Shift Left, Shift Right

and Improve the centreA strategy for testers in a continuous delivery context

Augusto Gus Evangelisti

Why you should listen to an old man with

a pig on his t-shirt?

Warning: by the end of this talk you might

hate me

When did I think about doing a

talk on this?

What is CD?“Continuous delivery (CD) is a

software engineering approach in

which teams produce software in

short cycles, ensuring that the

software can be reliably released at

any time. It aims at building, testing,

and releasing software faster and

more frequently.” - Wikipedia

What is CD?

Some myths

CD can work only for websites, it does not

work for complex things

CD can work only in non regulated

industries

Teams that do CD have very buggy

software

Myth #1 - CD can work only for

websites, it does not work for complex

systems

Myth #2 - CD can work

only in non regulated

industries

Myth #3 - Teams that do

CD have very buggy

software

Myth #3 - Teams that do

CD have very buggy

software

Discuss

Pick 2 people next to you and discuss

the answer to the question

“why do organisations use continuous

delivery?”

- 3 minutes

Benefits

Now let me tell you

my story

Caveat to my storyI will tell you the story of how we

transformed PaddyPower into a high

performing continuous delivery

organisation.

I will tell you what I learned from it.

I will not tell you “This is how you have to

do it”, but I hope you will find some of the

lessons I have learned useful for your

context. (Gus)

Let’s start from the

end

My first day in PP I saw

this

First thing that worked for

us

The industry calls it DEvOps

Quiz

In 2014 my department had 8 teams with around 50 developers, 8 BAs, 8 POs and 8 system engineers

How many testers did we have?

Answer

Acceptable answer #1: 3

Acceptable answer #2: 77

50 dev, 8 BAs, 8 POs, 8 Sister eng. and 3 Testers

Quality became the

priority for everybody

Testing activities shift

Shift Left activities

Reduce complexity

BDD

Test automation

Pair programming

Code reviews

Mob programming

More Shift Left

activitiesDesigning a lean product (Impact

Mapping/LeanUX)

Improve testability

Reduce multitasking through WIP

Design for resilience

Design for availability

Design for performance

Improve the centre

activities

Pair exploratory testing with developers

Shift Right activities

• Monitoring customers use of the

product

• Analysing customer’s feedback for

future products

• Canary releases

How did 3 testers

manage to do all this?

Communication

became more central

than everWe needed to communicate with all sorts of

different people

We needed to gain people’s trust

We needed to understand different points

of view and expectations

What skills did I work

on?

Active Listening

Empathy

Infulencing

Active Listening

Listen for what people have to say, do not

prepare an answer while somebody is

talking to you.

Use positive body language and reinforce

the conversation by paraphrasing (or

restating) what you just heard

Empathy

Perspective taking

Refrain from judgement

Recognising emotions

Sharing our acknowledgement

Empathy

Can we rejoice for

other people’s

success?

Influencing others, let’s

learn from salesmen!

The science in context is

Psychology

I like these 2, let’s try

Reciprocity

Consensus

Collaboration was

vital

Testing community of

practice

I said “at least” one

Can you do it?

To finish

Deliver fast

Deliver often

but most of all

HAVE FUN DOING IT!

Thank you!