\’ilities

This Coder\’s Guild Session was all about the \’ilities.\’ 

This was led by Ady Stokes. 

The main focus was on:

1. Testability

2. Observability

3. Monitorablily

We first touched on the \’ilities\’ in Suman\’s session on quality. 

These give the ability to Access, Test, Monitor, Scale, Respond, Audit, Secure, Perform, and Observe. 

Testability

Testability is the ability to test software, the ability of the system to tell us things, and the ease in these things can be automated (automatability)

James Bach 2003- Heuristics of Software Testability

1. Controllability – The better we can control it, the more the testing can be automated and optimised

2. Observability – What you see is what can be tested

3. Availability – To test it, we have to get at it

4. Simplicity – The simpler it is, the less there is to test

5. Stability – the fewer the changes, the fewer the disruptions to testing.

6. Information – The more information we have, the smarter we will test

The 10 P\’s of Testability- Robert Meaney

Examples

1. Documentation

2. Environment availability, suitability, status and access, 

3. Test Data

4. Fakes, mocks and stubs

5. Code

Software Observability

The ability to observe the software\’s behaviour internally, the ability of the system to tell us things about that behaviour, and the ease in which we can understand a system\’s state, even if we haven\’t seen it like that before. 

Monitorability

The ability to monitor the software, the ability for the system to tell us things, and the ease in which we can take action, based on the given information, to prevent issues. 

Such as:-

1. Tracking trends/ response times

2. Using systems/ product / monitor dashboards