Analyses of the Wired Article: “The Software Revolution Behind LinkedIn’s Gushing Profits”
Wise and ambitious IT executives take test automation and continuous testing seriously. A case study of implementing daily production releases (i.e. real agile) in a large IT organization.
Wired is one of the most respected technology magazines. In the “Silicon Valley” TV show, featuring on the cover of Wired is a big thing. In my previous articles, I refer to this Wired article, “The Software Revolution Behind LinkedIn’s Gushing Profits”, a few times. My readers seem not deeply impressed by the article as it to me nine years ago. I will share my thoughts here.
Table of Contents:
∘ 1. Daily Production Releases
∘ 2. Co-Founder and Executive Chairman Involved
∘ 3. This change ( called ‘Software Revolution’ by Wired) is good financially.
∘ 4. Test Automation (regression testing)
∘ 5. Pass Automated Regression Testing => Deployment
∘ 6. The company might need to invest the effort to build some tools.
∘ 7. CIOs, you won’t be able to hire a real senior Test Automation Engineer via normal channels. They are too rare!
∘ 8. Firmly support the change, big change.
1. Daily Production Releases
“Release Early, Release Often” can be implemented indeed. This shall have been the case for agile projects. Because of so many fake Agile projects, people forget what real Agile means.
2. Co-Founder and Executive Chairman Involved
The picture of Reid Hoffman (co-founder) is shown as the heading image of the article.
The reason that most “release early, release often” attempts failed: the top executives (e.g. CIO, CTO or CEO) are NOT physically involved.
3. This change ( called ‘Software Revolution’ by Wired) is good financially.
Some ‘fake agile coaches’ might argue that the big rise of LinkedIn stock can be due to several other factors. That’s true. However, we shall all know, this big change at least did not f**k up ( many IT managers messed up with even small changes), right?
The fact that Wired (again, a highly respected) listed two financial facts
“Gushing Profits”
“Stock has more than tripled in less than two years”
in the article title and subtitle. This indicates the relativeness to the change, don’t you agree?
In summary, investing in test automation is a good one. This matches two forecasts of the global Automation testing market: high growth.
For some who did not have the patience to read Wired’s article and are puzzled about where test automation comes from, read on.
4. Test Automation (regression testing)
These automated tests serve functional testing as well as regression testing.
Many ordinary IT managers focus too much on developing new features, which is wrong. A good IT manager knows a code check-in often causes regression issues. In fact, the majority of software development efforts are to deal with changes and bad code check-ins. That’s why when a good automated regression testing process is in place, the team’s velocity grows rapidly (typically 5X to 10X) in a very short time.
5. Pass Automated Regression Testing => Deployment
There is no formal and lengthy manual testing process, obviously. It cannot be if updating production multiple times a day.
The staff must understand automated end-to-end (via UI) testing leads to a production deployment, maybe not every time, but mostly. That expectation will push the team to
develop high-quality automated test scripts responsibly, not using a recorder.
maintain the whole test suite well, which is a lot of work and challenging.
take pride in work
However, it does not necessarily mean no manual testing either. Manual testing will be supplementary in the form of Exploratory Testing. Check out my article: Without Solid Automated End-To-End Regression Testing, Exploratory Testing is Largely Compromised.
6. The company might need to invest the effort to build some tools.
Quite common, CIO fell in sales pitches on software tools. DHH said it well in a recent LinkedIn post.
“These companies (Asana, Monday, Smartsheets and ClickUp) can’t even make their own businesses work, yet they’re trying to sell you software to run yours.” — David Heinemeier Hansson
Here I tell you a true and unbelievable story. I was invited to a high-level tech meeting at a large financial company. One architect asked one in the Agile Transformation Team (consisting of Agile coaches, Principal Software engineers, DevOps Engineers and one external consultant, about a dozen): “When will your team get (Micro Focus’) UFT automated tests running in the Bamboo CI server, it has been 9 months”.
Maybe some IT managers and software architects did not get this story. Let me clarify, it was supposed to be a 90-minute job, but it took 9 months (in fact, longer, it was not done even after I left the company). My daughter developed a few automated tests and set up running them on the first day, at her first intern job.
Considering the following factors:
This agile transformation team decides the framework and tools, including:
- UI Test Automation: Micro Focus UFT
- API Test Automation: SmartBear ReadyAPI
- CI Server: Atlassian Bamboo
But no automated testing running in Bamboo! How ridiculous!This is a general skill set, like riding a bicycle. If one has done it well once, the same process can be directly applied to the next.
I have been providing the same formula successfully for many companies (regardless of the coding language used for developing the app: Java, C#, Ruby, and JavaScript. To a real test automation engineer like me, the same, Web technologies barely changed in the last two decades.)
It is obvious that no one in that expensive Agile transformation team knew real test automation or real Continuous Testing. These people were busy reviewing and evaluating vendor tools! Evaluating is OK, but more importantly, you need a hands-on mindset and be ready to develop your automation tools/utilities, as LinkedIn did, according to that article.
7. CIOs, you won’t be able to hire a real senior Test Automation Engineer via normal channels. They are too rare!
LinkedIn did “lure”.
If you are an ambitious CIO (or CEO of an IT firm), don’t sit and wait for your “Kevin Scott” to come from a Job Ad. The chances are that you almost certainly get fake ones.
How? Check out the wisdom from this ancient Chinese story: Paying a Handsome Price For A Swift Steed.
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