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First Line Software is a premier provider of software engineering, software enablement, and digital transformation advisory services to clients across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Global presence: US, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Montenegro, Germany, UK, Australia, Sweden, Poland. Headquartered in the US, First Line Software's global staff of 400+ technical experts leverages agile technological excellence to efficiently deliver complex projects in retail digitalization, web content management & eCommerce, healthcare IT & real world evidence and data, machine learning and enterprise data management. An Optimizely Gold Solution Partner, First Line provides implementation and customization services to direct clients and in cooperation with other Optimizely Partners. First Line Software is consistently recognized with industry rankings and awards from top global and regional, independent research agencies.

First Line Software

The business process management (BPM) global market value at 8.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2020. It’s expected to reach 14.4. billion U.S. dollars by 2025. There are multiple reasons for this. Here are the primary ones: was estimated First, around 70% of companies implement BPM solutions to reduce costs or improve productivity. Second, the consistent growth of the demand for process automation around the world reasonably increases the need for BPM solutions. This, in turn, provokes vendors to enhance services as their solutions help organizations to thrive and stay competitive. Third, COVID-19 exposed companies’ vulnerabilities and also boosted the demand for automated solutions. Work from home, in particular, requires secure and efficient business processes. Therefore, proper BPM solutions steadily become an integral part of entire organizations’ systems. To determine whether the solution is worth the investment and improves essential metrics, let’s look at the key features you should pay attention to when choosing BMP software. Easy-to-learn Solution It’s crucial to choose and test several options to estimate how adaptable and compatible they are with your company’s business scenarios and needs. The time spent on learning how to use the solution and your employees’ expertise should also be taken into account, as the more complex software requires additional technical knowledge and time. Considering that employee turnover at some point is inevitable, it’s better to focus on simple solutions for non-technical users to learn and adapt to. Available Customization and User-Friendly Interface Most probably, you'll need to adapt the product according to your business processes, so it’s important to consider how customizable the preferred solution is. At a certain point, you may decide to fine-tune your software. Therefore, the BPM solution should be extensible (e.g. with the help of plugins.) Likewise, vendors can offer necessary modifications along the way or provide a source code. For example, Workflow Engine, a BPM automation software, provides a source code, so companies can customize and make changes without any restrictions on the vendor’s side. The same applies to business process design interface. It should be user-friendly so that your employees are satisfied while working with it. If you need to change the interface of the software, so that it corresponds to the interfaces of other products, vendor-provided source code is essential. However, keep in mind that if you purchase an open-source solution, your employees should possess some technical knowledge to adapt and customize it to your needs. Extensive Documentation and Regular Updates Make sure to learn the product documentation and usage examples thoroughly. Incomplete or confusing documentation is a significant disadvantage. Moreover, software should be sophisticated enough and up-to-date. If it’s not being updated regularly, most probably the development is “on hold.” Choosing such an option is risky as you’ll have to resolve any issues by yourself. There are tools that offer a perpetual license. It means that you only pay once and use the current version forever, while a one-year updates subscription is included. Integration with Your Database A chosen software should integrate well with the database your company exploits. If it’s not the case, you’ll have to start using another database and find specialists who can work with it and provide technical support. Workflow Engine, for example, supports both SQL and NoSQL databases, such as MS SQL Server, SQL Azure, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MySQL, MongoDB, CosmosDB and Redis. Customer Support and Trial Period Without professional customer support, the solution will be hard and inconvenient to exploit. Moreover, it allows vendors to better understand users’ needs and implement demanded features faster. Purchasing software without testing it is risky as only real-time results are relevant. To make sure the solution meets your business needs, it’d be wise to try it first. Bottom Line BPM software automates repetitive tasks, minimizes errors and manages essential processes according to preferred logic. Therefore, BPM has the ability to improve overall efficiency and reduce excessive expenditures. Make sure to choose the right one by evaluating the fundamental features described in the article.

What to Look for When Choosing Business Process Management Software

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A Dozen (or so) Learnings From 15 Years of Software Incident Management

সফ্টওয়্যার ঘটনা ব্যবস্থাপনার 15 বছর থেকে এক ডজন (বা তাই) শিক্ষা

Ein Dutzend (oder so) Erkenntnisse aus 15 Jahren Software-Vorfallmanagement

Una docena (más o menos) de aprendizajes de 15 años de gestión de incidentes de software

Une douzaine (ou deux) d'enseignements tirés de 15 ans de gestion des incidents logiciels

सॉफ्टवेयर घटना प्रबंधन के 15 वर्षों से एक दर्जन (या लगभग) सीखें

15 年間のソフトウェア インシデント管理から学んだ 12 の教訓

15년간의 소프트웨어 사고 관리 경험을 통해 얻은 12가지 정도의 교훈

Uma dúzia (ou mais) de aprendizados de 15 anos de gerenciamento de incidentes de software

Дюжина (или около того) уроков за 15 лет управления инцидентами с программным обеспечением

15 Yıllık Yazılım Olay Yönetiminden Bir Düzine (ya da O Kadar) Ders

Hàng chục (hoặc hơn) bài học từ 15 năm quản lý sự cố phần mềm

从 15 年的软件事故管理中学到的十几个经验

Quality is critical when it comes to releasing any software, whether it’s in order to ensure an excellent experience of your product with minimal bugs, or even for security reasons, and it’s been well established that good code comes coupled with good tests. The hierarchy of tests as they relate to quality assurance are from unit tests through E2E testing, so just so we’re on the same page––I’ll briefly dive into each, and why the ultimate goal is to reach E2E testing of your product. Unit tests are at the bottom of the pyramid, as they’re just what they sound like, the smallest self-contained unit of testing. This means that you take the component or piece of code that you wrote, and test it as a standalone unit. This code is completely disconnected from anything else in the software stack and system it is going to live in, and the tests check if it performs as expected, as a standalone entity. Once we complete this basic testing of our code, we need to dive a little deeper, and test the code with more context of where it is actually going to exist in the stack, and this is where integration testing comes in. Integration testing is when we start integrating our code with other modules and services to see how it performs and functions in a more realistic ecosystem. While these can provide some context, they still need to be fast, and so they really don’t cover all scenarios, and don’t cover how users interact with your product at all. While some would argue that unit tests are the simplest unit of testing, sometimes you need to actually write mock modules to ensure the code actually works, whereas with integration tests you plug into actual existing modules. At this point you verify that your assumptions when mocking and injecting dependencies for unit testing do hold. So it’s a toss up - but both of these test types usually present fairly different challenges than end-to-end (E2E) testing. E2E testing is likely the most important testing you will need to perform on your product. It’s mission-critical to the company to ensure that the core business and value you are trying to provide the end-user is fulfilled. It involves simulating the end user as closely as possible, and ensuring the product works as expected––with many considerations in mind: usability, performance, user experience, and much more. E2E testing usually involves the impersonation of an end-user journey, such as logging in, integrating it with the user's existing environment, interacting with it and much more. Since there is so much involved with getting this right, and extracting realistic results, many companies choose to do this manually. Companies usually employ QA teams whose sole purpose is to spin up the product in testing environments, and use the product like a regular user. However, what the company will quickly discover is that they need to do this at a greater velocity and scale that doesn’t keep up, with repeated ticket back-and-forths between the QA and Engineering teams and this is a tedious and tiresome process that largely just frustrates engineers. So they decide to automate the tests, by creating a test automation team. At Diversion, as an early stage startup, we needed all our engineers focused on writing great code to reach our product release targets quickly. However, we knew we couldn’t compromise quality, so we went to work designing a solution for automating our E2E tests from day one. We’ll walk you through how we built and automated our E2E testing framework with Docker Compose, RPyC, and Puppeteer. Automate All the Tests It’s core to our philosophy that developers should be happy, and enjoy their day to day work. Yet, as engineering managers, one of the most common sources of pain for developers is testing which we can’t compromise on. Automation is a great way to remove human error from all processes, as well as streamline repeatable processes, and remove the pain of manual testing. We understood that if we invest in the technical design of our test automation, we would be able to offload this from our engineers. In addition, by automating our E2E we created greater satisfaction and ownership of our product by our engineers, who focus on building an excellent product, with built-in quality guardrails while minimizing friction. However, automating the end-to-end user experience of your product is quite challenging. We needed to ensure the testing covers all of the critical parts in the chain of the E2E user flow and the typical operations they would perform, such as: signing in and entering credentials in a web page, checking file system operations such as creating a file, writing to it and then moving it somewhere, make this happen on several machines in parallel, and enabling these machines to communicate with each other. On top of this, we needed to be able to trust the accuracy of the results. The Stack After some research and understanding of what we need to design and build, we chose , , and for our test automation suite. Docker Compose RPyC Puppeteer The tech stack for our E2E testing is completely independent of the stack we chose for our product of course (we’ll dive into this in a separate post), and it can run with any product that is able to run Docker and Docker Compose in their environment. We chose Docker Compose because the service requires several hosts to be spun up and communicate with each other. Docker Compose provides a convenient solution for this, as it sets up a for your application by default. single flat network This means that each container for a service joins a default network and is reachable by other containers on that network at a hostname identical to the container name. Docker Compose is also a very popular tool in the ecosystem, so it was easy to integrate and run it with other popular CI tools like Github Actions. Making the automation really easy to set up. RPyC enabled us to run the test scenario from a single script, as one host can control other hosts that participate in the test script. Much of our backend code is Python, so this was a sensible choice for us, as the entire team is comfortable with it. RPyC also enables us to do any random operations we need from within the testing scenario, such as executing any binary. Puppeteer is an automation tool for Chrome that enables you to take control of web pages, and is able to click buttons, fill in forms, and perform other web-based actions. When you start using the , the sign-in process takes you from the terminal to a webpage for authentication. It then uses a Proof Key for Code Exchange flow ( ) to fetch the credentials from the server. Puppeteer enabled us to emulate a user performing the web sign-in process. Diversion CLI RFC7636 Show Me the Code We launch three services, one for Puppeteer, and the other two are the mock users/participants in the test scenario (we create two machines for the same user). Next we dive into the different parts of this test scenario setup. # docker-compose.yml
version: '3'

services:
 cli-1:
   image: cli_user_image
   build:
     context: .
     dockerfile: Dockerfile.cli
   volumes:
     - ../:/repos/diversion
   environment:
     - AWS_REGION  # forward AWS credentials, for accessing AWS Secrets Manager
     - AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
     - AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
   command: >
     sh -c "REPOS_PATH=/repos/dv_repos &&
           /repos/diversion/system-tests/prepare_test_env.sh &&
           cd /repos/diversion/system-tests/tests/ &&
           su -c 'dv login' cliuser &&
           su -c 'rpyc_classic.py --host 0.0.0.0' cliuser"
 cli-2:
   image: cli_user_image
   volumes:
     - ../:/repos/diversion
   environment:
     ...  # same vars
   command: >
     sh -c "REPOS_PATH=/repos/dv_repos &&
           /repos/diversion/system-tests/prepare_test_env.sh &&
           cd /repos/diversion/system-tests/tests/ &&
           su -c 'dv login' cliuser &&
           REPOS_PATH=$$REPOS_PATH PLAYER2_RPYC=cli-2 su -c 'python3 -m unittest discover .' cliuser"
 puppeteer:
   build:
     context: .
     dockerfile: Dockerfile.puppeteer
   stdin_open: true
   cap_add:
     - SYS_ADMIN
   depends_on:
     - 'cli-1'
     - 'cli-2'
   volumes:
     - ../:/repos/diversion
   environment:
     ...  # same vars
   command: >
     sh -c 'cd /usr/app &&
           /repos/diversion/system-tests/wait_for_it.sh --strict --timeout=240 cli-2:5002 &&
           LOGIN_PW=$$(aws secretsmanager get-secret-value --secret-id test/e2e/login | jq -r .SecretString | jq -r .password) &&
           node --unhandled-rejections=strict ./loginscript.js $$(nc -w 1 cli-1 5001) "$$LOGIN_PW" &&
           /repos/diversion/system-tests/wait_for_it.sh --strict --timeout=120 cli-1:5002 &&
           node --unhandled-rejections=strict ./loginscript.js $$(nc -w 1 cli-2 5001) "$$LOGIN_PW"' The first CLI instance signs in, then opens an RPyC socket, and is then controlled by the test scenario on the other CLI instance. For signing in, our CLI calls on Linux machines with a preconfigured URL. xdg-open To automate it, we placed the following script at : /usr/bin/xdg-open #!/usr/bin/env bash
# xdg-open override
nohup sh -c "echo '""$1""' | nc -l 5001" >/dev/null 2>&1 &
nohup sh -c "echo ready | nc -l 5002" >/dev/null 2>&1 & When the CLI calls , this script publishes the sign-in URL on port 5001 using , then announces that the address is available via port 5002: xdg-open <url> netcat This is then used in the puppeteer service, as we see in the docker-compose file: it first waits for the URL to be available by calling (project on Github) on port 5002 of host cli-1, then reads the address that should be opened from port 5001 ( ) and passes it to . wait_for_it.sh $$(nc -w 1 cli-2 5001) loginscript.js The puppeteer login script is pretty straightforward, feeding the sign-in form with the credentials. This is the gist of it: // loginscript.js
const signInUrl = myArgs[0];
await page.goto(signInUrl);
try {
 await page.waitForSelector('input[name=username]', {timeout: 1000});
 await page.type('input[name=username]', 'testuser');
 await page.waitForSelector('input[name=password]');
 const pw = myArgs[1];
 await page.type('input[name=password]', pw);
 await page.click('input[name=signInSubmitButton]');
} catch (error) { // User is already signed in and all we're getting is a "Sign in as <user>" button
 await page.waitForSelector('input[type=Submit]');
 await page.click('input[type=Submit]');
} After both clients have signed in, it’s time to run the actual scenarios. Below is a snippet of the system tests. It starts by connecting to the other machine in , then runs a test involving two clients for a single user. setUpClass Note how uses the RPyC socket to execute CLI commands on the other machine: dv_runner_remote dv # test_system.py

class SystemTest(unittest.TestCase):
   TEST_REPO_NAME = 'test-repo'
   TEST_REPO_DIR = f'./{TEST_REPO_NAME}'

   @classmethod
   def setUpClass(cls) -> None:
       cls.player2 = rpyc.classic.connect(os.environ['PLAYER2_RPYC'])

   def test_create_move(self):
       dv_runner_local = DvRunner(subprocess.run)
       dv_runner_remote = DvRunner(self.player2.modules.subprocess.run)

       # clone the repo
       resp = dv_runner_local.run('clone', SystemTest.TEST_REPO_NAME)
       self.assertTrue(os.path.exists(f'{SystemTest.TEST_REPO_DIR}'),
                       f'stdout: {resp.stdout}, stderr: {resp.stderr}')

       # create a file, then move it to a new dir
       os.mkdir(f'{SystemTest.TEST_REPO_DIR}/test-dir/')
       with open(f'{SystemTest.TEST_REPO_DIR}/test-dir/test-file', 'w') as f:
           f.write('test-content')
       os.mkdir(f'{SystemTest.TEST_REPO_DIR}/test-dir2')
       shutil.move(f'{SystemTest.TEST_REPO_DIR}/test-dir/test-file',
                   f'{SystemTest.TEST_REPO_DIR}/test-dir2/test-file')

       # clone the repo on the other machine
       resp = dv_runner_remote.run('clone', SystemTest.TEST_REPO_NAME)
       self.assertTrue(self.player2.modules.os.path.exists(f'{SystemTest.TEST_REPO_DIR}'), resp.stdout)
       self.player2.modules.os.chdir(SystemTest.TEST_REPO_DIR)

       # ensure the file is in the right location
       self.assertTrue(self.player2.modules.os.path.exists(f'{SystemTest.TEST_REPO_DIR}/test-dir2/test-file'))

       # delete the repo
       player2_status = dv_runner_remote.run('status')
       repo_id = re.findall(r'(dv.repo.\S)', player2_status.stdout)[0]
       resp = dv_runner_remote.run('repo', '-d', repo_id) With this stack we were able to simulate E2E testing of our CLI with a web-based login, and this is applicable for any similar application. This general framework can be leveraged to solve many other use cases as well, for example if you need to perform an action from a CLI and verify it propagated in a webpage, synchronize actions across multiple machines from one central script, etc. This framework manages to reduce the daunting task of E2E tests to a nearly self-contained unit, very similar to unit testing. With all of the relevant services and components connected and communicating with each other, you can write these tests quickly and simply just like unit tests. This is a sweet spot for developers, and the testing realm they feel most comfortable with, as it is much more native to their workflows, and with the automation it is much more scalable than manual QA. The E2E testing also provides as close a replication of the product journey as possible. This ensures that our developer experience and product quality are always at the core of our engineering. Special thanks to Alon Regev and Avi Mastov for their feedback on this article. Previously published here.

How We Automated our End-to-End Testing from the First Line of Code 

It is possible to split firewall models into two groups: a software firewall and a hardware firewall. Software for the firewall is security software mounted on a device or server. A with a dedicated CPU, memory, operating system, and software is a standalone unit. Often, certain hardware firewalls are part of and are built into the router. hardware firewall The distinction between firewalls for software and firewalls for hardware is embedded in their capabilities. To compensate for the other drawbacks, both should be used in networks due to the variations between the hardware firewall and the software firewall and the advantages and disadvantages. firewalls What Exactly Is A Firewall? A firewall is software or hardware that surrounds a network or computer device, like a security fence, and protects it from . We can consider the first security barrier to network input to be a software or hardware firewall. Thus, before it can access your network from the Internet or other networks, any data must first pass through the firewall. But how does a firewall detect what the network boundary does and should not cross? cyber-attacks The firewall checks the data packets for this reason, including the source and destination addresses of the boxes, complies with the collection of network rules, and decides whether the package is permitted to pass. To avoid unauthorized access or the entry of viruses and other malware into the network, malicious sites can be blocked by setting up a firewall. Either software or hardware are firewalls. What Is a Software Firewall? The program that is mounted on a device or server is a firewall. The Windows VPS operating system's proprietary firewall, accessible from the Windows Security Settings panel, or Pfsense for Linux VPS, is one of the most common software firewalls. Security software companies (Kaspersky, Panda, etc.) often manufacture their firewalls, which typically come in various versions. Some of them are intended for personal computers, and others are designed to be mounted on network servers and business environments. Other network computers would be under their protection umbrella with only one installation on the server because otherwise, any computer connected to the network should be worth it. Purchase and install a separate firewall, which costs a lot and takes a lot of time to install and run on dozens or hundreds of computers. Some software firewalls can also control outgoing network traffic, in addition to tracking incoming network traffic. Furthermore, software firewalls typically have more choices and settings for protection and are more versatile. What is a hardware firewall? A firewall has a dedicated processor, memory, and operating system and is a standalone hardware unit. Some standalone hardware firewalls are built to be mounted in server racks because servers and other network equipment are installed within the stand and have a regular capacity in many medium and large networks. Instead of a standalone computer, several hardware firewalls often form part of a network router. In other words, there is also an internal hardware firewall on certain network routers. The hardware firewall is positioned between the router and the outside world at the network boundary (Internet or other networks). It is the first line of defense at the entrance to the network, thus. Before it hits the router and then the computers on the web, all data must go through the hardware firewall. Another benefit of a hardware firewall rather than a software firewall is that it conceals from the outside world the device or local area network. Thus, the external monitor sees only a hardware computer that has an unknown operating system instead of the network (because it was said that the operating system of the hardware firewalls is proprietary). This secrecy approach is called the translation of network addresses (NAT). This measure does not, of course, operate against the introduction of e-mail viruses. What is the difference between a software firewall and a hardware firewall? With a single physical unit, hardware firewalls allow you to secure your entire network from the outside world. Between your computer network and the Internet, this system is installed. A firewall of hardware tracks data packets as they are transmitted. According to predefined rules, the firewall then blocks or transfers the data. Dedicated hardware firewalls require the installation of advanced IT expertise and typically require monitoring and management by a loyal IT employee or department once installed. Hardware firewalls are also commonly used by large corporations or businesses where security is of the utmost concern. Today, most routers have simple firewall features, but these devices are intended for home or SMB users. Compare this with software firewalls that provide a network with internal security. On an individual computer, a software firewall is built, and it protects the particular unit. The program must be installed on each system if several computers need security. A software firewall regulates the behavior of specific applications. You may block access to certain websites or a printer that is mounted on the network, for example. If a threat manages to infect a computer, software firewalls are also helpful, as they can secure other computers linked to the same network. Since they are simpler to build, many homes and SMB users would use a software firewall. A free software firewall requires any Windows OS newer than XP. Also available for purchase from several trusted vendors is separate firewall software with more robust features. Hardware Firewall Advantages As the software firewall is mounted on a device or network server, the hardware firewall protects the network one step ahead of the software firewall. Still, the hardware firewall is placed even before the router and right at the network boundary. A hardware firewall can protect a whole network. In centers that have several computers, this feature is handy and economically cost-effective. Independent hardware firewalls that do not install on another computer, such as CPUs, memory, and proprietary operating systems, are more powerful and faster than software firewalls. Hardware firewalls are more resistant to malware because their operating system, which is more popular with hackers, is different from standard operating systems such as Windows. If you’re looking for a for your home then it’s better to start looking into different guides first. hardware firewall Hardware Firewall Drawbacks For beginners, configuring enterprise hardware firewalls is difficult. Hardware firewalls are not appropriate for outbound traffic tracking. Software Firewall Advantages Firewalls for home software are typically inexpensive, and some are even free. There are also multi-user licenses for their technical and business versions and can cover all systems on a network. It is easy to install and configure standard versions of , and with only a few clicks, the appropriate level of protection can be calculated. But there is more experience and skills needed for organizational versions. In addition to incoming traffic, some software firewalls can track and refine outbound network traffic and are superior to hardware firewalls in this regard. Firewalls for apps are more versatile. For instance, using them will restrict access to the network of some programs and thus reduce the risk of infiltration of some malware. Since they are mounted on a device, software firewalls, specifically single-user models, are more removable, meaning the computer comes with a firewall wherever it goes. For those who frequently travel with a laptop, this function is essential. software firewalls Disadvantages of Software Firewall The software firewall uses the host system's resources (CPU, memory, etc.) and can decrease its speed or output as a result. The more computers and systems on the network are available, the higher the cost of buying firewalls for applications. As it is not cost-effective or time-consuming to use single-use software firewalls on such networks, you must purchase a copy that supports all systems. Furthermore, insensitive and corporate environments, cheap or free firewalls are typically not very effective. What kind of firewall do we need? Most of the decision depends on personal factors and desires. A hardware firewall would better support laptop users, whose machines seldom change networks. Combined with the most excellent versatility, it provides the most straightforward setup. A software firewall should be used by notebook and laptop users, especially those who frequently travel, to ensure security no matter where they are. You may choose to use both for total security — a hardware firewall while running on a home or office network and a software firewall while you're on the path. Previously published at https://www.techsaa.com/difference-between-hardware-firewall-and-software-firewall/

Firewall Hardware And Software: Differences Everybody Needs To Know

Many businesses have a process they undergo before the products are shipped off to stores across the country or globe – it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, but software QA is much the same. When you build a piece of software, whether a mobile app or otherwise, the first goal is to get design elements in place then from there, you ensure that the app functions as intended, meaning it both “looks right” and “behaves correctly” much like when building a physical product. Because coding software is a complex process, there are often several little elements that programmers and designers don’t catch during an initial review which later surface over time or under specific conditions. Unlike the QA process that physical products endure, software QA is a multifaceted endeavor that requires more than one set of eyes to properly assess digital products from multiple angles. Every software development company is a little different but the end goal is the same. So here, we’re going to provide an overview of how we approach the software QA process used at . Blue Label Labs Our QA Team Structure QA isn’t a single function or job at Blue Label: it encompasses several activities done by various team members throughout the life of a project. However, on every development project, there is always at least one person whose sole job is to ensure the quality of the delivered product meets our client’s needs, namely the QA engineer. At Blue Label Labs, we hire completely independent QA engineers who act separately from our development team. Their main purpose is to ensure functionality is implemented properly, no regressions are introduced, and that the overall state of quality is maintained in the software. We feel it’s really important to keep QA teams separate from development teams as well as to incentivize their performance based on their ability to find defects. In general, you don't want software QA being handled by your development teams as I’ve found that developers have an incentive to ship rather than fix. Further, just because you are good at creating software doesn’t make you good at testing it. A bit on QA automation versus manual review Modern purists often say you must automate everything, including QA tests, but really, when you are building MVPs or first versions of a product, automated testing doesn’t do much good. In fact, it introduces a significant engineering cost. Writing automation code increases your engineering burden greatly, meaning every time you change functionality you not only need to change the code of the app but also go change the automation code. Based on years of experience, we understand that you should only automate once your app or product has reached a certain level of stability. Until then, we leverage good, old fashioned hard work in manually testing our products. Our software QA process After developers complete a new, major build of an app or website, what happens next is a series of QA steps designed to balance the needs of getting the build in the hands of users quickly while at the same time making sure that no major bugs slip through the cracks.  The goal is to ensure that all bugs are found, logged, and ideally fixed before the product is published to a marketplace or packaged for distribution. The heart of the development process is our ticketing system JIRA – every feature or bug worked on by the development team exists in JIRA as either a Story, Task, or Bug ticket. JIRA serves as the main control point to understand what the development team is working on, what is being released, and where the QA stands based on the tickets within the system. Our software QA process can be broken down into several directives. The following is the baseline for how we approach this function at Blue Label Labs. Unit testing Before our development team transfers a build to our QA teams for verification, developers perform a series of unit tests against their components to ensure basic validation of input and outputs. Generally, we have our developers perform manual unit tests of previously outlined scenarios that are designed to serve as the first line of defense. Once the development team has completed their manual unit testing, they move all the JIRA tickets which were fixed or resolved in this release to the status of “Ready For Testing” then update our internal release note documents, explicitly listing all JIRA tickets that are ready for verification. Once the developers have released a build into the testing environment (which we refer to as sandbox or staging), our QA team beings their work. Right after the development team has released a build but before leaving for the night, the QA teams perform a series of end-to-end basic validation tests to ensure the build itself is not fundamentally broken and that the QA team can proceed without further work. If a build is broken and thus, rejected by the QA team, then the developers are in for a long night as they have to resolve whatever issues are found before resubmitting a build. Phase 1: smoke testing. Once a build clears smoke testing, the QA team begins work by running through a full set of manual test cases to test each user story as well as every bug returned in the release. Our QA team will, ahead of time, organize their QA plan in what is called a "Test Plan" in JIRA through the use of a plugin called Zephyr.  As the QA engineer proceeds through their test plan, they mark the associated Zephyr test case complete which is then reflected by the original story ticket in JIRA. Phase 2: feature testing and validation. The next steps: passing the project back to the PM Once our QA teams have reviewed and verified each of the tickets in a release, they move the associated JIRA ticket to the "Verified (By QA)" status in JIRA at which point the tickets are moved back to the PM's plate. For issues that do not pass QA validation, they return to the development team with a status of "QA Fail". The PM serves as the last line of defense in terms of quality control before builds get released to clients. A PM will take the build for a spin by performing a series of basic validations based on the intended functionality. This is a very important step as the PM is ultimately responsible for ensuring that the overall spirit of what was meant to be built has been accomplished. Here, they also identify “finish issues” by finding elements like improper spelling, grammar, and other minor visual discrepancies that might have slipped through the QA net. Once the tickets have passed PM validation, they are moved to the "Done" state in JIRA, effectively completing the lifecycle of the ticket. The final phase of software QA: User Acceptance Testing (UAT) Finally, builds are released to the client, generally either through the iTunes External Beta program for iOS apps or through the Google Play Beta testing channel for Android devices. During the UAT portion of software QA, the PM works with the client to identify and log any issues found by the client. Any problems found are plugged into JIRA then triaged alongside other outstanding tickets by the development team. We like to use plugins like Bugsee which makes it very easy for end-users to file bugs from within the app by using a shaking gesture to trigger a new bug report screen. At Blue Label, we want to minimize the number of issues found in UAT as we’d much rather catch our mistakes than have our clients find them. Each JIRA ticket opened as a result of UAT is logged as such and retained so we can revisit them at a later time. We periodically review this data to ensure we minimize instances of bugs slipping through our QA controls where they’re found by the client. Blue Label Labs creates great software, thanks in part to outstanding QA At the end of the day, our software QA process is what allows us to stay in business. If we were constantly fumbling through redesigns and tweaking faulty code, our clients wouldn’t want to work with us. Through big-picture analysis of the market and focused testing, our solutions-oriented teams of designers and engineers develop prototypes and ultimately, finished products for today’s digital marketplaces.

FIRST LINE SOFTWARE

firstlinesoftware.com

201-500 employees

Since 2009

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FIRST LINE SOFTWARE

EVERGREEN INDEX #3885

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FIRST LINE SOFTWARE

firstlinesoftware.com

201-500 employees

Since 2009

COMPANY RANKING

FIRST LINE SOFTWARE

EVERGREEN INDEX #3885

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