November, 2008

Agile software development failures

Like software projects that use other development methodologies, agile projects can fail. They fail when agile development practices aren’t understood and/or aren’t followed. And they fail when organizations don’t realize that doing agile development requires a significant cultural change. Agile is not a tool you can simply install and expect to turn out perfect software.

An interesting dialog is taking place on James Shore’s blog stemming from his post “The decline and fall of agile.” Shore, an agile consultant and trainer, says more companies now call him for help with their flailing projects than to learn about agile. They’re struggling, he said, because they’re misapplying agile practices and because they don’t want to put in the time and effort to truly change.

Some companies, as other agile experts have advocated, have selected only a few agile practices to implement. The problem, Shore said, is that they’re not selecting the ones that make agile work.

Doing agile development requires a commitment. You need to take time to learn what it involves and make a plan to implement it. Agile is not “cowboy” as some people have said; it is highly disciplined, and it requires focus.

Ten things software testers can be thankful for

As the U.S. kicks off the holiday season with Thanksgiving on Thursday, it’s harder this year to find the hope and joy the season traditionally offers. Each day we hear about companies failing, industries needing government assistance, retailers struggling, increased joblessness, housing foreclosures, and more.

It’s times like these that make you really appreciate what you have — things large and small. With that in mind, I thought I’d take a look at things software testers can be thankful for. A few of these may be wish-list items for some of you, but if you’re fortunate to have them, you are very thankful indeed. (My thanks to the software testers who contributed to this list.)

Here they are — in reverse order — 10 things testers can be thankful for:

10. A product that has testability features built in
9. Coffee (or your caffeinated drink of choice) — Testing has a lot of late nights
8. Agile software development and early and frequent feedback
7. A manager who understands the benefits of training and lets you take courses and attend conferences
6. Microsoft Excel — The tester’s Swiss Army knife
5. Open source tools — As we know, testers don’t get big budgets
4. A programming team that actively solicits feedback from testing and appreciates the value of testers
3. A talented and committed test team
2. Successful application releases

And topping the list …
1. A schedule that allows enough time for testing

What are you thankful for?

Protecting data in software testing environments

When you think about application or software security, you usually think about the bad guys outside your company trying to get in. But just as often, if not more, the danger comes from within with employees accessing personal data.

The issue of protecting data comes up when testing applications. Testers need production-like data to ensure applications work correctly, but you don’t want to give them live data. To help with that, companies are employing data masking technologies.

DataGuise is one company that provides a data masking tool. This week the company announced the industry’s first masking in place (MIP) solution for multi-database environments, the DataGuise dgSolution suite. Company officials say the suite solves two of the biggest concerns for building non-production test environments: time-to-deployment and production data leakage.

The suite includes dgDiscover, which helps locate sensitive data across various databases, and dgMasker, which masks the data in non-production environments.

dgMasker comes with 15 masking options out of the box, including options for Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, addresses, etc. And because it runs across multiple databases, if you make a change on one database it will also be changed on the others. You get consistent test data.

Erik Jarlstrom, vice president of customer advocacy at DataGuise, said they tried to make it a high-performance suite. “We really tried to make it as fast as possible so you aren’t releasing unmasked data to development,” he said.

Guerrilla-style agile software development

Say the word “agile” and people immediately have a reaction. Those in favor of it see it as an efficient way to create software that users actually want. Those against it see it as “cowboy” or rogue — developers doing whatever they want.

If you work at a company where people like the processes they have for developing software and push back against new ideas, needless to say it can be difficult implementing agile development practices. But it can be done if you make subtle changes and don’t even mention the word agile until you have to.

David Christiansen explained in his recent Webcast “How to introduce agile in a waterfall environment” how he used guerrilla-style tactics to introduce agile practices on his projects. Little by little he changed things until it was obvious that they were doing agile development, and then he had to admit he was using those techniques. But at that point, he could show management that agile development worked. He could show them proven success.

David said that usually it’s IT that pushes back when talking about agile — managers, testers, and sometimes developers. It isn’t the users or stakeholders. They don’t care what you do as long as you give them software that works the way they want it to, he said.

You need to be careful when following David’s secret strategy, as you don’t want to be fired for disobeying your boss. If you ask if you can do agile development and you’re told no, you probably shouldn’t go ahead and do it. But if you can show them first how agile practices work, then you’re likely to get more support. As David said, “Sometimes it’s better to ask for forgiveness later than to ask for permission first.”

What are the top software tools of 2008?

As the year starts to wind down, we at SearchSoftwareQuality.com are looking back at what took place during 2008. One thing that we’re focusing on is the tools and solutions that were released. In an effort to help our readers understand what tools are available to help them, we are creating a guide to tools released in 2008 to be published in January.

In order for us to do that, we need your help identifying tools that were released. The tool categories we’re focusing on:

• Software testing
• Test management
• Code quality
• Application security
• Software requirements
• Agile development
• Project management
• Application lifecycle management
• Application performance monitoring & management

Please send us information about tools released between Jan. 1, 2008, and Oct. 31, 2008, that you’d like us to consider for the guide. The tools must be new products or significant upgrades. And you must include the following information:

• Product name and version/model number
• Company name
• URL for the product
• Product or company logo
• Date product was released
• Tool category (see above)
• Product description
• If it’s an upgrade, features that were added
• What makes it innovative?
• Details about how it performs
• Details about its ease of use and manageability
• Pricing

Send your product submissions to Editor@SearchSoftwareQuality.com by Friday, Dec. 12.

Green computing

Virtualization, considered a cost-savings technology, is getting “greened up.” Increasingly groups and industry experts are talking about the ecological benefits of virtualization. By reducing a data center’s power and cooling requirements, a company can reduce its carbon footprint, they say. Companies may want to consider server consolidation, application virtualization, and virtual application test labs.

Hoping to shine more light on the “green” benefits of virtualization, the Computer Measurement Group has added a track about the subject to its upcoming annual conference (Dec. 7-12). Session titles include the following:

• Capacity modeling and planning in virtual environments
• Green data center: A case study
• Modeling/sizing techniques for different virtualization strategies

Other tracks at the conference include application load and stress testing and software performance engineering.

For more information about the conference, visit the CMG ‘08 website.