Anne-Marie Charrett is Head of Engineering (Testing) at Tyro Payments, which recently acquired a banking license. She discusses testing challenges with microservices architecture and diversifying testing strategies when risks are high. Key points include: (1) microservices allow independent deployment but make testing deployment and data schema changes harder, (2) risk levels depend on system size and understanding, and boundaries are blurred, (3) an effective strategy diversifies tester skills, test data, environments, and focuses on security, performance and deployment testing.

1. T E S T I N G M I C R O S E R V I C E S
A N N E - M A R I E C H A R R E T T TA L K S A B O U T
….WHEN THE STAKES ARE HIGH

2. Anne-Marie Charrett
Testing the testing industry for
a long time. Right now, I’m an
Head of Engineering (Testing)
working at Tyro Payments.
Tyro Payments has recently
acquired a banking license
allowing us to make loans and
deposits, all been developed
using a microservices
architecture.
Our team has been testing
that...

6. Tyro Culture
• New Product
• Rapid Growth
• Testing Culture among developers
• Extreme Programming
• Fortnightly releases
• Moving to Continuous Delivery

9. Microservices architecture is a service-
oriented architecture composed of
loosely coupled elements that have
bounded contexts.
—- Adrian Cockcroft

10. MONOLITH
Small change requires whole
application rebuilding
Keeping changes self
contained is hard
Scaling requires scaling of
entire application
http://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html

11. MICROSERVICES
building applications as suites
of services.
services are independently
deployable
each service also provides a
firm module boundary
http://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html

12. Testing MICROSERVICES
http://martinfowler.com/articles/microservice

13. Tyro-like Microservices architecture
http://www.grahamlea.com/2015/03/microservices-tyro-evolution-presentation/

14. Challenges
• Changes to Data Schema
• Deployment problems
(configuration/firewall)
• Test Environment setup time
• Automation Maintenance
• Business (Lack of) Focus

15. Risk
• Risk Changes Over Time
• Risk changes depending on
how much information you
have
• Risk changes depending on
how much people understand
what their creating?
• Risk changes depending on
the size of the system
• Risk changes depending on
who wants the information

16. (Un)Bounded Context
• Learning has no
boundaries
• Risk has no
boundaries
• Bugs have no
boundaries

17. Subjective Nature of Risk
• High Risk compared to what?
• Key Risks: Security, Performance, Reliability
• Risk (for us) lay outside the bounded context
• Risk through the size and complexity

19. Diversify your Test Strategy

20. Diversify Tester SkillSet
Testers who support test environments
Testers who focus on understanding the
business and how they operate
Testers who focus on working with developers

21. Diversify Test Data
Different ways to load data (built in house
tools)
Different datasets to load up
Diversity in test data (different states)

22. Diversify Test Environments
• Diversity of Test Environments
• Local Machines for Fast
• Feedback Testing Environment in a Box
• Performance Testing Environments
• Work in Progress (Testing in Production)

23. Test Strategy
• Functional
• Backwards Compatibility
• Security
• Deployment
• Performance
• Robustness/Maintenance

24. Lessons Learned
• Checking is essential… Testing is vital
• Diversify your strategy , Diversify your testing
skill set, Diversify your test data
• Use Risk to help you decide what to test
• Treat e2e automation with kit gloves
• Mimic Production where useful

27. Further Reading
• http://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html
• http://martinfowler.com/articles/microservice-
testing/
• http://www.grahamlea.com/2015/03/
microservices-tyro-evolution-presentation/
• https://www.nginx.com/blog/microservices-at-
netflix-architectural-best-practices/

28. Questions?
@charrett
http://dojo.ministryoftesting.com/