Category Archives: Test Environments

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Test Environments: How to Value Stream DevOps With TEM

For many organizations, DevOps is the best practice for efficiency. However, this model doesn’t come easily as the organization needs to put certain things in place. For example, the firm needs to incorporate the right tools to ensure its delivery pipeline and feedback loop are working as expected. Many firms get it all wrong when there’s a problem in their delivery pipeline or feedback loop. This will cause issues for the firm as there’s a loss of time and an overall reduction in efficiency.

To avoid an occurrence like this, firms need to ensure their DevOps model is efficient and adds value to customers. For these reasons, firms adopt the test environment management (TEM) model to check that their model works as expected. Sometimes, this may seem like a lot of work if not done correctly.

In this article, we will explore what test environment management is and how an organization can use it to measure and add value to a DevOps model. First, we’ll define DevOps, the value stream, and test environment management. Then, we’ll explain how and why you should value stream DevOps with TEM.

Defining Our Terms

To get us all on the same page, let’s discuss DevOps, the value stream, and test environment management.

DevOps

A company’s first priority should be satisfying their customers’ needs. For software organizations, this involves shipping out features to end users as quickly as possible. To do this, software engineers make use of the DevOps model. DevOps consists of rules, practices, and tools that let the software engineering team deliver products to end users faster than traditional methods would allow. In conventional methods, the people responsible for a project’s operation and the people responsible for a project’s development are on distinct teams. This isn’t the same for DevOps. In DevOps, development engineers and operations engineers work closely together throughout the application life cycle. This structure decreases handoffs, waiting time, and communication breakdowns to create a speedy development cycle.

The Value Stream

When developing or improving products for end users, companies need to understand what their customers really want. A company might add new features to their product, but the new features won’t help them if they don’t speak to the users’ needs. Some features, if shipped to users, might reduce customer engagement with your product because they’re not wanted or broken. It’s discouraging to develop a feature tirelessly only to find out that users don’t like it. How do you know that your features will please your customers? This is where the value stream comes into play. A value stream is the sequence of steps an organization takes to develop software. Ideally, each step in the development cycle adds value to the product. By analyzing their value stream, an organization can learn which development stages provide the most return on investment and which could be improved. For example, if your value stream includes a long wait time between building code and testing the code, you can guarantee that reducing the wait time between these stages will add value to your product. Value streams help the firm measure, monitor, and incorporate what will bring value to customers at the end of the day.

Test Environment Management

Before shipping new features or products to users, it’s a good practice to test their functionality. Developers should know how responsive their application is from the perspective of a user. For example, you don’t want a part of your product to be broken, unresponsive, or inaccessible. Such features will deter customers from using your product and may lead to negative reviews, which deter customers even more. To test software’s functionality before shipping it to users, engineers make a test environment. A test environment is like a simulator: it allows you to imitate your application’s operation and functionality. Basically, you’re seeing your product and interacting with it as a user would. The testing environment has maturity levels, which are different protocols and practices depending on the state of your app you can follow when testing your application functionality. TEM consists of sets of procedures or guides that help developers create valid and stable test environments for their products. It allows you to control the test environment itself through things like communication, test cases, automation, bug detection, and triage. For example, you may want to test the overall responsiveness of your product. To do this, you first have to test the functionalities of smaller features. Next, you’ll have to review product defects and implement measures for optimization.

Putting It All Together: Value Stream DevOps With TEM

Now that you know what DevOps, the value stream, and TEM are, it’s time to learn how they can work together to help you innovate and delight your user base.

Focus on Time and Value

There are a lot of things to consider when shipping products to users. These can be summed up into time and value. Let’s imagine a case where a firm ships a feature to users on time, but it’s unresponsive. While time was met in delivering this feature, value wasn’t. At the end of the day, you get unsatisfied customers who won’t be happy at the firm’s choice of feature. Another case is when the company doesn’t ship features on time. When this happens, you get angry customers who don’t seem to understand why it’s taking your team so long to release new features. For software firms to really up their game, they have to ship features that add value to customers at the right time. However, the processes of DevOps, value streaming, and TEM will prevent these things from happening. These three methods create automatic checks in your software development cycle that stop you from pursuing projects customers won’t like. And guardrails will keep you on schedule to deliver products in a timely fashion. This might sound complicated, but it’s easy to get started.

How to Value Stream DevOps With TEM

In this section, we’ll explore ways to ship features that add value to users at the right time through a combination of DevOps, value streaming, and test environment management. These are ideas for you to start devising your own DevOps–value stream–TEM strategy.

Logging and Testing

Often, it’s difficult to aggregate logs during the developmental stage of a product. Most developers don’t find out that the tools they use for logging don’t aggregate logs properly until they’re in the right test environment. For an application that depends hugely on logging and tracing, this may be a problem for users. Black box testing also doesn’t allow developers to see the products from the customer’s perspective. There could be bugs in the application’s UI which may be overlooked. Some of these bugs cause unresponsiveness—which, as we discussed, can spell disaster for a product. All these can be mitigated when developers incorporate the right test environment.

Elimination of Redundant Procedure

Numerous firms make the mistake of incorporating redundant and wasteful processes in the development stage when there’s no test environment management. Developers can fish out and eliminate redundant and wasteful procedures with test environment management. This will save the firm time and money, creating value for customers.

Visual Representation and Process Clarity

Visual representation and clarity are another way to value stream DevOps with TEM. Test environment management provides developers with a visual representation of each feature and how much value it adds to the product, thereby clarifying which elements are vital to a product’s success and which could be improved.

Maturity Levels

Maturity levels tell the engineers the next step to take when testing a product. Policies are written for each step and every unit of the application tested. The engineer isn’t testing the application by intuition or suspicion. Rather, there’s a carefully planned guide on how to best test the application. It’s imperative to understand and apply different maturity levels because it allows developers to measure the readiness of their test environment and define the process they’ll use in test environments.

Feedback Loop

After shipping products to users with the DevOps model, there’s a feedback loop. The feedback loop involves monitoring responses from users and incorporating that feedback as a feature in the next release. Feedback loops help developers determine what kind of feature and test environment they’ll be working on and the type of test policies to write in the different maturity levels.

Integrate TEM and DevOps Seamlessly

DevOps remains one of the best models software engineers use to ship products to users. In this article, we have explored how engineers can ship products that add value to users at the right time with test environment management and value stream mapping. These practices give rise to several strategies for improving the time spent on features and value delivered by features, including logging and testing, eliminating redundancies, visually representing the product, assessing the feature’s maturity, and creating a feedback loop. Test environment management can become an overwhelming task if you don’t use the right tools and procedures. For example, there’s the difficulty of choosing the right test environment and eradicating redundant procedures. You can integrate DevOps in the right test environment easily with test environment management resources from Enov8. These resources offer various tools like data sheets, visuals, case studies, and white papers to help integrate your DevOps model in the right test environment.

Author

This post was written by Ukpai Ugochi. Ukpai is a full stack JavaScript developer (MEVN), and she contributes to FOSS in her free time. She loves to share knowledge about her transition from marine engineering to software development to encourage people who love software development and don’t know where to begin.

Measuring Test Environment Maturity

Measuring Your Test Environment Maturity

The goal of every company is to satisfy its users. This certainly applies in the software industry. However, as the number of users increases, they tend to make more demands. Increased demands will increase how complex software is, as these demands may require adding new features. And of course, software firms try hard to control defects in their products whenever they add a new feature.

Nevertheless, the industry is still far from zero defects. To avoid defects in products shipped to users, firms in the software industry must pinpoint defects in their test environment before shipping products to users.

What’s a test environment, and how are developers making sure that they can find and cure defects in that environment? We’ll discuss both topics in this article.

What Is a Test Environment?

A test environment is like a simulator that provides real-life visual representation. It includes a server that allows developers to run tests on their software.

A test environment also allows developers to include hardware and network configuration. The purpose of this is to let the test engineer mimic the production environment so that they can find defects. Also, test engineers can write custom tests and execute them in the test environment. This lets test engineers ensure that the software is responding as it ought to.

Let’s look at how test engineers make sure their test environment mimics the production environment. When that happens, the team can remove issues and defects from software before shipping it to users.

What Is Test Environment Maturity?

Test environment maturity is a set of leveled guides that help test engineers determine how well-developed and rigorous their testing system is. Test engineers need to understand how the products they’re about to test actually function. The engineers should also be able to define the process they’ll use in test environments and manage those environments. And there are different levels of test environment maturity.

To understand test environment maturity better, let’s look at the Test Maturity Model (TMM). We’ll examine the different levels and find out how test engineers can measure environment maturity.

Test Maturity Model (TMM)

In order for test engineers to manage their test processes properly, the Illinois Institute of Technology developed the TMM framework. This framework works well with the Capability Maturity Model (CMM), which is the industry standard for software process development.

The TMM framework defines five maturity levels so that test engineers can manage their testing processes properly. These maturity levels help test engineers identify the next improvement state in their test environment.

Test engineers can’t measure their test environment maturity if they don’t know the level of maturity of their test environment. This is exactly what the TMM maturity level does. It displays levels of maturity and the steps required to attain each level.

Maturity Levels

Each maturity level consists of steps that are essential to attain test environment maturity. Let’s look at the different TMM maturity levels and consider how test engineers can measure their test environment maturity.

1. Initial Level

In the first level in the TMM framework, the goal of the test engineer is to ensure that the software is running successfully. The goal here is simply to make sure that the software developers have developed a working product. Although TMM doesn’t identify any process area for this level, the software should be working fine without breaking. So Level 1 has a low bar!

2. Definition Level

Definition is the second maturity level in the TMM framework. In addition to ensuring that the software is running successfully in the test environment, the test engineer needs to define test policies. This is because at this maturity level, basic testing methods ought to be in place. You’re trying to answer the question, “Does the software do what it’s supposed to?”

The different process area that this level identifies are:

  • Test policies and goals: This is to make sure that test engineers specify goals and policies they need to achieve.
  • Test methods, techniques, and environment that test engineers are using: It’s essential to spell these out.

3. Integration Level

This level involves the integration of testing methods, techniques, polices, and environment defined in the definition level. It’s necessary to do this so test engineers can determine software behavior. During the integration level, the engineers test life cycle and integration. Completing this step ensures testing is organized and carried out in a professional manner.

4. Management and Measurement Level

This TMM maturity level ensures that test engineers carry out quality test processes. At this stage, developers can evaluate and review software for defects. For example, after the integration level, the test engineers need to make sure they pick out all of the defects. The process areas this level identifies are test measurement, evaluation, and reviews.

5. Optimization Level

This is the final level. At this stage, the aim is to ensure that test processes and environment are optimized. This maturity level is important because testing isn’t effective unless defects are controlled. In this level, the team members figure out how to prevent defects. The process areas in this level are test improvement, optimization, and quality control.

Best Practices in Measuring Test Environment Maturity

We’ve explored the different maturity levels for TMM and discussed how this model is the industry standard for software testing. In this section, we’ll explore the best practices for measuring test environment maturity.

Hire a Test Engineer

A test engineer is in charge of carrying out tests on software to make sure it performs as expected. It’s important to employ a test engineer to manage software testing. Why? Because a qualified test engineer is highly skilled in using the right test environment, techniques, and tools.

Understand the Test Maturity Model

When you employ a test engineer for your firm, make sure that they understand the test maturity model. This is because they can’t measure what they don’t understand! Fully understanding the test maturity model will enable the test engineer to determine which processes are covered in each level and precisely what level their test environment has gotten to.

Don’t Skip Steps

It’s a bad practice to skip or merge different levels of the maturity models. This will not only make software testing confusing, but it may also produce adverse test results. Therefore, direct test engineers to write down the maturity levels and proposed date of completion before beginning to test.

Automate Testing

When test engineers automate testing, it becomes easier and faster to measure test environment maturity. For example, this test environment and management tool from Enov8 allows test engineers to automate tests and manage test environments without a hitch.

Measuring Test Environment Maturity Goes Better When You Understand Test Environment Management

Knowledge of TMM maturity levels isn’t enough to measure test environment maturity properly. To do so, test engineers need to be familiar with test environment management (TEM) and how it applies to TMM. So, let’s explore TEM.

Test environment management, according to Enov8, is the act of understanding IT environments across the life cycle and proactively controlling them to ensure they’re effectively used, serviced, and deleted promptly. With test environment management, test engineers can easily analyze software capability. This is because proper test environment management allows test engineers to measure test environment maturity properly. For this reason, there are tools like Test Environment Management Maturity index (TEMMi) to help firms understand test environment management.

Author

This post was written by Ukpai Ugochi. Ukpai is a full stack JavaScript developer (MEVN), and she contributes to FOSS in her free time. She loves to share knowledge about her transition from marine engineering to software development to encourage people who love software development and don’t know where to begin.

Comparing Configuration and Asset Management

When you’re running an IT organization, it’s not just the business that you have to take care of. One part of running a business is building, creating, and providing what your customers need. The other part is management. Out of all the things you have to manage, configurations and assets are two of the most important.

Although people often think of configuration management and asset management as the same thing, but they are different. People also sometimes confuse these terms with each other. So, in this post, I’ll explain what configuration management and asset management are and how they’re different. Let’s start by understanding each of these terms.

What Is Configuration Management?

Configuration management is the management of configuration items. So, what are configuration items?

Configuration Items

Any organization provides certain services. These services might be the ones being provided to customers or to internal users. Either way, creating and providing these services requires some components. So, any component that needs to be managed to deliver services is called a “configuration item.”

Too confusing? No worries—I’ll explain with an example. Consider that you’re providing a service that tracks an organization’s user data. In this case, you can consider the software to be the component that needs to be managed. It’s important that you manage this software to make sure your service works fine. This means that your software is a configuration item. Another way of defining a configuration item is that it’s a component that’s subject to change to make the service delivery better.

What Information Is to Be Managed?

When you manage the attributes of such configuration items, that’s configuration management. So, what kind of information do you have to manage? You have to manage attributes such as ownership, versioning, licensing, and types. Let’s consider an example in which you’re using software for internal tasks.

Now you’ve identified that the software that provides service is your configuration item. The next step is to manage information related to that software. The software developer will have released different versions of the software with updates and new features. You obviously look out for better versions of the software or the version that best suits your requirements. One piece of information that you have to manage is the details of the software versions.

Another example is when you’re using licensed software. The software will be licensed to a particular person or company, and the license will be valid for a certain period of time. Such information becomes the attribute you have to manage. Now that you know what configuration management is, let me tell you a little about how it’s done.

Configuration Management Database

An easy way to manage information on configuration items is by using a configuration management database (CMDB). A configuration management database is just like any other database that stores data, but it specifically stores information related to configuration items.

Configuration Management System

Configuration management isn’t easy. You have to take care of lots of tasks, such as tracking the data and adding and modifying configuration items. To make configuration management easy, you can use a configuration management system (CMS), which is software that helps you manage your configuration items. A typical CMS provides functions for storing and managing CI data, auditing configuration, making changes to the configurations, and so on.

Now that you know what configuration management is, let’s talk about asset management.

Asset Management

In generic terms, anything that’s useful is an asset. If you own a house or a property, that’s an asset for you. So is your car or your phone. When it comes to an organization, anything that’s useful to the organization is an asset. Assets can be capital, office property, the servers locked in your highly secured server room, and so on. But IT assets aren’t limited to physical or material things. The knowledge stored in your employees’ brains is also a valuable asset to your organization.

So, basically, tracking and managing the assets of your organization throughout its life cycle is asset management. The main aim of asset management is to create processes and strategies that help in managing assets properly. The asset management process starts right from the moment of acquiring the asset until disposing of the asset.

For example, let’s say you have an organization that builds and manages web applications. As part of this, you own some servers that you host the web applications on. You also have some databases where you store data for your clients. In this case, your asset management process starts from the time you bought the servers and the databases. You have to manage the buying, maintenance, and inventory costs. Along with that, you also have to take care of regular updates, audits, security implementations, and any changes that you make. This asset management goes on either until the assets are damaged or until they stop being useful to your organization and are disposed.

Asset management directly involves finance. You have to consider the inventory, governance, and regulatory compliance along with the financial aspects in asset management.

Why Do You Need Asset Management?

Asset management helps you understand your financial flow and how to efficiently plan your finances. You can easily track your asset throughout its life cycle. This helps you analyze incidents if something went wrong. Management of assets improves your assets’ quality and performance, which helps your business.

The asset management process helps you stay compliant with various rules and regulations. This improves the quality of your business and also saves you money on audits and fines. Because asset management lets you track your assets, you can plan more efficient strategies for operations.

Configuration Management vs. Asset Management

Now that I’ve explained each of these terms, I hope you understand what they mean. At some point, you might have felt that they were the same. To eliminate any lingering confusion, let me highlight the differences between them.

Asset management is managing anything valuable to your organization. You can consider configuration management to be part of asset management. Configuration management mainly focuses on managing configuration items and their attributes. These attributes mainly affect the delivery of the service.

In the case of asset management, it’s more of a financial perspective. You track the asset to understand the financial flow and need for that asset throughout its life cycle.

To understand the difference, let’s take an example of a hardware component that you’re using—let’s say, a database. When you’re using a database, the database itself becomes an asset. You have to manage the maintenance, track the asset, conduct audits, and so on. This is asset management. The same database will have software versions. Keeping track of the software version, updating it, and tracking which other components it works with becomes part of configuration management.

Configuration management and asset management might sound the same at a high level, but they have different purposes and are implemented differently. Understanding such terms with the help of an example really makes it easy to understand the differences, hopefully, the explanations and examples here have helped you.

Author

This post was written by Omkar Hiremath. Omkar uses his BE in computer science to share theoretical and demo-based learning on various areas of technology, like ethical hacking, Python, blockchain, and Hadoop.