Dev Box Testing - Step to Faster Feedback

Devesh Maheshwari

Test Lead, NBN, Australia

Devesh, is passionate about software testing having worked close to 6 years in various softw... more>>

Dev Box testing derived its name from the practice where the initial round of testing is done on a developer's (Dev) machine (Box) before the developer checks in the code to the source repository and mark the task (story or defect) as development complete.

I feel this is one of the crucial step towards getting faster feedback. Every task done by the developers will be tested on their machine by BA's & QA's and feedback is provided on the spot. It sounds very simple and yes it is simple if followed properly else it could turn out to be chaotic.

How it should be done??

There is no formal process of how it should be done. So it's up to the team to choose which is best.

Here are few ways I have done it so far.

• The developer demonstrates the functionality implemented and runs through the changes that have been made to help BA & QA to analyze the impact of changes on other functional areas.
• Developer's handover his/her machine to QA or BA to run through the scenarios. Majorly happy path scenarios and making sure that goal of the task is accomplished.
• Time spent for this should range between 10 to 15 minutes based on the complexity of the story or defect implementation.

Where does it fall within iteration?

Why teams should follow:

• Quick feedback usually reduces the significant time to find defect and get it fixed. In usual iteration model, where this process is not followed, feedback will come very late and if any defect found then it will get into the priority queue and developers available at that point of time will fix it. However, the turnaround time in this case will be quite high.
• BA gets an opportunity to ensure that implementation meets business requirements.
• Developers & QA's can share knowledge and context about how QA's test complex stories beyond UI e.g. with service calls, databases, etc and developers can also share better ways of doing the same thing.
• Most importantly, if issues are found developer can fix them immediately and get it tested faster.
• Time utilization, developers can utilize the time when they run the build locally before check-in.

Dev box testing encourages collaboration within teams, specially BA, QA & Developer and aim towards reducing the bugs that are committed into source repository and collaborate to work towards the same goal which is to deliver business value by building a quality product.

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Dev Box Testing - Step to Faster Feedback