Episode 3: Bad Data in Software Delivery!

05/18/23 • 31 min

Bad data but also production data. Curiosity Software's Huw Price and Rich Jordan move the conversation on from GDPR compliance to bad data in software delivery. Together they explore the concept of the data gambler and sceptic, and the tension of using commercially live data in software delivery. Asking, is data more than a side gig for organisations? And ultimately, why it’s all about data, and why without test data there is no testing?
Can we change the narrative? Implement Design through Data Security to shore up predictability and repetition, which can reduce disorder in a system and set the bedrock for dynamic automation. And then what actually defines synthetic data? Responding to this, we touch on using API over unit testing and the role of a data generation AI to move away from the buzzy gold copy database.
What can you do? Design to do critical changes only once, then disguard them, reducing the amount of logic gates with each test, so reducing test bloat. Just spin up just the right amount of Dynamic Automation, ensuring to be critical around test cases, starting with manual, then go towards negative testing, for instance coping with nulls.
Finally, realising the cost to the business? To what extent is the delivery team that works like a feature factory aligned or detached with the audit team verifying by checklist? Maybe start weighing in on this as a compliance versus conduct risk situation in the organisation. The need then is to align the synergies between what’s being asked about the customer profile and how the profile of the customer is actually understood.
Ultimately you’ll be upping the bar on both functional (one-to-one testing of cases and data) and performance (what would, or even should production do) testing. GDPR guidance is there to be interpretted by the individual organisation, which is missing right now, and so at the molent is this just a type of control theatre mitigating a real lack of understanding of the unknowns in a systyem under test?
The Curiosity Software Podcast featuring Huw Price and Rich Jordan! Together, they share their insight and expertise in driving software design and development in test. Learn how you can improve your journey to quality software delivery, by considering how much do you really understand about your systems, and when things inevitably go wrong, why didn’t you test that?

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!

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Episode 2: What GDPR Means For Software Delivery

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.

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Episode 4: Aligning Testing to Quality with Marcus Merrell

In this episode, Marcus Merrell, Vice President of Technology at Sauce Labs, bring his experience to Inside The Outer Loop! Together with Curiosity Software's hosts Huw Price and Rich Jordan, Marcus Merrell discusses the lack of innovation in the testing space over the last 20 years, and why testing should be at the centre of quality efforts. Marcus rejects the idea that testing is a janitorial effort and cost centre, seeing it more as a revenue protection and growth opportunity if utilised properly!
The discussion gets started with a few questions, why is innovation limited to digital testing and model-based testing? How do we get beyond the dogmas and fashions around favouring tooling over business risk?
The takeaway is that focusing just on the common trappings of economically expensive bugs, even with 99% code coverage, it pulls focus away from reflecting on real business risks. This takes teams beyond the "must deliver yesterday" culture.
Software practices require testers to have a seat at the executive level to inform the company about the kinds of risks they’re exposed to, but there’s a rabbit hole syndrome that has freed up a misconception that testers are irrelevant.
The way to combat this is through finding early adopters to incubate, diffuse and prove culture change is an option. In terms of organisational risks, it’s great having a testing capability and team, yet unless somebody’s feeling pain when something blows up, how likely is it they will react? And at a more granular level the conversation needs to be on persuading organisations to spend time thinking about requirements, and quality at the start of the software delivery lifecycle.
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!