Fighting against technical debt (CukenFest 2020)

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This talk is about the experience I have gathered on how to handle and avoid technical debt. I affiliated three projects in the last years that had to deal with technical debt. I could see how different methods can help (or how they cannot). In my context, we needed a combination of BDD, DevOps and a better focus on sustainability. You will hear about ideas how these techniques can work together that you can also consider for your project.

Software

Copyright © Gaspar NagyCopyright © Gaspar Nagy
CukenFest 2020
Gáspár Nagy
coach • trainer • bdd addict • creator of specflow
“The BDD Books: Discovery” • http://bddbooks.com
@gasparnagy • gaspar@specsolutions.eu

Picture by Mathieu Perrier on Unsplash
Illusions
Full coverage exists and reachable
There is a recipe for good testing
The world can be categorized into Unit/Integration/System testing

Copyright © Gaspar NagyCopyright © Gaspar Nagy
Forget about testing!
What we want is quality…

Copyright © Gaspar NagyCopyright © Gaspar Nagy
“I get paid for code that works, not for tests”
(Kent Beck)

Copyright © Gaspar NagyCopyright © Gaspar Nagy

Reversibility
Thanks to Richard Hundhausen
Picture by style-photographs on Bigstock

Reversibility
We will not be able to make the right design decisions all the time
The quality of the decisions won’t be improved with a longer preparation time
It is better to focus on how easily we can change our design decisions later

Reversibility by BDD
Scenario: Correct easy answer scores 10
Given I register a team
When I submit a correct easy answer
Then my score should be 10

BDD ensures
outside expectations
Given
When
Then
Given
When
Then
Given
When
Then
Given
When
Then
G
W
T
Given
When
Then

UI scenarios
Scenario: Question Test
Given I navigate to 'http://specoverflow.com/#/'
And wait until link 'Home' becomes visible
Then browser title is 'SpecOverflow - Home'
Given I click on link 'Login'
And wait for 2000 ms
When I click on link 'Ask a question'
And wait for 500 ms
And I clear text box '//input[@type="text"]'
And I type 'Test Question 123' into the text box '//input[@type="text"]'
And I click on element '.ta-text .ta-bind'
And I type 'With some details' into the element '.ta-text .ta-bind'
And I clear text box '(//input[@type="text"])[2]'

When
Then
When
Then
When
Then
When
Then
When
Then
When
Then
When
Then
When
Then
When
Then
When
Whe
The
Whe
The
Whe
The
When
Then
When
Then
When
Then
UI scenarios
block reversibility

Story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11, picture: NASA
Apollo 11
Landing site selection for the moon landing took more than two years
As the landing module got close to the selected site, they found a crater and
large rocks there
They landed using semi-automated control, Aldrin called out navigation data to
Armstrong

Was this a success?
They had the sensor and navigation data
They were trained to switch to manual control

DevOps
We can get better BDD
We can do more automated checks
We can do more integration testing

We cannot make sure that
everything is going to be all right

DevOps to react
Monitoring to get operational data
Automated release pipeline for streamlined fix distribution
The feedback is not enough – we need to react!

Picture: https://thehustle.co/the-worst-sales-promotion-in-history/
Sustainability

Story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_free_flights_promotion
Hoover's free flights fiasco
The company offered free European flight tickets for purchasing larger items
Seeing the good results, the promotion was extended to US flight tickets as well
600k customers claimed their tickets, causing more than $50m loss and the UK
part of the company had to be closed

Success should be seen
in the light of sustainability

Copyright © Gaspar NagyCopyright © Gaspar Nagy
Gáspár Nagy
coach • trainer • bdd addict • creator of specflow
“The BDD Books: Discovery” • http://bddbooks.com
@gasparnagy • gaspar@specsolutions.eu

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