Frameworks That Pass the Maintenance Test

Mike Hansen

Wednesday, May 4, 2005

Networking Dinner @ 5:45; Bootcamp @ 6:15; Business @ 6:45; Program @ 7:00 PM

at Countrywide, 2900 Madera, Simi Valley, CA 93065

Test automation is the most important technologies to get "right" because it is the only way a QA group can keep up with the modern development environment. Automated testing can increase coverage levels by several orders of magnitude. Pursing this goal, automation has progressed from scripts, stubs and drivers to complex IDE like software tools. There are many oddities associated with testing software, though, and one of the most perplexing is that the more expensive the tool, the higher the rate of resulting shelf-ware. In 1997, companies starting to figure out that they needed to reduce the complexity of the scripting language they used to create scripts and they needed to reduce the amount of code written to test their production code. This gave birth to the era of the automated test framework. The first frameworks tried are data driven and keyword since they are the easiest to complete. However, these still require a great deal of script code maintenance, negating all the potential benefits of test automation. If test automation cannot overcome the tool complexity issue and the extreme demands of maintenance, then automation efforts will fail. Keyword driven frameworks only exacerbate the problem. The promise of test automation can be accomplished by moving to the next level: class/action based frameworks. The presentation will show how to create a framework that needs no script code and will allow all test assets to be stored in a database so that maintenance from version to version is reduced to a simple find and replace.

Mike's passion is testing software. He feels there aren't many things as fun as delving into a complex application, looking for anything that would spoil a customers' experience. He is a load and function test specialist, spending over a decade increasing code coverage via test automation in over 20 different companies.

Mike has worked on academic, defense, shrink-wrap, web, ERP and game software projects. His background is in the sciences, doing his PhD work in medical physics and neurophysiology, developing MRA image processing software. However, he is equally skilled at technical tasks as well as administrative duties. He's lead large groups as the Director of QA, focusing on building productive teams, deepening skills and promoting appropriate process levels. He was a testing technical representative for Rational Software where he was able to speak about software quality improvement on a regular basis and sharpened his automated testing skills, test management capabilities and project management methods. He has continued speaking at various user communities, STAR West and pretty much anywhere that will allow more focus on software quality. He now works for Worksoft, the next generation of test automation: class based frameworks.