Over the last few weeks I have found myself reflecting on the progress my team and I have made in migrating learndirect over the last few years. It is strange to think that I will have spent almost 10% of my working life nurturing the next decade of online learning for the learndirect community. We still have quite a few more releases to go, but I find myself surprisingly relaxed about every release we provide to our QA department.
In previous companies I have seen the day of release of a new version of software treated with trepidation by the testing team and with relief by development. Some developers might consider they had earned a brief respite having worked round the clock to hit the build target, others would be relieved to be able to finally share their hard work. Few would be prepared to second guess what the result might be in testing. In my experience the last month of development is often as much about sleep deprivation as anything else.
For those that feel this way I can strongly recommend a good dose of continuous integration. It may not quell all of your headaches, but it has served my team and I well for years.
Adding automated unit tests to the continuous build is a great second step, but if you can work on a more thorough approach to script the compilation, packaging, deployment, installation, data seeding and integration of your system(s) you wont regret it.
In previous companies I have seen the day of release of a new version of software treated with trepidation by the testing team and with relief by development. Some developers might consider they had earned a brief respite having worked round the clock to hit the build target, others would be relieved to be able to finally share their hard work. Few would be prepared to second guess what the result might be in testing. In my experience the last month of development is often as much about sleep deprivation as anything else.
For those that feel this way I can strongly recommend a good dose of continuous integration. It may not quell all of your headaches, but it has served my team and I well for years.
Adding automated unit tests to the continuous build is a great second step, but if you can work on a more thorough approach to script the compilation, packaging, deployment, installation, data seeding and integration of your system(s) you wont regret it.
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