How Testers Can Thrive in CI/CD Without Being Gatekeepers

In this episode of the Vernon Richard Show, the hosts delve into the nuances of Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment, exploring how testing practices evolve in these environments. They discuss the skills required for testers, the importance of risk management, and the cultural shifts necessary for effective quality assurance. The conversation highlights the need for collaboration within teams and the role of testers as facilitators rather than gatekeepers. The episode concludes with reflections on the importance of understanding quality and risk in software development.

Links to stuff we mentioned during the pod:

• 01:35 - Quality Talks
  • Check out their awesome new website
• 02:37 - The Agile Testing Days Conference
  • Oh! Their Call For Papers is open until the end of March. You should submit!
• 02:42 - Johnny J. Jones
  • Johnny's LinkedIn
• 03:23 - Continuous Delivery & Continuous Deployment
  • What is Continuous Delivery?
  • What is Continuous Deployment?
• 03:31 - Abby Bangser
  • Abby's LinkedIn
• 05:24 - Keith Klain
  • Keith's blog
  • Keith's podcast
  • Keith's LinkedIn
• 23:51 - Dan Ashby's famous post called "Continuous Testing" (featuring his famous diagram!)
• 28:45 - James Bach's Test Jumper concept
  • James' website
  • James' LinkedIn
• 31:20 - All of these people should probably change their last names to "Bourne"
• 40:18 - James Christie
  • James' blog
  • James' body of work regarding the Post Office Scandal
• 43:37 - Trunk-Based Thierry de Pauw
  • Thierry's website
  • Thierry's LinkedIn
• 48:30 - Jerry Weinberg's 2nd Law of Consulting from his book The Secrets of Consulting
  • "No matter how it looks at first, it's always a people problem."
  • Find more of Jerry's quotes on this page
  • Jerry's Wikipedia page (his books are highly recommended)
    
    

Bonus links to further study on the topic:

• 
  What's the difference between Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment?
• The book Continuous Delivery, seminal work on the topic by Dave Farley & Jez Humble
• Speaking of Dave Farley...
  • You can visit his website to find links to allTheThings
  • Here's his excellent YouTube channel Modern Software Engineering
  • He's written a second book Modern Software Engineering
• Speaking of Jez Humble...
  • He wrote the excellent book Accelerate with lead author Dr. Nicole Forsgren (<- all of Dr. Nicole's work is recommended reading at this point)
  • And here's his website
• I asked ChatGPT for some resources and it gave me this list (proceed with caution just in case!). 
  
  

00:00 - Intro

01:06 - Merch tangent

02:53 - Today's topic:

• What skills and behaviours does a Tester need, in order to be successful when they work in a CI/CD context?
• What does testing look like in a team using CI/CD?

04:08 - ⚽️ Footy

04:40 - Compare and contrast

07:00 - What conversation(s) needs to happen before "pressing the button" and who needs to be involved in it?

08:25 - Deployed Vs Released

13:37 - Monitoring and tooling to enable CI/CD practices

17:25 - Where/how do reviews fit into this?

20:38 - Back to Shift Left!

23:51 - Where does the testing happen?

24:36 - The link between chef Gordon Ramsey and software testing

25:45 - What are we reeeally talking about here?

27:09 - How to reframe things when someone makes the polarising claim "We don't need Testers in CI/CD/DevOps teams"

29:35 - Q: So how would I test differently if I were a Tester in a CI/CD team? A: Test like Jason Bourne.

32:00 - The value of having a tool belt and using it regularly

33:06 - How to catch a unicorn? How to unbundle testing skills

35:40 - This all loops back to risks & culture

37:03 - Where would it be a bad idea to use Continuous Deployment?

40:45 - Q: So how would I test differently if I were a Tester in a CI/CD team? A: Test like a Circus Ringmaster.

42:39 - Moar Shift Left: Real Devs build on Main

48:48 - Modern Vs Traditional mindsets

50:30 - Quality enters the chat...

51:00 - The relationship between risk and quality

52:47 - Testing Vs Quality Engineering

55:50 - ⚽️ Footy

What is The Vernon Richard Show?

Vernon Richards and Richard Bradshaw discuss all things software testing, quality engineering and life in the world of software development. Plus our own personal journeys navigating our careers and lifes.