If your business is capturing or coordinating persistent data as a primary function then it behooves you to create a data quality initiative that improves your Test Data Management (TDM). There are common opportunities in the way that IT organizations manage, coordinate and execute their processes around test data. The actual data are not securely… Continue reading Data Quality as an Initiative
Author: Jim Azar
James (Jim) Azar, Orasi Senior VP and Chief Technology Officer
A 29-year veteran of the software and services industry, Jim Azar is charged with oversight of service delivery, technology evaluation, and strategic planning at Orasi. Among his many professional credits, Azar was a co-founder of Technology Builders, Inc. (TBI), where he built the original CaliberRM requirements management tool. Azar earned a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Alabama, College of Engineering, where he was named to the Deans’ Leadership Board. He furthered his education with advanced and continuing studies at Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon, and Auburn University at Montgomery. Azar has been published in both IEEE and ACM.
Winning the Performance Race
From experience running benchmarks, I can tell you that in order to win them, you must have the full run of the servers, settings and the code. However, this is not the typical case in any large enterprise solution operating in the ‘real’ world. How can you achieve inclusive buy in on performance from your… Continue reading Winning the Performance Race
More on Test Coverage
As promised here is my continuing post on Test Coverage. More on Test Coverage… Last post, I wrote about how developers can evaluate their code coverage and overall code quality using their development tools. This post covers how the test team becomes involved more directly. Specifically we will focus on. Test coverage workflow Test case… Continue reading More on Test Coverage
Code Coverage in Development Phase
Let’s consider how code coverage and other similar processes, as requested, fit within the workflow of an application during design and development. I think of this in the following stages: Local development – quality analysis Centralized build – quality analysis Test coverage workflow (next post) Test case coverage evaluation (next post) Local Development – Quality… Continue reading Code Coverage in Development Phase
A Pragmatic Approach to Test Coverage
I like models and I love automation on top of them. Software development in almost any form requires a logical model and an implementation in code. The best developers can find the re-usable patterns or code within a complex system to minimize their work. Functional testing gurus also use this pattern for success. Anti-Patterns for… Continue reading A Pragmatic Approach to Test Coverage
Functional Test Prioritization with Heat Maps
I like to make decisions based upon data. One of the more challenging decisions a leader of a functional area will have is workload prioritization. Fact based decisions, in a spreadsheet, are a great way to communicated with executive leaders in IT. One cool method, to determine the test prioritization, I’ve used was a heat… Continue reading Functional Test Prioritization with Heat Maps
Geometric Value in Continuous Integration
One of the most important measurements in software development is related to the defect queue. I don’t mean simply the count of defects. A queue has a depth, latency, service time and throughput. The depth is the count of issues assigned to a team or person. The latency tells you how long an issue sits… Continue reading Geometric Value in Continuous Integration
Creating Successful Requirements for Performance and Scalability from Subjective Goals
Whenever I work on a performance problem, I need a maturity assessment of the existing requirements. A great place to start is characterizing the performance issues from the stakeholders. Let’s separate this into three archetypes to guide the discussion: Subjective, Low Precision, and Monitored. For each of these, I will try to describe some patterns… Continue reading Creating Successful Requirements for Performance and Scalability from Subjective Goals
QA Automation within CD Pipeline
One of the best ways to improve the quality of IT solutions is to leverage automation, to shorten the iterations between changes and validation. Let’s start with the tools available to a modern software developer. In the diagram above, a developer has some code ready to go and they have an approved change ready to… Continue reading QA Automation within CD Pipeline
Sample Deployment Pipeline Diagram
Deployment Pipeline In the diagram above you can clearly see that the IT organization created a rich and robust set of approval processes and committees to improve the quality of every change that goes into production. When this team needs to react quickly, they skip some of the manual review processes. This is a top-down… Continue reading Sample Deployment Pipeline Diagram