Inside The Outer Loop

GDPR (general data protection regulation) and what it means for software testing and delivery. Guest Tom Pryce, Communications Manager, Curiosity Software, brings his knowledge to ep2 of Inside The Outer Loop, what GDPR Means For Software Delivery. We’re exploring plenty of ideas including: was the grace period of 2 years prior to GDPR legislation a call to arms for organisations to shore up clarity in their IT estates? Who are the gamblers and sceptics? What have been the implications for data provisioning regarding data minimisation and process limitation, particularly for software testing and delivery? From this to also considering what if you reduced the attack level through using synthetic data in the lower environments? What’s the difference between the data subject and the data processor related on premise? Also, how does this all impacts having access to PII protected characteristics in data provisioned to non-production environments. And finally where should you be paring back on the use of live data to know the flows between systems for assisting in migration You’ll also hear about how the fine caused by a cloud migration that the Norwegian DPA (data protection authority) said could have been avoided being levied by way of using synthetic data and less production data. Inside the outer loop – brought to you by the Curiosity Software team! Together with industry leaders and experts, we uncover actionable strategies to navigate the outer loop of software delivery, streamline test data management, and elevate software quality. Tune in to transform the way you think about software delivery, quality, and productivity!

Inside the outer loop – brought to you by the Curiosity Software team! Together with industry leaders and experts, we uncover actionable strategies to navigate the outer loop of software delivery, streamline test data management, and elevate software quality. Tune in to transform the way you think about software delivery, quality, and productivity!

Welcome to episode 14 of Inside The Outer Loop! In this episode, the Curiosity Software team, Rich Jordan and Ben Johnson-Ward, are joined by Alex Martins, VP of Strategy at Katalon, to discuss the implications and challenges of AI-Powered Testing. This episode goes beyond the hype and marketing euphoria of AI, to weigh up productivity gains coming from GPT-4 and large language models (LLM) in the software quality space. Guest Alex Martins leads the conversation around the need to put the tester at the centre of AI-powered testing, and only then, start building out AI use cases and safeguards. Where the development community has seen tangible gains in AI deployment, the uplift in AI-powered testing practices is just beginning. So, how will this impact software testing professionals? Also, how will SME knowledge evolve as organizations develop bespoke LLMs? Ben Johnson-Ward argues, if artificial intelligence is used to create test outputs, then testers will have to evaluate the output of these tests to determine if they are correct. This approach may lead to a decrease in productivity as testers spend time testing the output of AI generated tests. Testers will be able to fine-tune their AI models and build out a broader toolkit. But what does this look like? While organizations are adopting AI in testing, there will also be impact on the metrics of repeatability, explainability, and auditability. With this in mind, internal AI committees can establish rules to abate uncertainty. Rich Jordan follows up on Ben's point, explaining how from the human perspective, AI may be limited in determining if an application meets the needs of the users. In this use case, AI becomes the co-pilot, a new tool for experts to enhance collaboration, while testers remain primary-pilots. Repeatability is discussed as a characteristic that humans are comfortable with in testing, but can AI offer better alternatives to traditional methods of monitoring code changes and integration flows? AI-powered practices in software testing and test coverage are still in their early stages. This requires ongoing collaboration, learning, and sharing of experiences among organizations and industry professionals. Finally, the possibilities and potential benefits of AI are too significant to ignore, despite the discomfort and challenges it brings in delivering quality software, faster. Inside the outer loop – brought to you by the Curiosity Software team! Together with industry leaders and experts, we uncover actionable strategies to navigate the outer loop of software delivery, streamline test data management, and elevate software quality. Tune in to transform the way you think about software delivery, quality, and productivity!

Welcome to episode 15 of Inside The Outer Loop! In this episode, Curiosity Software's Rich Jordan and James Walker, are joined by Mark Winteringham, author of AI-Assisted Testing. Together they reflect on their experience with AI, the effect it has had on software quality and testing, and the future of AI Co-Pilots. LLMs, namely ChatGPT, Gemini and Llama are cool, but what do they offer in terms of delivering software quality? What leaps have you taken in using generative AI technology? How will you future-proof your AI-Assisted testing efforts? By now you really should be considering these questions at a strategic organisational level. Guest Mark Winteringham unravels a collage of challenges as he reflects on his new book "AI Assisted Testing” with our hosts. Providing a balanced perspective in understanding the progress, plateaus, and benefits of using artificial intelligence and co-pilots for delivering quality software. James follows up by exploring the value of AI Co-Pilots in testing and the importance of context in prompt engineering, emphasising the need for experimentation to determine what actually makes a good prompt. Seen with a healthy scepticism, prompts can be used as aids to extend quality testing abilities. But to yield better results, rather than prompting AI with a broad question, the advice is to target specific parts of the system or problem. But what does implementing AI technology in to your SDLC actually mean, and how does it work? The possibilities seem endless, and large language model’s keep growing, but has there been an impact, is true transformational change still a while away? Use Curiosity's code at checkout for a discount on Mark Winteringham's book, AI-Assisted Testing! Get the Book Here: https://bit.ly/ai-testing Use this code: podcuriosity24 Inside the outer loop – brought to you by the Curiosity Software team! Together with industry leaders and experts, we uncover actionable strategies to navigate the outer loop of software delivery, streamline test data management, and elevate software quality. Tune in to transform the way you think about software delivery, quality, and productivity!

Is virtualisation given its rightful place in test design? Deployed in a loosely coupled system, speed and flow increase, whilst reducing technical debt. Team alignment and version handling is improved, setting the terrain for better software delivery. Welcome to this episode of Inside The Outer Loop. Moving from expertise in original service virtualisation to sandboxing, guest John Power, CEO of Ostia Solutions, with Curiosity Software's Huw Price and Rich Jordan shares insight that a proper sandbox is fully simulated, gives a good customer experience to developers and testers, that a sandbox being standalone and generating synthetic data, it isn’t compromised. Initially offering a proxy, using request-response algorithms for recording and replaying without Mainframes in play, Ostia went to providing full simulation by example of the UK's Open Banking Model. This involved moving the technology from simply record and replay of data to actual data generation. The hosts share experiences on leading a virtualisation team but also how best to implement Master Data Management using sandboxes in model-based testing to avoid accidental complexity in the system under test. In adopting such an approach, the starting point really is to understand the current confidence level in the interface you’re asking service virtualisation to replace. In practice, simulating what currently exists a system, through the framework bringing in functional endpoints and business rules, it informs the required APIs to the benefit of time, security and quality. But the challenge is for organisations to value sandboxes in adjusting the system design rather than as a regulatory or end-of-year afterthought. Beyond creating reusable assets, you’ll ensure continuous updates to sandbox data and testing models. The approach also gives oversight to which contracts and test environments are affected, alongside sandboxes. Though this requires moving away from a centralised management of APIs. In working towards a better architectural design of a system, where dependencies are isolated, we can learn from Conway’s Law. It suggests a system mimics the organisation's communication, so it's best to improve communication across teams first. Sandboxing will then thrive at an organisational level. You’ll be reducing technical debt, risk, extra effort and in parallel developing mature teams to enable flow, feedback and experimentation in the system under test. Inside the outer loop – brought to you by the Curiosity Software team! Together with industry leaders and experts, we uncover actionable strategies to navigate the outer loop of software delivery, streamline test data management, and elevate software quality. Tune in to transform the way you think about software delivery, quality, and productivity!