What

Description

Testing in production tends to be lauded as the new silver bullet or dismissed as a ridiculous meme. In reality, it is just another technique that depends on certain prerequisites and skills to execute effectively, and when done well can fill big gaps in risk coverage from other pre-release testing.

This workshop will take the time to explore why we would use this technique. Testing in production actually leverages a lot of tools and activities that you may be applying in other environments already so we will see how existing skills like exploratory testing and smoke tests can be reframed for production feedback. Beyond existing experiences, we will identify some additional techniques you may not have used before but can hopefully also apply to early environments. And finally, we will discuss which of these techniques can increase our risk in production and how our delivery practices can set us up for success.

Who is this course for?

Everyone who is working on a product in production is at some level testing in production. Because of this, anyone who currently works on a piece of software that has live users will gain value from this session.

Attendees should have a basic understanding of software delivery processes via pipelines and a basic understanding of software telemetry including logs and metrics but with an interest in understanding more about how this influences the quality of their services.

Takeaways

• Examine current team practices for readiness to leverage different activities and tools
• Discuss what risks testing in production can introduce
• List the activities and tools used for testing in production
• Describe the types of risks testing in production can mitigate

Prerequisites

There are no pre-requisites for this 99-Minute Workshop

Speaker

Abby Bangser

Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)

Abby Bangser is a software tester with a keen interest in working on products where fellow engineers are the users. Abby brings the techniques of analysing and testing customer facing products to tools like delivery pipelines and logging so as to generate clearer feedback and greater value. Abby has a strong background in QA across software projects and platform engineering teams which she is now using in her new role as a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE).

Outside of work Abby is active in the community by co-leading Speak Easy which mentors new and diverse speakers, co-hosting the London free meetup Software Testing Clinic which brings together mentors and new joiners to the software testing industry, and hosting the London branch of #CoffeeOps meetup. You can get in touch easiest on Twitter at @a_bangser.