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Author: Ritesh Arora

  • How Automated Testing Can Help the Latest C-Level Issue: Quality Software

    How Automated Testing Can Help the Latest C-Level Issue: Quality Software

    Every year developers gather in San Jose for Apple’s annual WWDC, where software quality is typically a key point of discussion. This year, the company progressed from its 2017 buggy software debacle in full force—it’s a heads-on effort, marked by the industry leader naming 2018 its year of software quality.

    This raises some larger questions around the software industry itself. Has modern IT become so complex that the concept of “bug-free” software is no longer realistic, particularly for a company the size and scale of Apple? Or did Apple recognize this pain point and shift its focus to  software quality in an effort to be the harbinger of change?

    Of course Apple isn’t alone when it comes to the struggle with quality. Buggy software from organizations across the board persists today, but it simply cannot be ignored. Poor quality software creates long-term effects of waning customer confidence, brand erosion and revenue loss. These are very real concerns for the entire C-suite. Quality is no longer an issue limited to Dev or Ops—it’s critical to every organization’s success.

    For example, consider the fact that 88 percent of consumers say they’d abandon an app if they encountered bugs or glitches (source: QualiTest). Nearly half those people are likely to discontinue using an app entirely if they experienced a bug every day. And 32 percent say they would abandon an app the moment they encountered a glitch.

    The cost of acquiring a new customer is 5 to 25 times higher than retaining an existing one. Getting software right the first time through a culture of continuous testing is critical to every business, as it translates directly to retaining customers.


    Budgets for QA and testing are expected to rise to 40 percent in 2019 from 31 percent this year. However, one-third of developers still admit they don’t have enough time to properly test before software deployments. As everyone in this business knows, developers run fast. It is of the utmost importance to ensure software actually works well and will provide the expected customer experience. The garbage in, garbage out model is not an option. To fill the gap, more and more organizations are turning to automated testing.

     

    Any repetitive, labor-intensive task is typically a good candidate for automation, including those associated with testing. Automated testing involves execution of prescripted tests on a web or mobile app, with test data accessible in detailed reports to help development teams quickly identify issues in the code, as well as any issues in the automated scripts themselves.

    Performance of the automation framework and its scripts is crucial, and should be a high area of focus. Prescripted tests fall into different categories that comprise the test pyramid. They include:

    1. Unit Testing
    2. Code Coverage
    3. Code Syntax Checks
    4. Security Tests and Checks in Code
    5. Integration Tests
    6. UI Tests for Web, Hybrid and Mobile Apps – on multiple cross browsers on various platforms and OS versions

    Once created, automated tests can be run again and again at no additional cost—which is particularly helpful when source code is changed. Since it is much faster compared to manual testing, automated testing translates into considerable time and cost savings.

    Automated testing is especially valuable given the breadth of browsers, operating systems and devices in the marketplace. Consumers today run apps on a countless number of these, so developers must have access to every combination imaginable to deliver the highest level of performance. What good is your app if it doesn’t run (and, by extension, monetize) properly when it gains popularity in some part of the world with users on a different platform from the one you tested on?

    Ensuring that software works on as many options as possible allows a business to reach a maximum number of users. This is where automated testing can help, by executing thousands of different complex test cases during every test run. Testing efficiency can be achieved by executing tests in parallel or grid, and executing CI/CD jobs in parallel. For example, one code is deployed in staging, teams can simultaneously start jobs to test against browsers and cross-browsers, apps and localizations, etc. The result is attaining coverage that would be impossible through manual tests. Teams can scale apps fast, maximize CI/CD workflows, and ship higher quality software faster.

    Attaining CI/CD and automating all the tasks involved in creating a real-time test system is one of the arenas in which the next big software battle will be fought. More importantly, as software continues to eat the world, the C-Suite can no longer ignore the impact of poor quality software devouring your business. Apple’s bold step of identifying 2018 as the year of software quality is a call for other organizations to do the same.

    Automated testing is a key piece of the solution. How is your organization meeting the software quality challenge, and by extension, the evolving standards of customer experience?

    — Ritesh Arora

  • What Andreessen’s ‘Software’ Essay Means to Development Today

    What Andreessen’s ‘Software’ Essay Means to Development Today

    It’s been nearly seven years since Marc Andreessen’s essay, “Why Software is Eating the World,” brought to light software’s role in determining the next wave of winners and losers.

    Today, his essay is still relevant. The past decade saw the consumerization of IT in business. It also witnessed the shift in software consumption from desktops to the web and to mobile apps today, reflecting a mobile revolution. Software continues to eat the world, having moved to a “mobile only” development model.

    This revolution is defined by disruptive companies including Airbnb, Uber and others that run with more leanness and agility compared to their 20th century counterparts. These companies have few physical assets, relying instead on software.

    Since Andreessen’s essay, the software development life cycle has expanded and evolved—from waterfall to agile processes, from testing against just a handful to thousands of mobile devices and from serving a regional to a global one user base, to name a few examples. Demands for speed and quality control have been key drivers, and as a result, the life cycle moves faster than ever. A record number of developers are writing a record number of programs. This expands each and every day as businesses small and large, in markets old and new join, the mad dash to create more software, better, faster and cheaper.

    Creating Software, Fixing Mistakes

    Indeed, the software development curve is evolving at breakneck pace. But while the cost of creation decreases, the cost to correct a mistake increases. How can developers and their organizations stay ahead of the curve? Here are three principles we’ve observed from studying more than 25,000 customers in the last seven years:

    Implement Modern Development Techniques Such As CI/CD

    Continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) are two modern development practices designed to help teams release quality code faster and continuously. CI/CD has gained popularity over the past few years, and for good reason. When implemented effectively, CI/CD shortens delivery times, improves overall quality and enables teams to adapt quickly.

    Key to a successful CI/CD practice and ensuring quality software development is the practice of testing throughout the development process. The cost of fixing already deployed broken software is high, and it’s crucial to ensure your software works properly on all platforms and devices to minimize customer abandonment. This is especially true when you consider that the cost of regaining a customer is four times higher than winning them in the first place. Getting software right the first time through a culture of continuous testing is critical to success.

    What does ideal testing look like? It is automated, runs fast and includes good coverage. As the already broad ecosystem of operating systems, devices and platforms expands, this last point is critical. What good is your app if it doesn’t run (and, by extension, monetize) properly when it gains popularity in some part of the world with users on a different platform from the one you tested on? Developers need to ensure their software works on as many different combinations of browsers, devices and operating systems as possible, to help their business reach the maximum number of users.

    Introduce ‘Self-Driving Software’ Practices, Technology into Your Development Cycle

    When everyone is running so fast, it’s critical to ensure the software you’re writing actually works, won’t break your infrastructure and will actually be used by consumers. The “garbage in, garbage out” model is not an option, especially given the expense of creating software today. While the barriers to create software have lowered over time, the bar has risen in terms of creating something really remarkable.

    The good news is that we are at the cusp of attaining the holy grail of software development. I have interviewed multiple engineering and quality leaders at many of our customers who are pushing the limits on ultra-efficient DevOps. Through a streamlined process (which, frankly, is nothing short of beautiful), they are able to create a single, seamless flow between development to testing to operations to deployment and monitoring—without compromising on speed or quality. The key is to prioritize speed over cost and quality and agility over all else. If an organization isn’t following this principle, they risk being left behind. In the “Stack Overflow developer survey 2017,” more than 65 percent of developers indicated that they follow some kind of agile development methodology at work.

    The end result is deploying software almost immediately as soon as it’s written, for release as quickly as possible. Companies strive to achieve this scenario, and the highest performing organizations have already reached this development dream in some manner or another. Attaining CI/CD and automating all the tasks involved in creating a test system in real time is one of the arenas in which the next big software battle will be fought. The quest for the holy grail of software development is on.

    Support (and Attract) Your Engineering Talent by Providing Flexibility

    In  the mad dash to develop amazing software, engineering has become among the hardest roles for companies to recruit for.

    Organizations need to be nimble enough to attract top engineering talent. Part of being attractive to potential hires is understanding that software can no longer be monolithic. More than ever, the talent pool expects choice in the languages, platforms and tools they can use to develop and work most efficiently. In the Stack Overflow developer survey, participants valued the languages, frameworks and other technologies they’d be working with as a critical (4/5) decision factor while assessing potential jobs. This doesn’t mean providing a “free for all” for developers to use everything and anything they want—rather, it’s all about adopting flexibility. The companies that are most attractive to the best engineers follow this principle.

    Conclusion

    Today, we’ve moved from software eating the world to the world eating software. Developers simply have no control or knowledge over where their website or app is going to be downloaded or accessed from. Unless it’s an internal app behind a firewall, any software developed today by definition is consumed by the global community.

    Even if you test for all scenarios and devices, the future will always bring new devices, browser versions and operating systems. Your customers may use these instead of what you initially tested for. One option is to test for emerging devices in an in-house lab; however, that means committing to resources, time and qualified engineers to maintain it. In most cases, this approach is simply unsustainable.

    Companies must focus on ensuring their software works both with what’s out there today and with whatever browsers, devices and platforms will be out tomorrow. This is a major challenge, requiring considerable investment. Companies need to decide whether they are in the business of testing software themselves, or leverage solutions that are.

    Well before Andreessen’s seminal article, Geoffrey Moore wrote “Dealing with Darwin.” Here he he expounded upon the concept of core vs. context. Organizations will be well-served in deciding (quickly) whether building an in-house testing infrastructure is core or context to their business. The alternative is falling behind—or worse, being eaten up by the competition.

    — Ritesh Arora