Spreading the (testing) weight

With all the buzz and excitement around quality over the last few cycles, we've been busy. We've built tools, started processes, wrote testcases and committed ourselves to testing. When the time came for us to write new applications for the ubuntu touch platform, we took our quality aspirations with us and tested all through development. The "core apps" for the phone is a perfect example of this; community developed software including tests. Kudos to everyone who is taking part in these efforts.

However, as more and more tests came online, new problems developed. How can we run these tests? When do we want to run them? How can we develop more? What tools do we use? The quality team met all of these challenges, but the weight started to grow heavier.

Rob Macklem Victoria BC derivative: Plasticspork [CC-BY-SA-3.0]

Something needed to be done. Before the bar breaks or our arms give out, let's split the weight. And thus a new team was formed.

Ivanko Barbell Company

Enter the CI team. Behind the scenes running tests, getting our infrastructure in place, and chasing down regressions, the CI team has their hands full. In a nutshell they will ensure all the tests are run as needed. If a test fails they will chase down and ensure the right folks are notified so fixes can be made. Ohh, and yes, that means potential bugs will never even hit your system dear user.

The QA team's mission then gets to be refocused. They will continue to write tests, develop tools if needed, and continue to push for greater quality in ubuntu and upstream. However they no longer have to balance these tasks with ensuring builds stay green, or writing a dashboard to review results. The result is a better focus and the opportunity to do more.

So how does this affect us as a community? The simple answer is that we too can take advantage of this new testing infrastructure and CI team. Let's focus on what coverage we need and what the best way to achieve it might be. We'll also be able to align our goals and ambitions even more with the QA team. I'll share more of my thoughts on this in the next post.