Bug Blog

Software development has evolved to a point where the end user has become as important as the application itself. The days of people adapting themselves to software are gone and the need for software to adapt to people has made quality assurance testing a vital part of software development.

The changing nature of the financial business can be attributed to digital technology. Fintech has now become ubiquitous across the entire financial ecosystem. At the grassroots level, most people encounter fintech through e-banking. This is the most common touchpoint for the majority of customers and it’s important to provide those customers with quality services.

Hiring the right software testing vendor can be a problem, but it doesn't have to be. There is no shortage of alleged “testers” in the marketplace. Fortunately, it isn't all that difficult to sort out those companies that provide excellent service. They stand out from the crowd. Certain items indicate when you are dealing with a quality software testing vendor.

Configuration management has been around since the 1950s, where it began by managing hardware development and later progressed to managing software development as well. It is the comprehensive documentation and updating of data concerning the hardware and software of a particular enterprise.

Every now and then, there arrives an idea whose time has come. DevOps is such an idea. But, it didn’t look that way at first. Yet, DevOps has taken off in only a few years to become a major influence on software development and deployment. And it has, through its use of infrastructure as code, greatly sped up the development cycle.

The importance of user experience testing has grown in direct proportion to the complexity of what is being tested. There was a time when software UAT didn’t even exist because software did not exist. There was no such thing when Charles Babbage started work on his “difference engine” way back in the early 1800s.

Bluemix is the Heroku of IBM. It has been built on Cloud Foundry and runs on top of Softlayer. Many of the world's well-known and successful applications and services have been built on SoftLayer. We were first introduced to IBM Bluemix in July last year. At the time it was still going through beta and coincided with the increasing market traction of Softlayer, which was acquired by IBM last year. We were intrigued but also excited about the possibility of a new channel for Bugwolf.

Ideally, UAT testing should provide the opportunity to uncover any remaining bugs, and to test usability directly in the operational environment. These tests should generate a confident certainty that the software will function as designed when it goes live. However, this isn't always the case.

These days it so easy for consumers to change technology products. Most technology is linked to a subscription based model which has no lock in dates and are typically month to month and based on consumption. Today, if a user is not happy with the experience and the quality of a product, they will pack up their bags and move to a competitor.

Autonomous vehicles, like so many other forms of digital technology, has convenience as a big selling point. Things have changed and they are about to change again.

It’s no longer about being first to market. You only need to look at Friendster and Facebook to see the evidence of that. Today it’s about startups getting to product market fit first and by doing it lean. Recently I had the privilege to keynote in front of 500 senior executives at IBM’s A/NZ Smarter Selling Academy I dived into this topic by sharing how we did it at Bugwolf. I want to share some of my comments from that talk, and a few other thoughts I’ve had since then.

When users switch between devices throughout the day the applications used are going to be the ones that function the same way regardless of the device size. Screen size plays a significant role in end user satisfaction even though in testing software “display” issues are the least important part of the code. However, with mobile applications, screen size and display issues become critical. Screen sizing testing can be infiltrated into nearly every phase from initial development through certification and in beta testing.