Paper Presentation at STeP-IN SUMMIT 2009
Ravi Gururaj, Founder & CTO, VMLogix

 

Enterprises, independent software vendors (ISVs) and small/medium businesses (SMBs) are rapidly adopting virtualization technology. Virtual lab automation (VLA) has emerged as an innovative solution for streamlining software development and automating the entire development and test lab management while utilizing existing server virtualization infrastructure. This presentation will highlight specific capabilities enabled using VLA that will transform the management of your traditional lab infrastructure. These capabilities focus on how VLA can add significant value to the software engineering and testing/QA teams. This value enabled by VLA has helped test teams drive business growth and employee productivity and has dramatically elevated the use and performance of test labs.

 

 

 

Software Product development methodology trends today see us leaning more and more towards Agile practices. Software Test teams therefore, need to re-align to this changing trend. Test Automation is the key to the success of software development projects using Agile methodology. The scalability and effectiveness of Agile Test teams depend on the level and maturity of Test automation available and the on-going investment the team makes into this area. Strategic thinking towards Test infrastructure development, Choice of tools and increase in Test Coverage‚ are the needs of the hour. The session will cover why Test Infrastructure and Automation is so key, stressing on what will happen if these are missing and what the best practices are in strategizing this function. Setting up the right kind of Test Infrastructure is the top most item in the Strategist’s agenda. Choice of tools, selection of processes, test cases to be automated come a close second. The challenge of On-Demand (subscription based and hosted) Software Testing are different from that of licensed software — this can be met with Agile Test practices and the session will share how this can be achieved. Hiring the right talent for an Agile Testing Team and motivating them to their peak efficiency is a challenge. Some experiences and learnings in this area will be shared and discussed too.