TL;DR: Sign up for the 1Q2017 PyData Triangle Meetup on February 1, 2017 at Maxpoint
What happens when you are celebrating the success of PyData Carolina conference over a drink with Eric Dill of Maxpoint? Apparently you end up starting a new organization: PyData Triangle.
Our first meeting is done and a wild success by all standards: two great speakers, 39 attendees and lots of yummy pizza.
Peter Parente gave a State of the Union of the Jupyter EcoSystem (The state of the union is good)
Francois Dion talked about detecting Anomalies using scikit-learn. Props to Dion for using both a Matrix and Numbers pop reference
The 'after party' at Lonerider was great too. The conversation was about RFIDs and longitudinal data, Dask and other great topics. A small group and lots of fun.
I will humbly say I did not get as much out of it as I could. But it did convince me I need to start bringing my 'A' game to keep up with the terms, trends and topics in the world of Data Science ... oh wait ... or is it Data Analytics. Still not sure.
I have the same take away from PyLadies, from PyData Carolina and now again, I need to learn and use Jupyter notebooks. I also realize that this space is interesting and useful. I am excited to dive in more.
Oh, what kind of music goes with a party like PyData Triangle (I totally stole this)
Automation is a craft. It takes skills, time to hone and when done right is a super power that enables software companies to be both agile and rugged at the exact same time. I had the opportunity to start my November by watching Angie Jones, Consulting Automation Engineer from LexisNexis, talk about agile automation. Thank you to Pendo.io and Triangle Testing and Automation User Group for hosting last night's meetup "How to Get Automation Included in Your Definition of Done"
Angie started out with an agile reminder of what Done Criteria is (What is Done: a set of criteria that a team agrees must be completed before a feature can be considered done.) and then highlighted two parts of it: the team and the time. From there she gave us some big thoughts on why automation within a sprint is not done and specific best practices to make it happen.
Have automation as part of the definition of done. Why they don't?
There is too much legacy applications without existing tests.
Agile backlog is too long
Not achievable in the sprint (not enough time in sprint)
Not a priority
Test team is siloed, away from the development teams
How do you overcome the inhibitors? Staff better and Get automation engineers embedded. Easier said, but can be done:
Collaborate with Other Players: Get with the developers before they start code. In the same room, without looking at each others work, each sketch out the UI. It not only comes up with a better UI but it also helps each understand the others craft and mindset. Also, just as importantly, before leaving the room, agree on tags. You can use these to start on automation without any code being available.
Automate Strategically: Make sure you know who cares and what they care about (see #1). If the test team won't report this as a regression, or there is no tolerance to fix this, move along. Focus else where.
Build incrementally: Just like Test Driven Development allows you to unfold the code just in time to run the test, you can do the same with automation. Don't pour time into a framework that will be out of date. Instead write the automated tests and implement the pieces you need to make them run
To be overly honest, I would not have attended a test & automation meetup if I did not have a personal connection to Angie.But I am so glad I was there. Angie was great (as always), the audience was very engaged, and the everyone I chatted with was passionate about their craft.
Cheers,
G
And as always, here is a tune, "Stompa" by Serena Ryder
