TriJUG Meeting Minutes: Agile Testing Strategies as presented by Jared Richardson

About 30 people attended this month's TriJUG meeting.

We brought back our "Have a Job / Need a Job" exercise.  We had dropped this
practice when it seemed that everyone needed a job and it seemed that nobody
had a job.  It was depressing.  Well, it is nice to note that the tables
have turned.  It appears that everyone has a job and there are lots of
opportunities if you are considering switching jobs.

Jared Richardson, co-author of Ship It! A Practical Guide to Successful
Software Projects, was our speaker.  He is part of the NFJS tour and an
independent consultant who specializes in using off-the-shelf technologies
to solve tough problems.

The title of Jared's presentation was "Agile Testing Strategies."

So, who remembers the main theme of the presentation?

Continuous Integration Rocks!

Is it free?  No.  Without continuous maintenance, Automated Tests Rust.

They need to be run often (continuously) and they need to be maintained such
that they keep passing.

A quick poll of the attendees showed that Cruise Control is the most popular
continuous integration tool
A new tool seems to be making some converts though.  If I remember
correctly, it was call Pulse.  Can someone confirm this for us please.

Jared also talked about how various test strategies can be used in
designing, maintaining and preventing defects in software.
 - Test Driven Design (TDD)
 - Defect Driving Testing (DDT)
 - Blitz Krieg (BK)

And don't forget to Jazz It Up.  Every time you add a new test
casetargeting a specific defect, throw in a few more test cases to
verify the
surrounding code.  Where there's one bug, you are likely to find others.

The meeting ended with a raffle.  Jared gave away some books donated by the
Pragmatic Bookshelf.

Ship it! <http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/prj/index.html>: A
Practical Guide to Successful Software Projects
    Use pragmatic, agile, team practices to ship your project on time, on
budget

Rails for Java Developers<http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/fr_r4j/index.html>
    Leverage your knowledge of Java to learn Rails quickly and easily

Agile Retrospectives<http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/dlret/index.html>:
Making Good Teams Great
    Continually mine the experience of your team using these proven
techniques

>From Java To Ruby<http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/fr_j2r/index.html>:
Things Every Manager Should Know
    when (or if) you should make the switch to Ruby



Next Month's meeting:  Brian Sletten will be coming down from Virginia to
speak to us about
"Abusing Maven for Fun and Profit: (Near) Zero-Admin Deployments."

   www.trijug.org

_______________________________________________
Juglist mailing list
[email protected]
http://trijug.org/mailman/listinfo/juglist_trijug.org