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A few years ago, I worked with a client, Arrowhead, to develop a dumb monkey test automation solution to address a number of significant quality risks with their ePro system, an FDA-regulated medical system. If you'd like to learn more about how we achieved significant, multi-dimensional quality risk management with a minimal investment and a positive automation return on investment (ROI) in mere weeks, check out this article, republished in Luxoft's Logeek magazine.

Today, I'm giving an intensive, hands-on workshop on white-box testing and code coverage in Kiev.  These are important topics and I'm glad to be offering this hands-on workshop here at Luxoft.  

As Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, and DevOps become ubiquitous, early testing to build confidence, find and remove bugs, and reduce risk become increasingly important. One key element of early testing is incorporating unit testing into the continuous integration and build processes. However, just running tests isn’t enough. You have to run tests that cover the software adequately, and that goes beyond just acceptance criteria or Gherkins. You have to know, down inside the code itself, that your tests have covered every executable statement, every branch, and (for safety critical systems) every condition in every branching or looping construct. Fortunately, the concepts behind achieving this level of coverage are well-defined and plenty of tools exist to help you. 

In this classic RBCS webinar, part1 and part 2, I'll explain the fundamental concepts and techniques of code coverage, so you can be more effective and efficient in your unit testing. If you'd like to go beyond just understanding these concepts, and learn to put them into action on real programs with real tools, contact us for more info about our one-day, hands-on white-box testing workshop.

As you can see, we are approaching another fun and exciting YouTube milestone: 200,000 views.  Whether that happens this week or next, it's clearly happening soon. And why not, with all the free resources you can find there.  So go ahead. Be the one who pushes us over 200,000 views. We promise you'll learn something in the process. Let me welcome you to the RBCS YouTube channel in this video.

Are you in Europe? Ready for ISTQB Advanced Security Tester? Well, June is the month, Nuremberg is the place, and we are ready for you?  More about the class here, and registration information here.

Are you in Europe? Ready for ISTQB Expert Test Manager? Well, June is your month. See you in Budapest. Register here.

If you are testing a simple mobile app, you may find it relatively easy to find representative test data. However, what if you are testing enterprise scale applications?

In the enterprise data center, one hundred or more applications of various sizes, complexity, and criticality co-exist, operating on various data repositories, in some cases shared data repositories. In some cases, disparate data repositories hold related data, and the ability to test integration across applications that access these data sets is critical. 

In this webinar I'll talk about the challenges facing our clients as they deal with these testing problems. You’ll go away with a better understanding of the nature of the challenges, as well as ideas on how to handle them, grounded in lessons I've learned in over 30 years of software engineering and testing. Need more help with test data management? Contact us.

RBCS and Experimentus announce their new partnership to deliver Testing Maturity Model Integration (TMMi) assessments in the United States and Canada. TMMi is the only open-source, non-proprietary test process assessment method that includes a maturity scale aligned with CMMi.

These properties make TMMi assessments and process improvement plans an ideal fit for organizations that are already leveraging CMMi or its general concepts to improve their software processes, and for organizations that want to benchmark their test process maturity in a way that is easily comparable to other organizations.

Since 1994, RBCS has provided consulting and expert services to clients, including test process assessments. Experimentus has the leading TMMi test process assessment tools in the world, with extensive experience delivering TMMi assessments to clients globally.  This partnership leverages each company's strengths to expand the reach of TMMi assessments in North America.

Rex Black, RBCS President, said, "The addition of TMMi assessments to our consulting line-up will be very beneficial for our clients who see the value in an objective maturity measurement of their testing processes. TMMi assessments will nicely complement our existing Critical Testing Processes (CTP) assessments, in that CTP assessments focus on quantifying test process effectiveness and efficiency while TMMi assessments address test process maturity more broadly. RBCS are excited to have partnered with the leading organization in the TMMi assessment space, Experimentus. In addition to their strong toolset and skills to support TMMi assessments, we think the decades-long relationships between key players in our company and Experimentus will lead to immediate productivity. We are looking forward to working with clients on TMMi assessments, and would encourage people to book their assessments ASAP to avoid delays."

Experimentus are the world leader for TMMi assessments and training provider. They offer supporting products with services such as iTM (Intelligent Test Method) and Testing ORB (Optimized Results for Business) which enhance the testing process as well as optimizing it. Process improvement is also an area of expertise for Experimentus supporting organisations with digital transformation projects and tackling complex areas such as Test Environment Management Provisioning.
"Over many years, we've developed a unique approach to providing our partners and clients with the expertise and knowledge they need to grow successfully. We are delighted to work closely with RBCS, who have an excellent track record in Software Testing, working with many of the companies in the Fortune 500", said Martin Adcock, Founder and CEO of Experimentus. "We've seen a growth of interest in TMMi in both North and South America over the last two years, and working with RBCS will now expand the reach of TMMi throughout America".

Listen to Rex's video on the partnership here. 

Since 1994, RBCS has provided consulting and expert services to clients, including test process assessments. In the 2000s, we introduced our Critical Testing Processes (CTP) assessment model, focused on improving testing business value and overall effectiveness and efficiency. Now in 2017, RBCS and Experimentus have joined forces to deliver Testing Maturity Model Integration (TMMi) assessments in the United States and Canada, extending RBCS's assessment repetoire to include the only open-source, non-proprietary test process assessment method that includes a maturity scale aligned with CMMi. Learn more in this video and the accompanying press release. 

As I've mentioned here before, RBCS is serious about helping gaming companies improve their testing. We have been helping gaming companies and game testing companies improve their testing for almost two decades. Game software is about the same size as the movie industry, which makes it one of the most important sectors of the US economy.

Why does testing matter? Simple. When you test better, you deliver a higher quality gaming experience to your players. When your players have a better gaming experience, they come back.

If you're building or testing gaming software, and you want to test better, deliver higher quality, and thus build player loyalty, contact us. Not only can we help you improve your testing processes through consulting and expert services, we can also help you improve your testing skills with our complete line of ASTQB accredited training courses. Not only is RBCS serious about game testing, so is the ASTQB, as you can see on their dedicated game testing web page. So, let us know today how we can help you.

Yes, I am coming to Europe in June. Check out some of the details in this video. You can meet me at one of the following events:

• June 1: Private white-box testing tutorial (sorry, not open to the public, but available for your company, too).
• June 2-3: Testing Stage 2017 conference 
• June 6-8: ISTQB Advanced Security Tester, in partnership with imbus
• June 12-14: ISTQB Expert Test Manager Strategic Module, in partnership with Masterfield
• June 19-21: Black-box Bug-a-thon and Software Test Estimation at the Software Testing Forum

I hope to see you there! If you want to arrange a private training or consulting session while I'm there, contact us today.