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The Entire RBCS, Inc. Team (four-legged & two legged) Wishes You and Yours a Happy and Prosperous New Year! 

Models: Kibo, MMink, Roscoe. Photo credit: Emma G. Black
Copyright © 2019-20 RBCS, Inc.

Contact us to discuss 2020 consulting, assessments or training!

You've heard about shift left. Finding and removing bugs earlier, closer to the point of introduction, makes sense, because it's cheaper to remove bugs earlier and it increases developer productivity by reducing debugging work. However, you should also be looking to shift down, too. Shifting down means introducing fewer bugs to begin with, and, of course, the cheapest bug is the one you don't have to pay to fix because it never existed.

If you're looking to shift left and shift down, but can't quite figure out how to do that, contact us. We've been helping clients shift left and shift down since 1997, so we have over 20 years of experience.

Welcome to Luxoft Tech Talks! Click here to listen to the first in this tech talk series: Code Coverage Metrics by Rex Black, President of RBCS.

More and more testers and programmers are using tools that provide code coverage metrics.  These metrics tell the tester or programmer how much of the code has been covered by a given set of tests, and, more importantly, what important conditions might not be covered.  Some tools can also provide insight into the complexity, and thus the likely difficulty level of future refactoring, of the code. 
In this practical presentation, Rex will explain the following code coverage metrics and how you can use them to write better code or tests:

• Statement, decision, and modified condition/decision  coverage
• McCabe Cyclomatic Complexity and basis path coverage

To make the material easier to understand and practical, Rex will illustrate each metric using a real program.

Melvin Chua, Test Lead, wrote "I have sat the Technical Test Analyst exam – passed the exam. Please convey my thanks to Rex for his guidance through the exam prep. It certainly helped with the preparation of the exam." Congratulations, Melvin!

Click here for information about our exam preparation guides.

“I wanted to pass on some feedback from the November Live Virtual CTFL class. Four of my team members attended and all were very impressed with the information presented, how it was presented, and the overall quality of the class. The attendees all stated that the instructor was fantastic and that they hope in 2020 when others from our organization attend training, that the same person is their instructor. I have been a big believer in the courses offered via RBCS since I attended many years ago. Thank you all for having this class available and for continuing to work toward strengthening the QA community at large.”

~Karen Cameron, Quality Assurance Manager

Rex Black recently gave a talk on "Stupid Metrics Tricks and How to Avoid Them" at the ASQ Austin chapter meeting. Check it out to hear real-world examples of common metrics mistakes and learn ways to implement metrics that aren’t stupid. Click here to view a video of one of Rex's presentations on this topic. Click here to view the slides.

If so, click here to check it out for free! It won’t be a waste of time!

Is software testing a waste of time and money?  Many people outside of the testing profession seem to think so, and, based on the relative paucity of money devoted to testing compared to other activities in the lifecycle, it’s certainly not a high priority for many organizations.  Is that smart?  Why do we test software?  What benefits, goals, and objectives does testing serve?  Attend this presentation to learn solid, hard-headed, convincing reasons why testing is one of the smartest investments you can make, and why organizations that invest in testing receive long-lasting benefits from doing so.  Rex will lay out the case for software testing and answer your questions.

In any real-world project, there are an infinite number of tests you can run, but you don't have forever. This is especially true in Agile, Kanban, CI/CD, and Continuous Deployment projects. How do you decide what to focus on? Risk-based testing, a technique we at RBCS have been perfecting since 1995, is the answer. Risk-based testing allows you answer key testing questions:

- What test conditions should I cover?
- How much effort should I spend on each test condition?
- Which test conditions do I cover first, and which can wait until the end?

In just one week of focused consulting on an actual project, we can show you how to incorporate risk-based testing, using our proven risk-based testing jumpstart technique. Across all types of lifecycles, for over 20 years, we've lead the testing world in defining and applying best practices in risk-based testing. Contact us today.