bad service, so that people appreciate what they had before? I explained that the relevant part of my neck story was how much I appreciated the lack of pain when it returned to normal. When did you last wake up in the morning and feel thrilled that your neck felt normal? But normal here hasnt historically been very good service, another participant offered. That is exactly why we need to encourage people to look for an improvement. I said. We need to get people to look for a change in service levels. I pointed out that I was carefully monitoring the mobility of my head for the first few days after my injury had healed and really appreciated what I had taken for granted before, primarily because now I was aware of it. We discussed the challenge of changing perceptions. Many of the people on the business side of the organization had been there twenty years or more, and it would be difficult to change their perceptions. Historically, business users had often been forced to fend for themselves when faced with technical issues. They were jaded, and their perceptions would be slow to change. When new people joined the business organization, it wasnt long before they learned from their peers that they should expect the IT organization to provide poor support. That suggested one target audience for changing perceptions: people newly hired into the business organization. How could we inexpensively provide them with a good customer support experience right after they joined the organization? One of the initiatives that we identified was a program of assuring that new users received a welcome soon after they started with the organization that included providing them with a new workstation that was ready to go and a quick briefing about the software used by the organization and online resources with more information about the software (users guides and FAQs). Providing new workstations normally happened within a week of the new employee starting anyway, so it wasnt net new work; it was a matter of prioritizing the activity so that new people had an initial positive experience with IT. The FAQs existed, but standard procedure was to direct users there when they called for tech support (which didnt win hearts and minds). It was further suggested that for the first week, new employees would be assigned a member of the technical team they could go to directly with questions. It was even agreed that, after a week, the formal hand off from their IT buddies could happen over coffee, assuring that the new person had all his questions answered and knew what normal channels for support were going forward. Net cost of this initiative was pretty much zero. Another prong of the approach was to publicize the changes that the IT organization was making to improve service. This might encourage some of the jaded, long-time business users to pay attention and look for service improvements.
A third step toward managing user expectations was making sure that the business executives were clear about the priority that they assigned their projects and assuring they understood and would communicate to their organization the service implications of not assigning a high priority to an initiative. The organization has its work cut out for it, but these initiatives (among others) may help users recognize and appreciate improving service. Over time, this may help IT improve its reputation with its user base, hopefully leading to renewed appreciation of the service organizations value that can be reflected in future budgets. The next time someone says that tech support is a pain in the neck, remind him that it really is. When it works well, no one notices, but when it doesnt work people really pay attention. {end} This article originally appeared on StickyMinds.com. Visit http://well.tc/PainInTheNeck to post comments and questions for Payson.
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Author recommended books, blogs, gadgets, websites, and other tools for building better software
Do you use a smartphone or tablet for work-related activities, or do you think they are better suited for entertainment?
I use my smartphone for work-related purposes as I do a fair amount of business-related travel. I would not want to do without it. The phone actually saves me time and money.
Paul Fratellone
As an early adopter of smartphones and someone who relies upon email and spends lots of time out of the office at client sites, I initially embraced my smartphone as a small, slow window for email access. The ability to monitor my email and respond to quick inquiries was helpful, but for years, I didn't go beyond that. During the past year, I've seen a number of people integrating tablet technology very well into a mobile lifestyle, and I am starting to make inroads in that regard. I purchased and read the first book on my iPad about six month ago. I've read six more since then, and I now purchase and give away copies of a really good book (Are Your Lights On? by Weinberg and Gause) on a flash drive to people who attend my problem-solving class. Easy access to reference books, note taking, etc., is starting to make it less likely I take out my laptop in meetings. I've been slow to adopt technologies like DropBox, but they are on my list. (I also play a KILLER game of Civilization Revolution and Words with Friends, but please don't tell the IRS ... I told them the tablet was a business expense).
I use my phone to read tech and other news from around the world (mostly RSS feeds), and also as a calendar/notebook/organizer. I'm still waiting for the elusive Ubuntu tablet to be released.
Erik Petersen
I use my tablet for entertainment purposes mostly. However, as reading books is part of my work, I can classify reading on the tablet as a work-related activity, which I do quite often. In general, I find tablets very suitable for reading but quite cumbersome for writing, so when I have to write something, I do it on a laptop. I guess a traditional keyboard combined with a touch pad or mouse does the trick.
Aleksander Brancewicz
Payson Hall
12
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From One Expert to Another
Alan Page
Years in Industry: 19 Email: alan.page@microsoft.com Interviewed by: Joey McAllister Email: jmcallister@sqe.com
In these days when I can discover nearly any fact in a few seconds (depending on my Internet speed), Id expect facts to be much less important than critical
I dont think the lack of critical thinking is confined to testers and programmersperhaps its just most profound there, since critical thinking is so important.
thinking and analysis. Know how to learn. Once youre on the job, what you know doesnt matter nearly as much as what you can figure out.
Success depends on your ability to experiment and discover solutions.
I find it helpful to stop once in a while and question our approaches and assumptions and to think about alternate views and approaches.
Even if we dont change, even a brief bit of consideration for diverse approaches can help us understand the systems were working in. These days, every time I want to learn about a new topic, I insist on reading at least three books on the topic. As a leader or manager, its critical to challenge new hires to understand how their little piece of the world fits into the big picture.
It would be great if degrees in technical disciplines required any course on how to thinkespecially if the exercises could be tailored to match potential career choices.
For the full interview, visit
http://well.tc/FOETA14-4
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ISTOCKPHOTO
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Planning work for the next iteration is a basic activity within iterative software development. A group responsible for the product and business strategy prepares a list of prioritized items describing what should be done, while a development team provides an estimate on how many of these work items can be finalized during the iteration. Early Scrum books (e.g., Agile Development with Scrum) teach that the software development process is highly empirical and cannot simply be reduced to a set of mathematical formulas. As a result, any attempt to derive a precise, longterm schedule with a detailed work path from any technical architecture will inevitably fail. Instead, a team should observe and measure progress while the work rolls out and, based on observation, adjust their plans and create a forecast for the future. There are two general approaches to building an estimate. In the first, the team estimates the size of the work items (e.g., user stories and use cases). At the end of the iteration, the team sums up estimates for all delivered items. The resulting number is called the velocity. After a few sprints the team may start calculating an average velocity based on results from the past. The only available conclusion is that the team is able to do on average K work items per iteration. The team performs no assessments in respect of comparing the planned and delivered items. In the second approach, as in the first, the team estimates the work items. However, they also commit to a number of work items they believe they can finish within an iteration. The team not only measures the velocity but also compares it to the their declared commitment. The goal is to minimize the discrepancy between the teams commitment and velocity. In the first approach, the team members measure only how much they can deliver. But, what if the team struggles to deliver anything at all? Finishing even one user story might be challenging, especially for agile software development newbies. Some teams end up in a permanent cycle of over-commitment preceded by a few sprints without any tangible results. During these situations, should you (as a team member, a team coach, or a manager) only keep measuring the teams velocity? Do the team members fully embrace their work if they deliver only every second or third sprint, leaving the other sprints empty? My answer to both these questions is no. The commitment-to-progress ratio refers to the betweenthe-work items the team commits to at the beginning of the iteration and the ones that actually have been delivered at the end of an iteration. The distance between the commitment and the progressas well as the correlation between them describes a value of the commitment-to-progress ratio. A high ratio means that the distance between what has been committed and what is delivered remains low and steady. Having more committed items leads to more deliverables and having a low commitment implies low delivery. A low ratio occurs when there is a long-lasting discrepancy between the number of committed and delivered items or a lack of correlation between the underestimated or overestimated commitments. The ratio between progress and commitment shows the maturity of the teams vision of what and how they can de-
liver during an iteration. The distance between progress and commitment reflects how deeply the team members embrace their work and profession. If we, as a team, commit to ten work items and only deliver one on a regular basis, then our promise is not worth much. However, if we commit to ten work items and routinely deliver eight or nine, then we look like we are in control and understand what we do. Moreover, once we equip ourselves with the commitmentto-progress ratio, we create an environment in which teams can grow based on a measurable pace. Whenever a team experiments with new tools and methods and needs to create software for a different problem, it can get back on track faster. But how does this translate to throughput? A team that embraces its job, resulting in a high ratio, is able to respond quickly and in a predictable way to changing business circumstances. A company that supports such teams may focus on business value. Software development is no longer a challenge, but a profession that builds products tailored to customer needs. Knowing the dynamics between commitment and progress helps us understand the current level of knowledge about the environment, business domain, and technical domain within a team. It shines a light on whether the team is undergoing a true transformation or has had a few better sprints by chance. Last, but not least, it exposes issues that a team should tackle in order to improve. For example, a standard velocity function represents progress and user story points per iteration (or other measures) represent commitment. What follows are the main scenarios regarding various values of distance and correlation parameters.
Figure 1: Enormous initial distance followed by run to the high ratio
Figure 1 shows an enormous initial discrepancy between commitment and progress, which is typical for teams just starting to learn how to estimate and deliver within an iteration. Consider a freshly formed team with members who previously worked in an environment where someone else (e.g., senior architect) made estimates on their behalf. Teams in which a majority of members are immature with respect to hard and soft skills may also fall under this category. Learning to estimate and deliver, the team shortens the distance between lines. Ideally, the lines should converge at some point, but a more realistic goal is the velocity function and committed work items functioning together with a small difference between their values. This is what you should aim for as a team coach through the first iterations.
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Its common for a team to overestimate their potential substantially when attempting their first iteration. By stepping down their commitment, along with some other changes, they begin to reduce the initial gap. As they achieve better results, they may feel that all major problems already have been overcome and again attempt to commit to far more than they can deliver. Eventually, they recognize which issues impact their ability to match their commitment and progress. This is the ideal course, but reality may be more difficult. Dont count on the learning process being smooth. In most cases, it is a long and tough endeavor. Depending on team members skill levels (described further in part 2 of this article), it may take three to eight iterations to achieve a high ratio. If it takes more than eight iterations, then the odds are against its success unless some circumstances change.
with a small difference between the commitment and progress might suggest that nothing is happening. It can be quite worrisome, because without absorbing new things and changing, we become vulnerable while the world around us moves forward. The pace of returning to a high commitment-to-progress ratio from a local disturbance should be proportional to the scale of the disturbance itself. Very complex architectures with many unknowns about technology and business domain often trigger large disturbances that take more time to stabilize. On the other hand, small changese.g., a new, mature team member who integrates quickly with other team membersshould cause only an insignificant disturbance.
Figure 2: High ratio with local disturbances
Figure 3: Switched cycle
Most teams should aim for the high commitment-to-progress ratio in figure 2. What a team can deliver is quite predictable, because the distance between commitment and progress is short and the correlation is high. There always exist some local disturbances, and the time it takes to return harmony between the commitment and progress depends on the scale of the disturbance. A significant disturbance might be triggered by a new technology, a new environment around the team (e.g., a new deployment process), a new business domain, or a change in the definition of done, all of which add variability by introducing new circumstances to which it takes team members extra time to adjust. Non-standard tasks or tasks involving a lot of creativity can disturb your team, sometimes significantly. For example, lets examine the creation of a new architecture. The goal is to combine various technologies, standards, and practices with respect to given constraints into one working system that can be easily enhanced, scaled, and maintained. Some proofs of concept might be necessary. With limited knowledge, it is likely that the team will underestimate some parts of this task. They must build strong technical scaffolding, which they later will fill in with expected functionalities. Other sources of variability include a significant change in the requirements and a serious issue in the architecture. Their impact may result in a downgrade of the commitment-toprogress ratio, and the lines describing commitment and progress may never fully meet. Team members can always make wrong assumptions, and they will (and should) try new things to improve their development skills and processes, which might further result in disturbance. Theoretically speaking, achieving 100 percent correlation
16
Ensuring delivery of working software every iteration is one of the principles of iterative software development. The end of each iteration is marked not only by the last day of its settled time limit but also by a large number of delivered work items. The switched cycle takes place when the delivery stretches across several iterations. You can spot the switched cycle easily in figure 3. The distance between the commitment and progress is quite large in the first two or three iterations, followed by an eruption of delivered items in the next iteration. All of a sudden, the team delivers high above their commitment. If this phenomenon has a repeatable nature, then its likely that a team has difficulty meeting the acceptance criteria.
Figure 4: Regular under-commitment
If team members regularly do more than initially expected and add extra items to the end of iterations, its likely that this is a symptom of an environment that is not challenging enough. You may come across such a situation when you begin with lightweight acceptance criteria in order to ensure a smooth start. Now is the right time to set the bar higher.
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Figure 5: Regular over-commitment
Working in iterations, taking care of quality, estimating work items efficiently, and collaborating with other team members take time and patience. However, if there is no chance of reaching a high commitment-to-progress ratio, then the team coach should react appropriately by discovering and addressing the underlying reasons. The most common reasons for continuous over-commitment include the following: The factors influencing the commitment-to-progress ratio are set up in an unfavorable way: tasks are too difficult for your team to grasp, the definition of done is too vague, the environment is distracting, etc. The environment cannot be embraced by the team members in a predictable fashion due to nature of the tasks (see part 2). Team members do not possess key skills. The team members feel a strong pressure (real or imaginary) to deliver more and, as a result, commit to more than they can handle. Because of this, they cannot focus on improvements and tend to repeat the same flaws. The team has no motivation to change their way of working. It might also be tough for experienced teams to embrace new subjects, which results in a long period of over-commitment. However, the more a team is mature, the less time it takes for its members to get back to the high ratio.
from a local significant disturbance. The disturbance is always triggered by changes like creating a new platform from scratch, introducing new business goals, new technology, or facing abnormal tasks. A team in the buzz of daily work may fail to notice a change at first, but they can adapt. In the case of sudden ratio deterioration, a team may struggle to deliver for reasons unknown to them. All improvement attempts fail, making it seem like there is no way out. The team probably lacks technical or work organization skills and cannot figure out what the real issues are which hold them back. The coachs role is to step in and introduce the team to the new concepts that help them moving forward. The most common sources of the sudden deterioration are a new definition of done or a change in work assignments. Sometimes, a team is assigned a task that they already understand, and good results follow. I once worked with a team that achieved a high commitment-to-progress ratio because most of the stories touched upon the front side of their platform, which every team member knew well. When faced with work items that required serious back-end development, the team members were unable to finish even one story successfully. A limited knowledge about the back-end logic combined with a lack of software architect skills wrecked their attempts to combine separate parts into one working whole. A remedy for sudden ratio deterioration is root cause analysis followed by implementation of improvements. In most cases, an experienced team coachs support is substantial enough to ensure that a team gets quickly back on track. At the same time, this situation presents an opportunity to instill improvement habits in team members. It is a tough experience, and it may be difficult for team managers to explain to their bosses why successes turned into failures. As a team coach, work to ensure that those bosses come to the proper conclusions. In this part of the article I have introduced the commitment-to-progress ratio as a measure that helps establish how far the team is able to embrace their tasks. I also described some positive and negative scenarios of relations between the committed and delivered work every team might be faced with. In part 2, I will answer the question How one can build a team that achieves a high commitment-to-progress ratio? and present the core skills and factors that influence the ratio. {end}
aleksander.brancewicz@gmail.com
This article originally appeared on AgileJournal.com. Visit http://well.tc/HighlyProductiveTeams to post comments and questions for Aleksander.
Figure 6: Sudden ratio deterioration
A teams ability to deliver may crumble after achieving significant improvements in reducing a gap between the commitment and progress. This scenario applies mostly to teams that have just started developing in the agile environment, but sometimes it may surprise experienced teams, too. It is important to distinguish sudden ratio deterioration
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Regulatory compliance and agile are words that may not seem to belong together. Nonetheless, agile delivery is a reality, business drivers rule, and to production we must go. You must know your risks and understand the impacts to the business. When regulatory agencies issue warnings to companies not in compliance, those companies stock prices can take a major hit. The Latin phrase non scriptum non est means If it is not written, it does not exist and is appropriate for regulatory compliance, where documentation is of the utmost importance. However, it is worse to have your processes documented and not followed than to have no documented processes at all. Whatever processes are in place must be documented, verifiable, and auditable. Should an audit occur, anything related to that regulated process and environment can come into scope and be used to prove a company is following documented policies and procedures.
Compliance Strategy and Leadership

My first experience in dealing with software that handled regulated data was with Title 21 CFR Part 11 of the Code
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of Federal Regulations, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines on electronic records and electronic signatures. More recently, I was responsible for compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley and the Office of Foreign Assets Control for specially designated nationals. For the FDA projects I worked on, the compliance leader made T-shirts to get the word out. The front read, Comply or die, and the back, ... but we are here to help. Both messages on the shirt were sincere. In most cases where regulations apply, one must prove that a documented process has been followedthat auditable records and reports validating the processes and related document artifacts are in place, secured, maintained and adhered to. Most regulatory agencies will only state what is under compliance, never how to be in the compliant state. When dealing with highly regulated environments like the FDA, expect additional layers of QA or compliance management within companies. I separated them into Big Q and Little Q. The Big Q compliance teams at this company dealt with interpretation and opinions as to what processes needed to be in place to satisfy regulations. I was Little Q for
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this company. There was Q envy, as Big Q also oversaw the how aspect from Little Q, which owned the delivery and maintenance of the compliant state. Getting to the validated compliant state was no easy task, and maintaining it was even harder and costlier. Risk to the business can be extreme, and the need for levels of compliance knowledge and leadership is serious. Part of the strategy is to deal with the regulatory representatives within your organization as accountable stakeholders that are totally engaged in the ongoing system delivery lifecycle.
The Awakening
I was totally unprepared to learn that any piece of software and hardware that deals with regulated data falls under regulatory compliance. This meant that the tools we used in the delivery of the software and handling of regulated data, like defect tracking, requirements, source or version control, test case repository, and management systems, now had to be in the compliant state. We needed quickly to learn new terms, such as installation qualification (IQ), operational qualification (OQ), and performance qualification (PQ).
IQ, OQ, and PQ would need several articles to discuss, but it is important to call out the need for experienced compliance leaders in traversing the regulated landscape. These qualification steps needed to be in place, documented, and validated for the ancillary software and hardware prior to any production deployments for regulated data or processes. This included requirements management, source or version control, test case management, and defect management software. Standard operating procedures (SOPs) for all tools and processes in support of the regulated data were a priority, as was the training needed for all associates involved with regulated data. I once thought that having a quality and process ally like the FDA was going to be a great thing, but that soon turned out to be a double-edged sword. Fortunately for the team, I was able hire an ex-FDA auditor to work on the specifics of dealing with regulatory commercial compliance. His knowledge and experience in citing high-risk areas was instrumental to our success and to remaining within budget. Getting to the compliant state increased my teams efforts and cost close to 40 percent when compared to a project with no regulations,
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and ongoing maintenance costs (depending upon the rate of change for the regulated components) increased to around 30 percent.
Avoiding the Land Mines

Lets examine some aspects of the agile manifesto and set in motion some changes in executing agile delivery for regulated data and processes.
Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools

The first partindividuals and interactionswill not change. Ensure that your compliance team is a stakeholder and an active contributor in delivering a compliant system. There is a clear migration towards pooling resources as regulations cross and overlap between many internal business units, but no business will remain compliant without a solid approach and long-term strategy. Consolidate compliance through a single, internal audit department supported by tools that streamline the process of achieving and maintaining the compliant state. Tools will not change, as they are efficient mediums to maintain the documents or artifacts needed for an audit. Processes are at the heart of what regulatory compliance talks to. One must have standard, documented processes and methods. Document how processes are defined, governed, implemented, and monitored. In other words, create an SOP on creating SOPs. That is not a joke. An SOP on compliance training needs a special citation and should not be overlooked. Everyone involved in delivering a regulated application must be trained on those regulations and what it means to be compliant. Periodic training sessions must also be part of the training SOP. In our organization, Big Q was responsible for ensuring that the organization was trained.
We even explored creating a separate database for the regulated components and data elements. Although that idea was not feasible for us, I suggest giving the idea some consideration for your project. The drain of maintaining the compliant state will negatively impact the schedule and budget. Knowing which functional or feature sets directly or indirectly touch regulated components will help you decide how well optimized the release-and-delivery plan is in regards to regulated components. When changes come down the pike that touch regulated components, you need to be on top of the impacts and risks to the validation efforts that have already taken place and the tests that still remain. Be very aware of the time it will take to certify the regulated components. Targeting the last set of sprints as the time for deploying the regulated components will save on re-certifying those components. Moving regulated components to production without certification can be extremely costly to the organization.
Conclusion
Penalties for non-compliance quickly reach into hundreds of thousands (and possibly millions) of dollars, and the negative public exposure can damage a companys reputation. In some cases, besides monetary damages, a company might be forced to go back to paper until all the exposures are mitigated. The trend for governments across the world to impose continued regulations will increase. As QA professionals, the burden to deliver quality in the compliant state falls squarely into our hands. Quality is a marathon and not a sprint, and the investment to maintain the compliant state needs to be articulated clearly to management. It is a continual process that must be integrated into the fabric of the organization. The cost for compliance is high and can be deemed a cost of doing business, but that is not good enough. As QA professionals, we need to explain the cost and risk-benefit equation of testing and regulatory compliance and articulate to business owners the real cost of quality in attaining the compliant state {end}
Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation

Software that has regulated data and processes must be working and, of course, validated. A compliance strategy already must have decided how comprehensive the documentation needs to be in order to be compliant. Get buy-in from Big Q on how it will be stored, secured, accessed, and reported. Once you have deployed the regulated aspects of the software into production, documentation must be submitted and complete. There is no way around the documentation requirement. Handling compliant systems via agile delivery must be done carefully, especially when deciding when to introduce the regulated components into the production environment. In waterfall delivery, this problem is much easier to deal with. The final certification of compliance can be completed prior to the production release, or it can be held off with regard to the regulated components and deployed closer to production. During release planning in an agile delivery project, the team must make these decisions and decide the best time to introduce the regulated components into production. Once the regulated components are in production, they must be continually certified as each subsequent production deployment is made.
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paul_fratellone@mindtree.com
This article originally appeared on StickyMinds.com. Visit http://well.tc/RegulationCompliance to post comments and questions for Paul.
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Have you ever watched a jazz combo? The performance starts with the leader counting off the rhythm, then stepping away. Then the drummer begins to lay down a beat. Even at this stage, the audience can feel a groove hit the room. Soon, the piano joins and adds both melody and harmony to the piece. Energy is flowing from the chords as the team starts to see and feel the direction of the piece. Now its time for the other instruments to join in the fun. A typical combo will have a couple of different instruments--maybe a sax and a trombone, or some other combination. Whoever starts off will state the melodic theme for the song, although sometimes the whole group does this together. After that, everyone gets a chance to do a solo, in which they improvise on the main theme, key off of past experiences, and apply their musical knowledge. It is not uncommon for jazz musicians to jibe each other, making jokes and comments while they are playing. The energy in the room builds and builds as the musicians play together, sometimes one at a time, sometimes in tandem. When you watch a jazz combo really swinging, it can be hard to tell who his having more fun, the audience or the musicians. What in the world does this have to do with software? Actually, quite a bit. Lets look at how small teams work and interact, from within this metaphor. In the agile community, we have asserted over and over again that we need small, cross-functional teams. And yet, what really is cross-functional? Can cross-functional really work? The more traditional view of software creation involves the need for separate, functionally focused teams that are experts at their domain. The teams only interact as they are passing work items from one to the other. When development is done, we hand off to test. Test will find defects and hand them back to development. And the dance continues in this light forever. In a jazz combo, or any other small musical group, each member of the team has a specialty. As the members play individuallybut often togetherthey create a tapestry of music that becomes much greater than the sum of the individual contributions. A small development team works best this way. We have some set of programmers, testers, documentation specialists, and some representative of the business working together. Team members gain their energy from each other. They try new things and get feedback right away from anyone who wishes to listen and share. The team members dont need to just focus on their own areas either. A tester can very easily and effectively form a duet with a programmer. They will play off of each other with their ideas. The tester will write a test to express some piece of functionality that the software will have. Then the programmer will answer with the code that will cause the test to pass. So we write another test based on this back and forth interaction. In music this interaction is known as call and answer, and it is especially effective with the testing and programming cycle. More often than not, a programmer will pair with another programmer. This duet is very effective and powerful as well, and should be embraced as often as possible. Lets explore some of the roles that are important in a development team. Usually there is some sort of coach or leader. In the Scrum world, you might hear about the ScrumMaster. Each of these names is meant to describe someone who is both a part of, and to some extent outside of, the team itself; in a jazz combo, this is the directors role. Not every combo has a director, but many do. Sometimes that director is part of the team, only directing long enough to initiate and introduce a number to the audience. In software development, the director represents the team to the stakeholders, and helps plan the meetings, stand-ups, and the likeessentially counting off the beat. If the rhythm seems to be getting lost, the director can help the team identify this fact and help with corrective actions. A team also needs an individual who has the ability to identify what needs to be developed. In agile, this role belongs to the product owner. Now consider a jazz combos basic rhythm section: The drummer lays out the shape of what is to develop; the bass takes this one step further, presenting the progression of chords that identify the order in which the chords that make up the actual harmonies and melodies will be played. Lastly, the piano comes in with the rich, fully realized chords. Accordingly, the product owner has to play all three roles of the rhythm section, explicitly: identifying the work to be done or the shape of the upcoming work. And, of course, we also have the rest of the musicians who are like the testers and programmers who have some specialization. In most bands, there are not only specialists as far
as the instrument they play, but how they play it. In the Duke Ellington band, not only was Cat Anderson known for being a great trumpet player but he was also known as a high-note specialist. If applied to the agile software development environment, not only are there specializations like programmer and tester, but there are also some folks who are best at UI or at database work. There was never a rule that only Cat Anderson could play the high notes, or that he could only play certain notes, and there should never be a rule that only your UI guy can work in the UI. That would lead to a very thin team. There are many reasons why small groups are desirable. Members of a small combo are best able to work together
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and play off of each others strengths and weaknesses. They can react to changes that might come from the stage dynamics. Whereas many large bands require a hefty amount of coordination and very little room for improvisation, the small combo thrives on improvisation. Everyone adds what fits best, and the feedback is immediate. The energy builds, not just from each contribution but also from the cumulative effect. The band doesnt stop and argue when someone makes a change during a jam session, band members pick up the new tempo and use this change to make the music better than ever before; the same thing happens in software. The team is able to communicate and work together. The different players are not going through some intermediary, but directly to each other. The energy, the pace, and the quality of the product all come out through this tight, frequent interaction. So now picture this: The team comes together for a planning meeting; the director establishes the tempo by identifying, with the help of the team, the velocity for the upcoming work; the product owner then lays down a groove, describing the melody and harmony of the iteration. She does this by providing the depth of description and acceptance tests that show not just what we will be doing, but how each story interacts with the others. Now the rest of the team picks up the melody as shown by how the programmers and testers pair up and work on stories together. The teams energy builds as the code is tossed back and forth in short phrases. Each member employs his strengths, but helps to contribute to the overall outcome wherever he can. At the end of the iteration, the audience expresses its appreciation for another fantastic performance. Now we can chill for a little while, enjoy our success, and look forward to the next gig. {end}
steven.ropa@versionone.com
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[1]
Capers Jones, A Short History Of The Cost Per Defect Metric, Randall Rice, The Value of ISTQB Certication
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Coming Soon
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Coming Soon
The Wisdom of Crowds

by Erik PetersenTechWell.com Curator
Theres a lot to be said for the wisdom of crowds. I heard James Surowiecki [1] speak about it at the 2008 Agile Conference and its a fascinating topic. At the recent Agile Australia conference, Doug Blue from Seek (an international job-seeker website group) spoke about letting the audience decide the fine-tuning of the user interface as a last step in usability testing. By selecting a small group of users, Seek is able to monitor crowd wisdom to help select the preferred interface. Some of the changes are almost invisible to the users, for example, tiny pink pixel highlights on an email me more jobs link increased its usage by 27 percent. Doug also explained his approach in this interview [2]. While this type of testing is becoming a standard across the industry, it is very easy to get it wrong. Doug explained that something as simple as having two drop down lists on a salary search impacted the number of job applications they received. There is also the danger in mixing user interface testing with functionality testing in a live environment, as Google and Delta recently discovered. What would todays equivalent be for the famous trash [3] icons of early PC desktops? If you utilize crowd wisdom, the choice would have to be an icon pairthe thumbs up/ thumbs down, like/dislike icons. Recently, Google, a pioneer of crowd wisdom interface testing, appeared to overstep the mark by replacing these icons in YouTube. A Google spokes-
person said, We are currently running experiments showing different Google+ buttons in YouTube in order to provide the best user experience. They replaced the thumbs up/thumbs down buttons with a G+ logo and +1, Like, or Share. This drew a strong response (with some strong language, as well) from Wil Wheaton [4] comparing the change to forcing people to like something before letting them see it. While some people saw this as a logical architectural step, merging Google+ functionality into a YouTube interface goes beyond standard crowd wisdom interface testing. Annoying any users is bad enough, but Delta Airlines alienated some of its most valued customers in an exercise designed specifically to do the opposite. In a blog post [5], Delta explained that it was all part of improving the search and shopping experience, with a phased installation of search as they were careful not to disrupt the booking experience for our best customers. When you are doing these live user experiments, one key idea is to only use a small sample (say 5 percent) to limit the impact of change. Delta apparently chose a much larger groupall non-frequent flyersto release a major functionality change that needed to be understood and verified with internal testing. Whether it was due to lack of testing or lack of follow up on internal testing, Delta now has close to a worst-case scenario with a lot of bad press, a U.S. Department of Transportation investigation, and a massive exercise in trying to reassure the frequent travelers [6] who were meant to be unaffected.
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Coming Soon
What went wrong? The frequent flyer searches appear to have been tweaked to focus on quality, giving the fastest return trip in a smaller time window (typically on a more expensive day trip), while the standard searches returned a much wider variety of return trips (including cheaper red eye and multiple stop options). As the cheapest flights are highlighted in search results, the impression was that frequent flyers were getting overcharged. It also took Delta three weeks to undo the changean eternity in the Internet Age. Using the wisdom of crowds is a great test tool to tweak user interfaces and its becoming a standard practice. The New York Times has a dedicated site, beta620 [8], that it is using as a testbed for new apps, and in Europe, crowd wisdom is being used to design a folding chair [8]. Think through your experiments well and youll be well rewarded. If you throw functional change into the mix, make sure you test it first and understand the impact of the change on your users! {end}
Links: [1] http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/08/ wisdom-of-crowds [2] http://www.brainmates.com.au/ interviews/5-minutes-with-doug-bluedirector-of-seek [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Trash_%28computing%29 [4] http://marketingland.com/enoughwith-googleification-says-wil-wheatonyoutube-doesnt-need-it-11091 [5] http://blog.delta.com/2012/05/18/faredisplays-on-delta-com/ [6] http://minnesota.cbslocal. com/2012/05/22/transportation-department-looks-into-deltas-ticket-glitch/ [7] http://dailycrowdsource.com/20resources/projects/630-new-york-timesbeta-tests-crowdsourcing-with-beta620 [8] http://www.psfk.com/2012/04/audicrowdsourced-chai.html
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Product Announcements
Atlassian Announces Atlassian Marketplace
Atlassian announced the immediate availability of Atlassian Marketplace, a one-stop shop where customers can easily discover, try, buy and manage more than 1,000 free and commercial add-ons and third-party integrations that complement Atlassian products. These products include JIRA, an issues-management system, Confluence, a collaboration software tool, BitBucket, a web-based source code hosting service, Bamboo, a continuous integration server, and the newly-released, Stash, a Git repository management product for enterprise teams. Third-party partners who build businesses on top of the Atlassian platform can now offer and market their software solutions directly to the 45,000 development teams across the world who are using Atlassians products to streamline product development. More than 4,000 add-ons are downloaded each day from the Atlassian Marketplace. ALM Works, AppFusions, Balsamiq, K15t, Stepstone Technologies, Tempo, and Zephyr are among the companies joining Atlassian at launch to offer their commercial solutions through the Atlassian Marketplace. also integrated CloudForge into its on-premise TeamForge and Subversion Edge products. CloudForge was built from the previously acquired Codesion public cloud-hosting platform and is designed to meet the needs of professional teams throughout the entire organization. It helps developers and IT managers instantly develop and deploy software using a hybrid mix of tools, application frameworks, and deployment clouds. CloudForge represents the industrys first enterprisegrade dPaaS offering, and is part of CollabNets strategy to focus on Enterprise Cloud Development. It provides code repository hosting (Subversion and Git), access to hosted and third-party agile tools, and facilitates the deployment of applications to public and private cloud environments. It also extends to and integrates with on-premise applications like TeamForge, Subversion Edge, and other commercial and open source tools, or to affiliated cloud platforms like Cloud Foundry and SOASTA. This mix of hybrid cloud and lifecycle capabilities enables development teams to leverage the power of agile processes and DevOps initiatives while providing the enterprise with a centralized view of productivity, cost management, and compliance.
https://developer.atlassian.com/display/MARKET/Atlassian+Marketplace CollabNet Launches CloudForge

CollabNet launched CloudForge, the industrys first enterprise-grade development-Platform-as-a-Service (dPaaS), and
http://www.cloudforge.com/ IBM Introduces New Version of Collaborative Lifecycle Management Solution

IBM introduced a new version of its integrated software Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM) solution with extended design management capabilities. CLM is built on IBMs open development platform, Jazz, and brings together IBM Rational Requirements Composer, IBM Rational Team Concert, and IBM Rational Quality Manager in one solution. The new CLM software ensures that software design is integrated with the rest of the software application development lifecycle. Development teams are now able to collaborate on the design and development of software with key stakeholders from across the business. IBM Rational CLM has also been extended to the IBM Mobile Foundation platform for centralized code sharing and distributed mobile application development. Currently, the fragmentation of mobile devices, tools, and platforms complicates delivery of mobile applications that typically have faster time-to-market and more frequent releases.
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http://www-01.ibm.com/software/rational/alm/collaborate/ SmartBear Software Releases API Complete

SmartBear Software introduced API Complete, a first-of-itskind solution that enables software developers, testers, and IT operations staff to test and monitor the quality of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and Web Services in an integrated and streamlined fashion. API Complete was designed to help organizations improve the quality of the increasing number of APIs and Web Services used in Web applications and sites, and is meant as a replacement of the
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fragmented approach currently used by separate development and operations teams. API Complete combines soapUI, an API testing tool, loadUI for load testing, and AlertSite, SmartBears Web performance monitoring solution and global monitoring network, into an integrated framework for API lifecycle quality management. Using common test scripts and validation assets, API Complete helps development, IT operations, and e-commerce teams ensure that APIs are thoroughly tested pre-deployment and performing well for end-users or business partners around the world once in production. This improves efficiency and collaboration, and lowers costs.
http://smartbear.com/products/web-monitoring/website-api-performance-monitoring Jama Software Announces Jama Contour 3.5

Jama Software announced the availability of Jama Contour 3.5, the latest version of the companys award-winning software that provides a collaborative platform for distributed teams to work together and execute complex projects successfully throughout the development process. New features in Contour 3.5 include custom workflow, test management enhancements, and greater enterprise control over project data. Contour 3.5 is available now as an on-site solution companies can self-host or as a secure, cloud-based solution hosted by Jama. Contour tracks the ongoing flow and activity stream of feedback, decisions, and changes to the requirements and other important details of a project that naturally occur during the development process. Delivered through a flexible and easy-to-use Web application, Contour provides all of the core functionality expected for requirements managementincluding traceability, test management, change management, diagramming, re-use, workflow, and reporting but without the overhead and expensive learning curves of traditional enterprise software. Its flexibility allows teams to customize Contour to fit their development processes, whether they are using waterfall, agile, or a hybrid of methodologies. Also, through integrations with other leading development tools, Contour ensures requirements are properly managed and, if modified, communicated instantly across the enterprise to ensure that everyone understands what the team is building and why.
The inclusion of the new Borland Connector adds complete ALM tool interoperability to the product, making it possible for a diverse group of ALM practitioners to directly participate and contribute to the developers work scope. Borland StarTeam 12.0 automatically connects developers and their code to any other change management artifact, enabling teams to fully participate in the flow of software delivery to end users. By making it easier to extend the types of software assets that can be managed, StarTeam enables organizations to better shape their ALM environment according to their unique development tool landscape and methodology needs.
http://www.microfocus.com/products/starteam/index.aspx Electric Cloud Introduces ElectricCommander 4.1

Electric Cloud introduced the latest version of its application development automation solution, ElectricCommander 4.1. This new version improves software application quality and improves time-to-market by streamlining the development and delivery process workflows and simplifying the developers continuous integration process. ElectricCommander automates and accelerates the application development (build-test-deploy) process and its supporting IT resources (physical, virtual, or public/private cloud). ElectricCommander makes the application development process run faster and with fewer errors, ensuring cloud infrastructures are utilized more efficiently.
http://www.electric-cloud.com/news/2012-0601.php Klocwork Releases Insight 9.5

Klocwork Inc. launched Klocwork Insight 9.5, the latest release of the companys flagship product. With this new release, C/C++ developers can now access sophisticated source code analysis using the simple usability model of a spell checker. Similar to the spell check feature in word processors, Klocwork Insight instantly underlines defects as developers are writing their code. In the background, sophisticated syntax and dataflow analysis, build comprehension, and incremental analysis are continuously running to ensure thorough and highly accurate identification of security vulnerabilities and critical defects. Additionally, with an all-new HTML 5 implementation, Klocwork Insights web reporting tool allows development teams to answer complex questions about the security, reliability, and maintainability of their code base quickly and easily. A redesigned report creator and all-new report templates use simple drag and drop pivot chart capabilities to allow users to design reports that meet their organizations specific needs.
http://www.jamasoftware.com/contour/requirements-management-workflow.php Micro Focus Releases Borland StarTeam 12.0

Micro Focus, a provider of enterprise application modernization, testing, and management solutions, announced the launch of Borland StarTeam 12.0. The new suite of change management tools increases and extends interoperability of application lifecycle management (ALM) tools and asset types across software development teams. This helps to overcome traditional development barriers such as lack of cross-tool visibility and inefficient collaboration.
http://www.klocwork.com/news/press-releases/releases/2012/PR-2012_01_17Klocwork-Introduces-First-On-The-Fly-Source-Code-Analysis.php
29
AccuRevs Introduces Kando,

AccuRev, Inc. introduced Kando, an enterprise security and compliance platform for Git. The new product complements the open-source SCM tool with its own functionality, allowing organizations using Git to simultaneously leverage the enterprise-level security and traceability within AccuRev SCM. Kando is the first software development solution that enables Git-development shops to work with features of AccuRev SCM, adding workflow, issue tracking, security, change requirements and other capabilities to the software development process, all while maintaining the flexibility and familiarity of Git environments.
tion processing (OLTP) applications and introduces new functionality to support analytic applications with real-time in-memory data management. It also allows customers to enhance application performance and scalability by supporting more concurrent users, higher volumes of requests, and more sessions.
http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/timesten/overview/index.html QASymphony Launches qTrace

QASymphony, a SaaS provider, launched its first product, qTrace, a defect-capture and reporting tool that provides insight into how the software was being used. qTrace captures all steps, screens, and system information associated with a defect along with out-of-the-box integration that enables the user to submit the defect trace to any bug tracking system of choice. qTrace runs in the background and captures every screen and every step performed during testing. It then automatically generates a detailed defect report from the captured information that includes how the application was being used along with associated environmental information.
http://www.accurev.com/kando Oracle Releases New Version of Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database

Oracle announced the latest release of its application-tier inmemory database, Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database 11g Release 2. Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database is a full-featured relational in-memory database designed to run in the application-tier to provide both rapid transaction response time and high throughput required by mission-critical applications. The latest release incorporates significant performance and scalability improvements for real-time online transac-
http://www.qasymphony.com/qtrace-features.html Serena Software Releases New Offerings for DevOps and Orchestrated IT
Serena Software announced new offerings that automate, control, and instrument application development and operations processes in order to deliver DevOps and Orchestrated IT. The new offerings include Serena Demand Manager, Serena Orchestrated IT Dashboard, and Serena Requirements Manager, along with enhancements to the Serena Service Manager and Serena Release Manager. The new Serena Orchestrated IT Dashboard provides roughly two-dozen pre-defined metrics like cycle times, queue sizes, wait times, and SLA performance. Serena Demand Manager allows for the prioritization of all IT work, presenting alternative portfolio scenarios and optimizing resources to fulfill any type of IT demand. Serena Requirements Manager is as an integrated suite that provides enterprise IT organizations capabilities to define and manage requirements, from initial prototype to production release, reducing rework, accelerating development, and ensuring complete requirements traceability.
http://www.serena.com/solutions/orchestrated-it/index.html
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How Can I Know When to Stop Testing?

It is impossible to find all the defects in a system. There are simply too many execution paths and data combinations. And multiplying paths by data results in a frighteningly large number. With that basis, we can never really declare mission accomplished and stop testing. We should always have that nagging fear that there is one more bug hiding out there that will adversely affect our users. We should acknowledge that testing never really stops since users continue to test the product after its deployment. The question really being asked is, When should testers decide they have done all they should? This question is also difficult to answer. Frequently, we say, It depends. But what does it depend on? It depends on the relative risk. There is a risk for any bug that the testers missed and is ultimately deployed to the field. What are the bad things that can happen if the bug affects users? Loss of reputation? Loss of revenue? Loss of life? The greater the relative risk, the more likely we are to continue to test. On the other hand, there is a risk in delaying the implementation of the product. Companies have competitiors. Older versions of a product may have existing defects or require enhancements. At some point, the risk of shipping a flawed product now becomes less than shipping a more perfect product in the future. So what techniques can we use to help us make an informed decision to stop formal testing and turn the product over to the ultimate testersour users? Functional coverage: If you have confidence in the test basisthe products requirementsand if you have based your tests on those requirements, then formal testing is nearing an end. Unfortunately, time constraints often prevent our addressing all requirements at the level of risk required. Some risk models can help focus our limited resources on those requirements that could potentially have a severe negative impact on the user or focus on those components that are, due to complexity or usage patterns, inherently more prone to failure.
by Rick Craig
rcraig@sqe.com
Defect models: Simple models such as the Defect Arrival Rate (defects discovered per day versus time) and Defect Detection Percentage (percent of defects discovered by a specific testing activity such as unit test or system test) can help show when continued testing is yielding diminishing returns. If these techniques are used on a regular basis, you may even be able to use them as predictive models that indicate the likelihood and severity of bugs that may be found after deployment. The decision to stop testing will likely be based on various factors including technical, financial, political, and even gut feelings. Ultimately, the project team (managers, developers, testers, marketing, sales, etc.) and the users must make their decision to stop testing based on relative riskdo the benefits of delivering the software outweigh the potential liabilities?
35
The Last Word
Peripheral Testing
Peripheral testing is a new concept that provides a systematic and structured method to exploratory testing and defines the what and the how to test.
by Faisal Qureshi | fizzq@hotmail.com
The tests that are performed on a product are primarily exThis means that we are testing not only the feature diecuted by following test steps from test cases existing in a prerectly as per the test case but also testing the feature indidefined test plan. When designing the test plan, the majority rectly and not necessarily having a one-to-one corresponof the tests have a one-to-one correspondence to the product dence to the requirement. The reality is that when the requirements. On the other hand, when a tester decides to product is released and in the customers hands, these variaperform exploratory testingeven in critical areashe must tions have a very high probability of occurring. If the periphpick and choose what and how to test. While its a smart way eral tests pass, it means that the feature being tested has a to test, there is no concrete structure to exploratory testing. low probability of breaking in the users hands, and that the Peripheral testing, however, is a product has been designed robustly. It new concept that provides a systemis a further indication that the product Peripheral testing is atic and structured method to explorhas the ability to survive with even atory testing and defines the what more variation in usage. based on selecting a and the how to test. The idea for Furthermore, its a good idea to peripheral testing originated due to have multiple testers peripherally test predefined test case in a the need for wide test coverage based the same test plan. This allows difon existing test cases, which, however, selections for the three changes test plan, then retesting by ferent can limit testing and leveraging the and provides a wider scope and covbenefits of exploratory testing. In pure erage in testing the feature. Each straying slightly from the test can select the change based on a exploratory testing, test reproduction, traceability, and targeted feature tree template, as shown in figure 1. actual test case. testing can prove to be difficult. Thus, peripheral testing merges test case-based testing and exploratory testing. Currently, testers perform one or the other and, therefore, by default, have innate drawbacks. Peripheral testing is based on selecting a predefined test case in a test plan, then retesting by straying slightly from the actual test case. The divergence from the original test case is systematic, i.e., at most three degrees of change from the original test case. If we consider the original test case as a constant, then the peripheral tests will be a function where only one variable of the test, which could also be environmental, changes at a time. In the first peripheral test, only x or y or z should change. In the second peripheral test, the variable change from the first Figure 1 test remains and one of the two remaining variables should change. Finally, in the third peripheral test, the last variable So, one test may test 1a, 2aa, and 3caa, whereas the other should change with the already changed values for the premay select 1b, 2ab, and 3bab. Its not a good idea to previous two variables remaining unchanged. For example, if the define the peripheral tests as actual test cases in the test plan defaults values for the test case are: x=1, y=5, z=a, then: based on this tree structure. This causes the peripheral tests to be confined, inflexible, and not exploratory. It also limits Test case = C*test(x,y,z) the testers intuition as to what to change for the variation. Peripheral test #1 = C*test(5,5,a) If multiple testers ran the test plan on the same product and Peripheral test #2 = C*test(5,2,a) the same feature, the results would be the same and coverage Peripheral test #3 = C*test(5,2,h) would be reduced.
36
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The Last Word
Heres an example of peripheral testing: The requirements specify that a button on a web page will take input from two fields, perform some processing on them, and then provide the user with the result. The test steps say to run the test on a Windows XP machine with the company provided and approved browser. Peripheral test #1 may be to test this in a beta version of a new browser. Peripheral test #2 may be to test this on a smart phone with a different browser. Peripheral test #3 may be to test this on a smart phone, with a different browser, with nonsensical data as one of the input fields. There are infinite possible tests that can be run on a product, which is obviously impossible to do. Thus, various techniques are used for the widest coverage such as core functionality tests, regression tests, and exploratory tests in highrisk areas. Exploratory tests, however, are done by randomly choosing what and how to test the high-risk areas. Peripheral testing provides smarts and structure to exploratory testing in real-world use cases. These tests can be verified, quantified, measured, repeated, and have purpose. Thus, peripheral testing can allow a tester to follow a consistent paradigm when performing exploratory testing. {end}
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