Test Data Automation Workshop

A practical strategy for harmonising data and test automation

Rigorous testing at the speed of today’s release cycles requires constant access to “good” data. That means data combinations with which to execute every positive and negative test scenario, available exactly when and where parallel test teams need it. The rich data must also be prepared at the speed with which parallelised automation burns through it, and must be available on tap for each and every unique test case.

Rigorously testing at the speed of agile and DevOps therefore requires a new TDM paradigm, moving beyond just the logistics of “subset, mask, and clone” provisioning.

This interactive workshop aims to set out a practical strategy for test data management that is test-driven, self-service and automated. This new paradigm, “test data automation”, embeds a complete range of unified TDM utilities within CI/CD pipelines and test automation frameworks, preparing complete test data “just in time” as tests are generated or executed.

Join Huw and James as they set out an approach to “test data automation”, that builds on the tools and techniques in place today. The session will focus on bringing test data management into alignment with the latest approaches in test automation. It will set out next generation technologies that can build on subsetting and masking, including:
A hybrid approach to test data creation, gradually augmenting masked production data with realistic synthetic data. The test rich data sets over time contain no trace of PII, but do contain the outliers, edge cases and negative scenarios needed to test new or updated functionality.
On-the-fly data preparation that finds, makes and prepares data automatically as tests are created and executed within CI/CD pipelines.
“Test Matching” that links unique data combinations to test cases. Validation of the matches as tests run ensures that data remains valid and up-to-date, facilitating stable test execution.
A central catalogue of re-usable test data processes that can be included as a standard step in manual or automated testing.

Agenda
17:30 - Walk in with coffee and tea
17:30 - 18:30 – Walking diner
18:30 - 20:00 – Test Data Automation Workshop
20:00 - 21:00 – Q&A and Open Discussion with drinks

Location: Hotel Mitland Utrecht
Address: Arienslaan 1, 3573 PT Utrecht

About the Speakers:

Huw Price, Curiosity Software Ireland

Huw Price is a test data management veteran and a serial entrepreneur, now founder of his fifth software start-up. Huw’s 30 years of experience in software delivery has brought collaboration with a wide-range of organisations, large and small. He has crafted strategies and innovative technologies for test data success, on projects ranging from large-scale migrations from mainframe to open systems, to building best-of-breed test automation frameworks for microservices.

James Walker, Curiosity Software Ireland

James is an experienced Software Developer Engineer in Test (SDET) and an experienced software inventor. James has helped design and built multiple model-based testing and test automation tools, and has collaborated closely with a wide range of organisations to solve their QA needs. James was a manager of Software Engineering at CA Technologies and is now Director of Technology with Curiosity.

Robert Boeve & Marcel Mersie, CloseSure

This meetup is co-hosted by Curiosity Software Ireland and CloseSure, an innovative, leading and fast-growing IT company consisting of more than 80 highly qualified professionals in the Netherlands. CloseSure services in the areas of Business Intelligence and Software Testing and is organized in an agile and informal way. Our motto is ‘You Only Work Once!’ and have a strong focus on a good work and life balance. To achieve this, we are regionally present in the Netherlands to reduce travel time for our consultants and frequently plan fun meetings to celebrate our successes!