The Testing Profession…A Brave New World

Most professions change and evolve and yes, some even die. Our testing profession has undergone so much change and much of it is truly disruptive. Many of the changes have caused us, as testers, to question whether or not our profession has ceased to exist. The good news is that as long as there is technology in our world, it will need testing. And as history shows, technology will grow and change in ways we cannot even imagine.
The pace at which technology, and approaches to its development, will continue to increase. New worlds will be spawned continually, and sometimes disruptively. Our role and our responsibilities as testers will continue to evolve and change and we will be challenged to expand our knowledge and skill sets in order to contribute and grow in this fast-paced climate.
The World Quality Report 2016-17, https://www.capgemini.com/thought-leadership/world-quality-report-2016-17, discussed current trends in quality assurance and testing. Among those were Digital Transformation, the Internet of Things, Security Testing and Agile and DevOps. Let’s review these trend-setting brave new worlds and the skills we will need to embrace them.
Digital Transformation
The majority of consumers today have embraced technology and as a result they expect to transact with organizations through multiple channels. Therefore, digital transformation is not only inevitable, but imperative for all organizations. More importantly, customers not only expect a seamless experience across all digital channels; but also, they demand applications that are intuitive, easy to navigate and perform consistently. As testers in a digital transformation, our role goes beyond testing. We are the customers advocates and the guardians of the organizations’ reputations.
Internet of Things
We all now live in the Internet of Things. From smart phones to voice controlled personal assistants, we are all interconnected to “things”. Comprehensive testing in this brave new world involves not only testing the devices, platforms, browsers and the various combinations thereof, the applications themselves as well as their integrations and, perhaps most importantly, the interaction between the device and the human being. Risk analysis is critical as the number of test scenarios expands exponentially, given all the types of functional and non-functional testing that is required. As testers, we are challenged to employ our skills in, mobile testing, usability testing and as well as our understanding of customer experience.
Security Testing
We are all responsible for security testing. Security is an overarching concern in all of our brave new worlds, most especially in mobile, the internet of things and digital transformations. Security breaches can be more far-reaching and have more severe consequences than almost any other type of production failure. Security testing starts during design; as threats and vulnerabilities and defects often require design changes. Security testing invites testers to reverse their thinking; it’s about proving that the application doesn’t have threats and vulnerabilities as opposed to finding bugs.
Agile and DevOps
The competitive climate in almost all industries dictates a need for increased speed of delivery and information technology departments have responded by moving to Agile and DevOps methodologies. Since quality and speed of delivery are opposing goals, testers must find new approaches in order to streamline testing, maximizing both effectiveness and efficiency. Testers are challenged to find their role on Agile and DevOps teams. The team approach in these methodologies relies on all team members taking responsibility for testing; however, the tester must assume the role of championing quality through the development process.
In Agile’s test driven development, testers pair with developers in order to create the test cases prior to development. In addition to our test automation tools, testers have the opportunity to become creative by using BDD, Behavior Driven Development, mind maps and model-based tests. Finally, the importance of colocation of Agile teams create a challenge for our Test Centers of Excellence that rely on distributed test teams.
DevOps, with its focus on continuous integration and even continuous delivery, poses the same challenges to streamline testing, yet increased. DevOps is a mindset that focuses on communication and collaboration among developers, operations specialists and quality assurance teams, so testers must embrace collaboration while at the same time ensuring that testing is done throughout the continuous integration cycle.
Clearly, testing is in a state of transition. Testers must not only learn new technical skills, develop streamlined testing approaches, as well as become the advocate for the customer; but also, adapt to and find their place in Agile and DevOps methodologies. And yes, that’s a huge challenge!
I’m sure you all have heard, at least once, that testing is dead. However, according to Techwell’s inaugural survey, The State of the Software Testing Profession 2015-2016, https://www.stickyminds.com/state-software-testing-profession-results-2015-2016 , 84% of survey respondents disagreed. No matter what technology or development methodology is used to develop software, the software will need to be tested. Testing won’t die! How we test, when we test and what tools we use and even whose role it is to test will continue to evolve and change. Testers, welcome to the Brave New World of Testing.

DevOps Still Has Room for Testing

You wouldn’t think that Boise, Idaho would be a hotbed of technology.  However, with the headquarters of HP Printers, a large Micron Technology facility, a number of technology oriented financial institutions, and even a few dot-coms, it combines a high quality of life with a bent toward technology jobs.

Boise held its first DevOps Days conference in October, and almost two hundred practitioners showed up to interact and learn more about how they can work with devops concepts.  I had the privilege of being invited to speak, and over the course of two days, interacted with many of those practitioners.

I learned that even in Boise there are a large number of IT professionals that are highly interested in bringing devops concepts into their organizations.  They work for technology companies, banks, government, and even startups.  They trended young and casual, as you might expect in a city with two major universities.

There were technical speakers from the likes of Docker, Chef, and JFrog, who explained how to use their respective tools within a devops environment.  Some of these presentations were in the weeds, focusing on what new features in containers and artifact factories brought to bear on creating better containerized software.  In places, they acknowledged that they contradicted each other, especially in places where their respective tools offered significant features.

Speakers from JPL and Sonatype discussed how to set up working environments for continuous integration and continuous delivery.  The focus was on getting the right tools and workflow in place, and trusting that the software pipeline will fill up at some point

DevOps Still About the Plumbing

One impression that stood out was that virtually all of the practitioners were still in the very early stages of a devops transformation, seeking the right way to configure their devops infrastructure.  Specifically, they were still looking for a continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) solution that actually worked for them and delivered on the promise of devops.  That involves specific tools, and how those tools work together in designing the software process workflow.

Testing remains a big dark hole in devops.  The speaker from JPL, Dan Isla, was asked how testing was accomplished.  He gave a weak laugh, and said that some of the developers did unit testing, but their focus was on getting code deployed quickly, and if necessarily failing quickly.

To most of us, failing in production is simply failing.  And in a mission-critical environment such as JPL and NASA, failure often means the loss of millions of dollars and years of time.  In other organizations, it could mean the loss of business and revenue.  Yet many devops professionals seem to lack the appreciation of the need for testing, or don’t believe it’s critical in a devops shop because they can fix and redeploy quickly.  That approach needs to change.

There seems to be a lot of opportunity for solid testing in the process, as long as that testing can be done in a CI/CD environment.  There is the future challenge for testing.  There has to be a major role in ensuring that devops delivers truly working software that can withstand actual production use.  It’s simply not there yet, and testers have to play a key role in getting it there.  Today, practitioners are largely aren’t thinking about how to test either the infrastructure or the software that uses that infrastructure.

It is largely a new language and workflow for testers, and the learning curve may be steep for some.  Some testers will be left behind by the new approaches to development and delivery, and may not fully appreciate the role of the devops workflow.

And to be fair, most organizations are not yet in the position to create containerized software.  There is a lot of discussion surrounding the use of Docker and similar tools, but few seem to be actually doing it.  It’s not clear that containers are necessarily the best way to build software into a known production environment, and testers need to weigh in on that, too.

Most of the devops vendors are offering very technical solutions to very specific environments.  But software development and delivery is a very unique process; every organization has its quirks.  My impression was that practitioners are confused on the approach they should be using, and how to integrate a devops process into their existing workflow.

This is an excellent time for testers to assert a role in devops.  That role might be as test consultants, providing testing standards and objectives to teams, or it might be setting up test automation environments as part of the workflow.  Most devops thought leaders admit that devops is a cultural rather than technical challenge, and testing can be made a part of that cultural shift.

Is Testing a Profession?

Testing is a real profession, but it’s undergone significant upheaval and change in recent years.  Don’t expect that to change in the future.  If you like rapid change and a fresh challenge with every project, testing can be a challenging and exciting career.

Just as programming offers a wide range of career choices, so does testing.  You can do anything from traditional UI testing to working with medical devices or even wearable devices.  Depending on your skills, inclinations, and yes, job opportunities, there are many different directions to take your career in testing.  Whether or not it can become a true career depends on your ability to reinvent yourself on a regular basis.

The profession of testing, as well as its knowledge and skills requirements, has changed substantially in the last decade.  First, it has diversified.  As testers, we understand the language of requirements, test plans, test scripts, and defects.  We create automation frameworks and run performance tests.  Yet, the testing world has become increasingly more complex and fluid.

The testing profession offers so many new areas of specialization.  Big data,  security,  IoT,  wearables,  mobile and embedded as well as user experience, customer experience and even machine learning and artificial intelligence are just a few of the possibilities.  And there are certifications in many of these areas.

Testers don’t necessarily have to choose a specialization; in fact, because computing changes so rapidly, a single specialization may be too limiting to give you the breadth of experiences you need over a long career. However, there are some trends in technology and methodology which all testers much embrace in order to build a career in testing.

First, are the agile methodologies, which have largely become the mainstream of development methodologies.  In agile teams, the testers take on multiple roles, the most important of which is championing quality and helping the team to see quality as the responsibility of every team member.  Testers also play a critical role in test-driven development (TDD) where the tests are created first and code is developed to pass the test. Testers also have the opportunity to pair with developers in testing as the code is being developed.

DevOps is another trend that testers can’t ignore and must contribute.  DevOps principles are based on breaking down barriers between development, testing, preproduction, and operations, in order to get software into users’ hands as quickly as possible, and to find faults and fix them in real time.  In DevOps, testers’ primary responsibility is ensuring the quality process.

Work on your communications skills

Communication and collaboration skills have never been more important.  Testers are often the ones delivering the bad news, and have to do so in a way that doesn’t lay blame or responsibility.  Further, they typically work as part of a larger team, and have to establish respect while advocating sometimes-unpopular positions.

Although testing is still a viable profession, there can be disadvantages to a testing career.  While most organizations need developers and IT people, some methodologies have been trending away from formal testing as practiced in many waterfall-based methodologies.  In particular, agile and DevOps are focused primarily on automated build and delivery chains, so automation skills are a requirement.  Wearables, IoT, and other devices may require knowledge of electronics and hardware-in-the-loop testing.

Testing in general is no longer the gateway through which an application has to pass in order to be successively deployed.  Companies have become far more willing to deploy software that may fail, as long as it does so fast.  Yes, users may face obstacles, but companies figure (often correctly) that users will help them tune their applications for more widespread use.

The upshot is that testing has become much more ambiguous than it has been in the past.  To effectively pursue a career in testing, it is critical to develop skills related to defining and executing tests earlier and faster, and to be more attuned to the ambiguity of software releases and feedback.

Testers must manage their own careers by getting the experience and training they need to thrive and grow in the testing profession.  Creative approaches for obtaining some of these experiences include volunteering for other projects that may be using innovative new techniques, or by participating in, or even organizing, corporate learning activities such as workshops and lunch and learn functions. Testers will have to invest in their own careers, perhaps by taking agile or DevOps courses and certifications, or by working on independent open source projects.

Finally, to create a career in testing it is important to recognize testing as a profession.  Get involved in the testing community through conferences, online groups and meetups.  These are not only great learning opportunities, but they offer testers a chance to mentor each other and to build recognition of testing as a profession.