RoboCrush.com

We felt like we just needed to do a call out to Charlie. You all know which Charlie we mean.

He did an amazing job debugging several of the newer automated test scripts.

I think we can all agree that it’s been helpful to go through the training on how to write automated tests and that once you get the hang of it it’s a joy to work with automated testing.

We still have one major area to tackle and that’s developing a better method for inserting and monitoring test start points and test completion points. I think we’re pretty close to figuring that out - well, I say “we” but I of course mean the programmers working on that part of the project.

Also, we’ve noticed a pick-up in the use of the automated test scripts that have been developed and we completely understand that getting into the habit of using them on a regular basis can be challenging at first.

One last shout out to Charlie and then we’re signing off here.

Tad & P.J.

We’re pleased to announce that within the next week or so RobCrush will start publishing limited releases of production data subsets. These are production data sets that have been verified as having gone through the following:

• Initial test plan walkthrough.
• Test data review.
• Proper test enivronment to product migration path.

By the way, we’ve heard a lot of complaints about the complexity and number of migration paths to choose from based on which piece of the RoboCrush system you’re working on. We understand this and once again we will be automating much of this into a pretty-much fail-safe system (never say never, eh?).

We’ll also be formally opening up the blog to a moderated feedback status and see how that goes.

Hope I didn’t scare you.

I’m just talking about Tad as a few of you have noticed him limping a bit. Nothing to worry about - just an old soccer injury that flares up from time to time.

It did mean quite a bit to him that several of you inquired and he’d be posting today, but as many of you know he’s currently on the road.

P.J.

Sorry for the scrambling-fast post here.  But as most of you know things have really gotten crazy here - and that’s crazy in a good way. Our project seems to be getting a lot of attention despite our attempt to keep it somewhat underground - obviously not TOO underground as we’ve put up this site and shortly will start publishing some of our production data.

Mainly we just want to make sure you all know that we feel like we’re really settingly into a groove and have  noticed some of you feeling that way as well. It’s been nice to see how some of the test teams are shaping up, too. It was a somewhat unexpected surprise that there would be so much synergy not only within the teams but even between the teams that have been working together on testing.

We apologize for the recent Beta lockdown and hiatus on the blog but we truly believe in the mantra “better safe than sorry”. I’m sure most of you got that from the testing training you’ve gone through.

Probably to many of you we seemed a bit paranoid and it may have even seemed like we were on a witch-hunt. Rest assured that wasn’t the case at all. Sometimes we got a bit careless with the language in the memos we sent out which gave the impression that we were being accusatory.

The truth is the whole problem started with what we thought was a potential vulnerability in our repository of test data. Even though the data itself is essentially useless without the system interface, there was a remote potential of partial reverse-engineering if certain potential exploits we thought we identified were actually present.

As it turns out, they weren’t so now we are ready to return to business as usual.

In the spirit of RoboCrush we will be sending out feedback forms to get your suggestions on how we might have handled this situation better.

Once again let us thank you all for hanging in there during these exciting times at RoboCrush.

Tad & P.J.