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.

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.

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

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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

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!!

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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)

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:

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

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