Lynn Winterboer

Always learning; always growing

Test Automation: Agile Enablement for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Teams

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Cher Fox and I recently presented at Agile2016 in Atlanta, GA. What an incredible experience! We are very fortunate that the Agile Alliance selected our session to video.

Our presentation is focused on test automation for DW/BI teams. Here’s what one attendee has to say about it:

During the Agile 2016 conference in Atlanta, I attended the Test Automation and Data Warehousing session with Lynn Winterboer and Cher Fox,” said Paul Carvalho, an Agile Coach at McKinsey & Company. “It was packed with insights into general trends and patterns for working with database teams, demos of working automation examples and an automated test dashboard, and interactive exercises to practice generating test cases for a Business Intelligence user scenario. Lynn and Cher brought their decades of combined practical experience to the audience in a value-packed interactive session that shows the tech industry where the gaps are and provides useful examples to help you get started on the path to automation. Test automation on data teams is a rare practice and yet is required to help lower risk and increase agility when working with databases and data warehousing projects. I highly recommend these two speakers and this session to other practitioners looking for good guidance for agility in the database and data warehousing fields.”

Paul’s insight into what the presentation communicated to him lets us know we are delivering news that’s relevant and necessary today. Test automation is a rare practice, but we really need to be doing it and it really is do-able.

Test Automation: Agile Enablement for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Teams

Presenters: Cher Fox & Lynn Winterboer

Here’s the summary we provided to the attendees about this video:

Regardless of whether your data warehousing (DW)/business intelligence (BI) team is dedicated to Scrum, a fan of Kanban, or focused on XP, “Agile” in any form calls for small increments of potentially deployable results – which means that QA is essential on a regular, frequent basis. As we develop these small increments, we need to not only test the new development, but also regression test what we’ve already built. Our test suite grows larger with each iteration, and manual testing quickly becomes infeasible. Agile requires that we automate our tests so that regression testing doesn’t become a development bottleneck.

Test automation is one of several key technical enablement practices that allows teams to be more successful in their agile journeys. While there are lots of test practices and automation tools out there for software development teams to leverage, very few are targeted to data-related development and testing. Agile analytics practitioner Lynn Winterboer and DW/BI architect and developer Cher Fox will share essential agile test foundations and data-focused test automation technologies to help data warehousing and business intelligence teams get a leg up on this important agile practice, including a demo of how this works!

Agenda

  • Why is test automation important for agile DW/BI teams?
  • Why aren’t all DW/BI teams automating their tests today?
  • What is the path to data-focused test automation?
  • Where to start? What tests to automate first?
  • Demo of a simple test automation tool any DW/BI team could build and use

About Agile Alliance

If you’re an Agile Alliance member, you can also watch the presentation from their website. Agile Alliance is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the concepts of Agile software development as outlined in the Agile Manifesto. With more than 30,000 members and subscribers around the globe, Agile Alliance is driven by the principles of Agile methodologies and the value delivered to developers, organizations, and end users. Agile Alliance organizes and supports events to bring the Agile community together on a global scale.

Are You Still Here?

Awesome! I’m glad you kept scrolling down the page. 🙂 I have a few bonus pictures for you from our visit to Agile2016.

Here we are at World of Coca-Cola at an Agile2016 event hosted by CA/Rally. Paul Carvalho stops for a Coke (and a smile!). He says, “Testers pick from the middle.”
Yikes! It’s a full room. Lots of friendly faces, though, including Em Campbell-Pretty there on the far right.
I facilitated an Open Space session at Agile2016. A group of us had a conversation about Agile Data Warehousing and took some quick notes on what we discussed.
Here I am with Chad Winterboer and Cher Fox cheesing for the camera. Well, I am, anyway. We are at the Georgia Aquarium during the closing conference party.

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