This document discusses shifting testing left in the development process to enable continuous collaboration. It recommends using a Kanban board like Jira to visualize workflows and identify bottlenecks. Automating tests is important, but some acceptance testing cannot be automated and requires human feedback. Breaking down silos through communication tools like chatops can improve collaboration between teams. Shifting left provides benefits like isolating and fixing bugs earlier when easier. Requirements include version control tools and organizational buy-in for the change in process.

1. Shift Left Testing for
Continuous Collaboration
DrupalCamp Baltimore 2018

2. Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg
CTO/Co-founder

3. Kaizen
- Continuous Improvement
- Regular minor changes to
process
- Feedback encouraged from
everyone

4. Visualize your process with a
Kanban board
(e.g. Jira)
Each task is a relay race
Kanban

5. How long does it take to get to
“done”?
- Bureaucracy = need for speed
- Chutes & ladders
- Smaller climbs + smaller slides
- Identify the longest ladders!

6. Bottlenecks
- How long do tickets spend in
each status?
- Which project roles or
individuals have ticket
congestion?
- Which tasks are most expensive/
hardest to scale?

7. Minimize WIP
- What is the most efficient task size?
- Prioritize finishing over starting
tasks
- Minimize distance of setbacks by
getting earlier feedback
- Deployment Driven Development

8. Size Matters
- Large orgs = large silos
- More complexity
- Legal & regulatory issues
- ex: FDA, ADA, PCI

9. How many steps to “done”?

10. SHIFT LEFT ALL THE THINGS!
- “Shorten the ladders + slides”
- Every project has testers, project managers, and product owners/stakeholders
- Traditional delivery pipeline puts testing last, locks out decision makers and
managers
- Shift left includes automated and human testing/acceptance
- Continuous Collaboration extends that to management product owners

12. Shift Left: Benefits
-Isolate bugs- the sooner you catch a bug the easier it is to fix
-Keep tasks & reviews isolated
-Approval and launch process is continuous instead of
episodic
-Speed
-Developer sanity
-Team cohesion and communication

13. Automate (traditional CI/CD)
- Automate as much as possible, but what can be?
- Deploy steps
- Visual regression test
- Code quality & unit tests
- Integration tests
- Performance
- A11y (SORT OF)

14. Can’t Automate (Continuous Collaboration)
- Identify any steps that must happen for each ticket which
cannot be automated
- A11y (fully protected against ADA lawsuits)
- Opinions and feedback
- Acceptance testing
- Medical-Legal-Regulatory-Compliance

15. Break Silos!
- Communicate on all channels
- Channels create silos
- Email, Jira, Github, etc
- ChatOps
- 2 way communication

16. Requirements for Shifting Left
- Git
- Feature branches (mostly)
- Pull requests (mostly)
- The will, resolve, & org buy in to do it

17. Pull Request Preview Tools

18. Let’s take a look…
Shifting left using Jira +
Bitbucket/Github +
app.probo.ci

19. Thank you!
alex@zivtech.com