Gojko Adzic

This is from my presentation on the Robot Framework at the Agile acceptance testing tools round-up event held on 27 May 2009 at Skills Matter

Robot Framework is a keyword-driven test automation framework which empowers testers to
automate and manage complex workflow scripts very efficiently. It is written in Python and supports scripting Python and Java applications (through Jython), but it also has flexible support for remote execution and different system-under-test libraries which allow it to be used for automating Selenium scripts and tools that are not written in Python.
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It was a great pleasure to present yesterday on agile testing tools together with Elizabeth Keogh and David Peterson. Here are the links to the tools that we presented:

• JBehave
• FitNesse
• Concordion
• TextTest
• Robot Framework

You can download my slides from http://gojko.net/resources/skillsmatter_20090527_aattools.pdf. David and Elizabeth will probably publish their slides soon on their blogs, http://blog.davidpeterson.co.uk/ and http://lizkeogh.com/.

Thanks a lot to everyone who attended, and I’m really impressed that the room was almost full especially as we had to compete with the final of the Champions league. As more than half of the people were at the previous agile testing events as well, it seems to me that we’re creating a nice community and I hope that you’ll keep coming to future events as well. The plan for the next few months is this:

• 23/6: Testable Software is Good Software by (David Evans and Mike Scott from SQS UK).
• 22/7: Agile Testing: Tools and Approaches (Nathan Bain and Anand Ramdeo)
• 26/8: Fast Track Test-Driven Development – Testify your project (David Evans and Mike Scott)

All events will be free, but up-front registration is required for capacity planning. You can sign up now for the June event at http://skillsmatter.com/event/design-architecture/testable-software-is-good-software.

Agile sells. It’s the new black. Companies are trying to roll out agile on a huge scale and even buy it as a software package. Teams sell themselves as agile as if it was the single guarantee of success that customers need, and people seem to fall for that. As agile adoption gets wider and more shallow, lots of teams struggle with those practices and projects are failing. Agile coaches used to be the best people in the business. A huge demand for agile people lead to mass production and a huge fall in quality.

This is a problem significant enough to be mentioned in the keynote for Agile 2008, the biggest meeting on everything Agile in the world last year, with Robert C. Martin calling for “Craftsmanship over Crap”. When Martin asked the audience who has at least once been significantly impeded by bad code since going agile, most people raised their hands. In November last year, Jim Shore wrote that “rescuing Scrum teams” keeps people like him in the business today, warning against “dubious ScrumMaster certificates [issued] to people who demonstrated competence in connecting butt to chair for two days”.

Agile simply became a buzzword that gets slapped on to anything and everything these days. As with anything else, a huge inflation of currency leads to the fall of value. Keith Braithwaite joked about avoiding to use “the A word” any more during XPDay in London late last year. So with everyone and everything agile these days and low quality in abundance, how do companies really know who they can turn to for advice or hire to avoid these problems? Continue Reading »

It has been a while since I published a book review on this blog, not because I stopped reading but because none of the books that I read meanwhile really stood out. I’m glad to say that Agile Testing by Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory finally breaks that trend – it is truly a great book and definitely a must read for anyone serious about quality in agile projects. Continue Reading »

My latest book is now in available on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. Both stores have it in stock and typically ship it in 24 hours.