Session Title

Sustainable Test Automation

Abstract

One of the hallmarks of DevOps is making it possible to quickly and safely deploy new functionality to production. Doing so safely is dependent on a protective suite of automated tests that can check for any regressions in the intended functionality.

But who is looking out for the health and safety of those automated tests? Sure, they did their job when they were first written, but they need to keep doing that job as long as the application is in production. That should be years, if not decades. Those tests need to continue to provide safety even as the functionality shifts over time and team members who wrote them leave and are replaced.

In this session we'll take a look at the long time horizon and explore some of the ways to keep automated tests healthy.

Bio

George Dinwiddie helps organizations develop software more effectively. He brings decades of development experience from electronic hardware and embedded firmware to business information technology. He helps organizations, managers, and teams solve the problems they face by providing consulting, coaching, mentoring and training at the organizational, process, team, interpersonal, and technical levels. Involved in the Agile community since 2000, he has helped organizations ranging from a 6-person startup to a Fortune 100 company and a billion-plus dollar federal program, either directly or in partnership with other companies. He is the author of Software Estimation without Guessing: Effective Planning in an Imperfect World (Pragmatic Bookshelf), Evolutionary Anatomy of Test Automation Code (LeanPub) and co-author of Patterns of Agile Journeys (LeanPub).