Questions from a recruiter

I've been asked to answer some questions before applying for a job. I'm not sure if my answer to the first one is correct, but here's the essence of what I'm going to send back.

Q. Ensuring web applications work effectively across different browsers is hard. Explain how you would go about ensuring a web application functions correctly with Yahoo's list of Agrade browsers, covering both development and testing approaches.

A.
Effective implementation of design and function across browsers is tricky to get right. The A-Grade browsers from Yahoo’s list are fairly varied and sit on multiple operating systems.

My view on this would be to work on one browser that is on the list of A-grades (e.g. Firefox 3.0 using Selenium to record any tests, more info on Selenium below), and as functionality is complete, I would expect it to be tested across the other browsers in the A-grade category. When an issue is spotted I would expect any specific browser fixes for layout to be quarantined in a browser specific file (for example ie6.css). I would also try to avoid using hacks to fix layout.

I would augment the previous tests using Hudson with the Selenium testing, a great blog entry on this subject can be found here: http://carsonified.com/blog/web-apps/easy-automated-web-application-testing-with-hudson-and-selenium/. This Blog post outlines how to use Hudson and Selenium Remote (using our pre-recorded tests) so that results can be captured and failures reported back.

The previous test scenario can be hard to set up, but you will save time running automated tests. I have experience with Hudson for Java automated unit testing using Ant, JUnit and Emma, and it was great to know that every 30 minutes if there was something new to check out of the source repository (in this case CVS) it would run tests against it and report any failures back by email.

I also don’t believe in avoiding the C-grade browsers – there is no reason a site cannot be tested to make sure it’s at the very least available to this audience.

I've not blooged for a while.

The title of the post says it all.. however I have blogged, just not here, you can find my previous entries here:

Learn Scrum in 10 minutes

Agility, Speed & Test Driven Development

When Agile goes wrong

I've just read this post:
When Agile goes wrong.

When I first started working with agile, I have to say I came across a lot of this behaviour, and was bilwildered why anyone would want to use it. However since (over the last 2 years) reading a lot about this subject and being exposed to some successful agile projects, I'd use it all the time now.

Come on people, don't cherry pick the bits you like, and the bits you think might get accepted, use it fully, and reap the benefits.

Scrumy!

I was looking around this morning for more scrum software, and I came across scrumy. This appears to be a really basic piece of scrum software, that may just be enough to "just work". This may be better than the stickys I yesterday. I know it supports burndown, which is really useful, although it breaks all taks to 3 hours, which is editable.

Online stickys

I've been looking for something that might help me with Scrum over a distributed team, and still using sticky notes - they really work. Especially when you take into account "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools". People find things easier to follow when a tool is easy to use.

So anyway, the point? Well I found what seems to me the best online sticky site I've seen:

http://linoit.com

I'm going to try this out on the next new Scrum I start with experienced agile devs. I'm hoping this will take some of the pain out of distributed teams. After all, I've tried photos and webcams; they just haven't worked for me or the teams.

A couple of interesting links on Agile

Not much time right now, but I've just read:

http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/10/iterating-for-knowledge - which is about iterating for knowledge, which I think is as important as iterating for business value. Both have their place, but I know it's a good idea to allow knowledge gathering. After all, the idea of just getting the project out the door with little or no effort, seems a great plan, but could lead to frustration in development teams.

I've not had a chance to go through: http://www.acceptancetesting.info/resources/ yet, but it looks quite interesting as it cover a lot about agile acceptance testing.

I'm still looking at web services

Today, while I've been working with webservice, and spring, I came across this very good site:

http://wheelersoftware.com/index.jsp

He really seems to know his stuff.

Still working with Apache's CXF is a challenge as there doesn't really appear to be a ton of information on it out there. Especially when trying to use it to use Spring for WS-RM.

Ho hum....