sbarber's blog

Candidate Statement for CMG Director

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 17:16:13 +0100

I've been nominated as a director candidate for the CMG. My candidate statement is posted below because my views related to CMG mirror my views for application performance in organizations and the industry as a whole and I believe that is (or, at least, I hope it is) interesting to anyone involved or concerned with challenges related to application performance now and in the future.

If you are a CMG member, I encourage you to review all of the candidate statements and to vote your conscience here.

Thoughts on Agile & Agile Testing

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 15:23:06 +0100

This past weekend, I finally made time to start reading Agile Testing: A Practical Guide For Testers And Agile Teams, Lisa Crispin & Janet Gregory, Addison-Wesley (2009). I made it through the first two chapters before life called me away. After I put the book down and starting going about accomplishing a mundane series of errands, I realized that I was feeling disappointed and that the disappointment had started growing just a few pages into the book. Not because of what the book had to say, what it said was pretty good – not exactly how I would have expressed a few things, but thus is the plight of a writer reading what someone else has written on a topic they also care and write about. What was disappointing me was the fact that the stuff in those chapters needed to be said at all.

STP Online Summit: Achieving Business Value with Test Automation

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 16:11:25 +0100

Due to the overwhelming success and positive reviews of the last STP Online Summit: Business Value of Performance Testing, we've decided to do it again -- only this time, we're going to explore Achieving Business Value with Test Automation.

Join me (while I continue practicing my radio host skills for my emergency back-up career as a sportscaster) and 7 other presenters that I consider to be elite practitioners, teachers, and thinkers in their test automation areas of specialization for 3 half days online to learn their tips and methods for achieving business value with test automation. If you or your organization are using, or thinking about using, automation to enhance or improve your testing, you're not going to want to miss this online summit. I honestly can't think of anywhere else you can get this concentration of relevant and thematically targeted information at a better price, but you be the judge:

When: Tuesday October 11 10:00AM - Thursday October 13 1:30PM PST

Cost: $195 USD before 9/26/11 $245 USD after 9/26/11

Theme: For more than 15 years organizations have been investing in the promise of better, cheaper, and faster testing through automation. While some companies have achieved demonstrable business value from their forays into test automation, many others have experienced questionable to negative returns on their investments. Join your host, Scott Barber, for this three day online summit, to hear how seven recognized leaders in test automation have achieved real business value by implementing a variety of automation flavors and styles for their employers and clients. Learn how to answer the ROI question by focusing on business value instead of testing tasks, and how to implement automation in ways that deliver that value to the business, not just to the development and/or test team.

Scott Barber Interviewed by Matt Heusser; Podcast

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 15:50:15 +0100

Two part podcast on the STP site. I say some interesting stuff... or at least I say some stuff that's interesting to me. :)

Twist #52 - With Scott Barber

Twist #53 - The Return of the Barber

--
Scott Barber
President & Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.

Co-Author, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
Contributing Author, Beautiful Testing, & How To Reduce the Cost of Testing

Performance Testing Practice Named During Online Summit

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 15:48:59 +0100

Last week, I hosted STP's Online Performance Summit, a 3 half-day, 9 session, live, interactive webinar. As far as I know, this was the first multi-presenter, multi-day, live webinar by testers for testers. The feedback from attendees and presenters that I have seen has all been very positive, and personally, I think it went very well. On top of that, I had a whole lot of fun playing "radio talk show host".

The event sold out early at 100 attendees with more folks wanting to attend, but were unable. Since this was an experiment of sorts in terms of format and delivery, we made a commitment to the smallest and least expensive level of service from the webinar technology provider, and by the time we realized we had more interest than "seats", it was simply too late to make the necessary service changes to accommodate more folks. We won't be making that mistake again for our next online summit to be held October 11-13 on the topic of "Achieving Business Value with Test Automation". Keep your eyes on the STP website for more information about that and other future summits.

With all of that context, now to the point of this post.

Google Page Speed Service – The death of the Web Performance Optimization consultant?

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 20:30:30 +0100

Fred Beringer of SOASTA posed that question on his blog yesterday.

An interesting question, so being a tester, what did I do? Right, I tested it. It took all of one test for me to come to my conclusion...

NOT WITH RESULTS LIKE THIS!!

--
Scott Barber
President & Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.

Co-Author, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
Contributing Author,Beautiful Testing, & How To Reduce the Cost of Testing (TBP Summer 2011, Taylor and Francis)

CloudTest Lite - A Game Changer in the Performance Tool Market

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 03:16:22 +0100

Yesterday, SOASTA announced their new product, CloudTest Lite (Press Release). It's not common that I get excited about a tool product release, but this is different. This product has the potential to change the market for the better.

Scratch that. I'll be shocked if it doesn't change the market for the better.

Why is that, you ask? Consider the following attributes of CloutTest Lite:

It's a fully featured, easy to learn and use, enterprise class, modern, performance testing tool for web & mobile applications
All you need to use it is a reasonably modern machine connected to the internet and a web browser.
- You don't need to buy, install, configure or maintain load generation machines.
- The "license" is tied to your personal credentials, so you can design, create, execute, and analyze your tests from any machine you want without needing to figure out how to point to the license server, or how to get onto the corporate network from your favorite internet cafe.
- You can even do much of the design, test enhancement, and analysis entirely off-line.
You can simulate up to 100 virtual users any time you want. No more scheduling time on the controller days or weeks in advance guessing the app will be ready for your test. No more having to wait until your next scheduled time to re-run your test when you see something 'wonky' in your data.
It's free.
- Yes, I said free.
- As in, you never need to pay a dime. Not today, not when the trial expires, not a year from now to continue your maintenance contract.
- That's right, it is free from now until the sun explodes (or at least until well beyond when anything we're building or planning to build today is long gone and forgotten)

Imagine the implications:

Uruguay surpasses world with professional development program for software testers.

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 16:46:31 +0100

The Centro de Ensayos de Software (CES), a non-profit software testing laboratory in Uruguay, has recently launched a program that is certain to become the new “gold standard” in professional development for software testers. The program, endorsed by the Universidad de la Republica (Uruguay), the Universidad Castilla La Mancha (Spain), and sanctioned by the Uruguayan IT Chamber (CUTI), is the most comprehensive, affordable, and publicly available training program for software testers on the market. Based on my market research and comprehensive review of the program, I have no reservation in rating it as market leading.

What being a Context-Driven Tester means to me

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 01:59:57 +0100

I guess it’s that time again. What time is that, you ask? It’s the time when discussion/debate flares up over Context-Driven. I’m not going to weigh in on the whole discussion of pros/cons, value/distraction, etc. I am a consultant. I am Context-Driven (and not just as a tester, it's simply the way I have operated since long before I was a tester and long before I became aware someone had coined a term and composed a set of principles around how I already operated). The license plate on my car says “CONTEXT”. It works for me. But my point isn’t to convince you that it’s right for you. My point is to address a comment that I frequently hear that *feels* very sad to me.

“Where I work, I don’t have the freedom or authority to implement all this Context-Driven stuff, so I guess I don’t get to be part of the club.”

I find this sad, because I don’t agree. It is my opinion that “Where I work, I don’t have the freedom or authority…” *is* a "driving context", making smart decisions about what you are empowered to choose, and appropriately trying to inform/educate those who are "driving your context" that there are other options qualifies as being Context-Driven... at least to me.

Webinar: Application Performance Testing; From Conception to Gravestone

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 16:49:33 +0000

Testing the Limits... Interviews by uTest

Thu, 13 May 2010 00:07:00 +0100

uTest is doing a series of interviews with interesting/well-known testers. I was flattered to be asked to be interviewed recently and found that I enjoyed answering the questions... and didn't hate my answers when I read them as posted (any of you who have ever done that sort of thing know that is a fairly significant statement!)

My interview is "Testing the Limits with Scott Barber": Part I, Part II, Part III

Attend CAST 2010

Tue, 11 May 2010 22:46:50 +0100

Attend CAST 2010
The 5th annual Conference of the Association for Software Testing
August 2-4, 2010, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
"Skills in Testing"
www.CAST2010.org
*Keynotes by:*
Tim Lister*
Cem Kaner
*Made possible by: DornerWorks
EARLY BIRD PRICING ENDS ON MAY 15!
LAST CHANCE TO SAVE UP TO 30%!

Testing vs. Checking ... my 2 cents.

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 07:10:31 +0100

I was pleased to see Michael Bolton's series on Testing vs. Checking. If you haven't been following, what I consider to be the central thread of the topic (and the unfortunately inevitable fallout that seems to happen in "testerland" almost any time someone says something that makes sense).

From Michael:

From James Bach:

http://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/358

From Scott Barber:

http://www.perftestplus.com/resources/014PeakPerf.pdf Original, ST&P Magazine, 2005
http://www.logigear.com/newsletter/investigation_vs_validation.asp Reprinted by Logigear, 2007

Thorkil Sonne: Recruit Autistics

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 03:25:31 +0100

Wired.com ran their smart list today. If you aren't familiar with it or don't care, at least check out the great press fellow software tester, entrepreneur, and social innovator Thorkil Sonne is getting for Specialisterne here:

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-10/ff_smartlist_sonne

Attention Vendors and Service Providers

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 08:35:17 +0100

The 4th Annual Conference of the Association of Software Testing (CAST) 2009

Colorado Springs, Colorado, July 13-16, 2009

Serving Our Stakeholders

If your company sells tools, training, or services related to software testing, CAST is the one conference you won't want to cut out of your budget. For a small fraction of the cost of many other conferences you can network with influencers and decision makers, you can become known as a company that really cares about testing and testers (as opposed to a company that simply found a way to make money off of software testing), and you can get a glimpse into where testing is headed in the future.