northern-tester / transmission

This tutorial encourages testers to interrogate, evaluate and elucidate the architectures they test, with the end goal of providing analysis of risk and information to those who matter.

Revealing Architectural Testability

Description of Workshop

A question I often ask testers is 'can you draw me the architecture of the systems that you test?' The answer is often stares blankly. I believe this is a core competency for an effective tester and the answer should be (more often than not) 'of course I can!'`

This workshop encourages testers to interrogate, evaluate and elucidate the architectures they test, with the end goal of providing analysis of risk and information to those who matter.

The workshop requires:

• A0 Paper or Large Writable Wall Spaces
• Post It Notes
• Your favourite pens
• 4 or 5 people per team works well
• Effort
• Questions
• Within each Exercise Folder (apart from the Warm Up), there are Handouts and Solutions folders. Print the handouts, dont give out the solutions. ;)

Objectives for this workshop

• Attendees can recognise and explain the load balancing, web, API, database and shared access networks architectural layers
• Attendees can recognise and explain the impact of cloud architectures on testing and testability concerns
• Attendees will be able to sketch an architecture from a set of technical documentation and anecdotal sources
• Attendees can identify key risk points within an architecture and build a context sensitive approach to testing
• Attendees can apply models of testability to identified risks to propose enhancements

Running Order

Please allow between 5 and 7 hours for this tutorial, depending on:

• Knowledge of architecture concepts and terminology
• How well they know each other

Exercise Breakdown

• 00 Intro - Context Setting and Get to Know You - Hard to Test and Attempted Remedy - plus comfort with architecture 10-20 mins
• IF - Group is new to architecture - slider results are less than 5 for the most part, play exercise X for Visual Dictionary.
• 01 Exercise 01 - Warm Up - Smells of Testable Architecture - 20-40 mins
• 02 Exercise 02 - Puzzle - Put together an existing architecture from varied sources - 45-75 mins
• 03 Excerise 03 - Canvas - Build a coherent picture of testability challenges - 45-75 mins
• 04 Excerise 04 - Infinite - Take a number of future features for the perform a testability kick off - 20-40 mins
• 05 Excerise 05 - Migration - With a new scenario, redesign architecture, risks and tactics - 45-75 mins
• IF - Group has finished all exercises, introduce a micro app architecture and repeat canvas
• 06 Outro - Closing Remarks

About Me

I'm a continuously learning tester with a penchant for getting involved in all aspects of developing people and products. I used to be a fully fledged consultant with The Test People, veteran of various engagements encompassing testing, performance engineering and automation. Now I'm in the start up world, heavily involved in mobile product development, from the ground up. I also speak, coach and contribute to the local tech community in Leeds. I'm quite busy but always have time for a question, usually answered with another question. I have a blog at http://testingisbelieving.blogspot.co.uk/ too, oh and I tweet from @northern_tester. :-)