You Can’t Compete without a Solid Automation Strategy
The speed at which software evolves, adapts, and moves to the next best thing can be dizzying at times. As soon as you adopt the latest and greatest methodology and see better results, a new solution is created that somehow requires teams to better test and develop at a greater rate.
But innovation doesn’t wait for you or any of your competitors to catch up. If, for example, you haven’t established a strong automation base within your testing team, you’re already well behind the curve. At least, that’s what Steven Winter, the president of Guerilla QA, argues in a recent interview with StickyMinds.
“If anybody reading this or listening to this does not have a solid automation strategy for their stuff, you are behind the times, and you will not be able to compete in today and tomorrow's market. Period,” Winter asserts. “Continuous integration was last week. Continuous delivery is now. Agile's almost not even fast enough for getting stuff out there.”
That can be both fascinating and disheartening to hear. You might be riding high after finally instituting all the best agile principles within your team, only to hear that somehow, you’re still not quite fast enough to keep up with each and every change that comes your way. That almost doesn’t seem fair, right?
But with so many connected devices hitting the market and an avalanche of data about each and every person walking the Earth coming our way, we need our teams and devices to adapt and change to what that data says. If you release a new update to your banking application that’s locking even 1 percent of your users out of their accounts, you can’t wait around to find a fix. You need to put that data into action immediately.
What’s the answer, then? Winter preaches that you can’t be reactionary. Instead of absorbing a stiff jab, registering the shot in your brain, and avoiding it the next time it gets thrown, it’s more advantageous to be prepared for the first shot and avoid it before it does any damage.
“If you make the decisions up front, you're going to be getting closer and closer to this beautiful self-diagnosing system. The sentient test robot will tell you, the app itself will tell you when there's an issue. You don't want to have to be chasing after it all the time,” Winter continues. “Absolutely, absolutely you have to have test automation up front, built in, part of the culture to support that kind of continuous deployment, continuous delivery, continuous quality based on the rapidly changing landscape that IoT is going to throw at us.”
Don’t react to what’s already happened. Understand the direction the market is going and be ready to act on a moment’s notice.
