The Internet of Things—what many are calling the Fourth Industrial Revolution—is shaping up to be a game-changing marvel as great as the Internet itself. With more than 10 billion connected devices and thousands more coming online by the minute, we are undoubtedly more connected than ever before. From your dishwasher to your toothbrush to your dog’s collar, electronic devices everywhere are connected. This phenomenon is drastically increasing demands on APIs, data, security, and software quality, pushing every industry sector to step up its game to stay relevant in the new era of connectedness. Although IoT will make our lives simpler as Things talk to other Things and anticipate our needs, mobile apps and devices—our primary communication conduit—will continue to increase in relevance and reliance. Steven Winter shares his insights about the challenges of IoT from his experience building a quality program to support the Starbucks Card Mobile and more than 3,000 mobile apps servicing 1,500 banks and 35 million users. Steven focuses on how automated mobile testing and continuous improvement for mobile apps have forged inroads for the IoT and why software quality will grow in importance as a market differentiator.
WHAT IS IT
WHAT’S IT’S IMPACT
WHAT CAN I DO ABOUT IT
WHAT HAVE I DONE ABOUT IT
Over 2 decades in QA building, engineering, and leading testing and quality
10 years in FinTech
Last 8 in Mobile
Starbucks - Delivered Nation’s very first successful mobile payments system
Over 3500 apps in market supporting more than 35 millions customers
Launched Guerrilla QA in 2015
Take poll of who mobile company folks in the room.
I had to understand what IoT really meant. What it’s rapid proliferation means to my testing world and what tools and techniques did I need to best be prepared. Not just manage, but thrive.
I’ve been a mobile QA guy for the last decade so how is my chops going to translate?
And, I’m choosing the word THRIVE purposefully. I want to succeed. I want to elevate myself and my teams, and the profession, if possible.
What exactly is IoT ?
How will my business be affected by IoT?
Where’s there a strategic plan?
Budget?
What happens when I’m asked to do 10x or 100x with the same resources?
What lessons from the Mobile revolution can I take into the IoT revolution?
So, then, Why is IoT so important?
Visa is introducing a new ring at the Olympic Games in Rio that will let people pay for things by waving their hand
-- no phone, wallet, or battery is needed.
The ring, which has yet to be named, features a secure microchip from Gemalto, and an embedded antenna.
It is crafted of black or white ceramic, as metal would interfere with the antenna. There will be 20 sizes available during its trial run where it will be available exclusively for employees and partners, as well as the 45 athletes sponsored by Visa.
The athletes inspired the creation of the ring, as wallets and typical wearables can be an annoyance to them when they're constantly changing uniforms.
The ring is even fit for Olympic swimmers, as it is water resistant up to 50 meters.
It never needs to be charged since it draws a tiny amount of power from the payment terminal and transmits far less data than Apple Pay or Android Pay.
As for security, the ring can be deactivated from a smartphone, and thanks to tokenization, sensitive data is replaced by a digital identifier that can be used to process payments, so thieves won't be able to use it.
Healthcare
Fitness
Home Automation
Industrial
Connected/autonomous cars
Wearable computing
Shipping/transportation
Travel
Shopping/Retail
Smart Appliances
Entertainment
The prevelant IoT products have been in the HOME AUTOMATION and MEDICAL space
New version of the Internet Protocol, IPv6, “enabling almost unlimited number of devices connected to networks.”
Another factor is that four major network providers— Cisco, IBM, GE and Amazon —have decided “to support IoT with network modification, adding Fog layer and planning to add Swarm layer, facilitating dramatic simplification and cost reduction for network connectivity.”
Janus Bryzek from
And it’s just NOW peaking in Gartner’s famous Hype Chart, the “Peak of Inflated Expectations”
Arguably the same challenge we’ve been facing since the mainframe days!
After reading through this, POLL
How many in the audience are in Mobile, by show of hands?
Now, keep your hands up in your mobile delivery practice is highly efficient with little to no problems.
Yeah, that’s what I thought
I need to immediately LEVEL UP my currently delivery chain, now.
Auto-pilot, fully automated
So I can give myself the time necessary to prepare for the IoT wave of scale and pressure
I will SUFFER if I do not get ahead of this curve, too big of a wave, bigger than anything before it
TAKE A POLL!!
For all you mobile folks, who has a flawless mobile delivery chain now?
What have I don’t about it so far:
Mobile is still hard but nowadays there’s more tools, open source frameworks, skilled practitioners, and a great deal more experience in the development marketplace.
Strategy to improve MOBILE DELIVERY
Start with Quality up front: automate from the beginning
API strategy that insulates and allows for expansion
microservices. Compact, contained, single purpose code
Virtualization - 3rd party API emulation, Network emulation
Device Clouds – real devices
Sometime On – connectivity. First apps were too smart, then they were too dumb – in terms of onboard logic. Sometimes connected won out on the right balance
Continuous Testing - continuous integration and deployment
Device Management
Sticking with the CD stance, and given you can pretty much automate at every layer with mobile and web (amongst other things), it’s now becoming the norm to automate at all levels of your stack.
It’s what we did at my last company, Trizic. We went from crappy unit test coverage for only back end services and schedule prolonged deployments > 2 deployments a day with Devs, Testers, and DevOps engineers working alongside one another kicking out fully tested code. Stories 2 days or less, reliably.
And we kept pushing the tests closer back to the merge point.
Merge point is the tipping point for me.
Gets information to the developer in near real time (20 minutes).
And, with containainerzation, and the dropping costs of computing power, why the hell arent’ you testing all the things?!?
If you’ve not, go read Jez Humble’s book on CD. The guys got it right, brilliant and inspiring.
Then, if you haven’t yet, go watch the Etsy slide-share presentation on CD. They’re doing it right.
Really empower them! Not just whine.
Make it easy to create good tests.
Give “them” the tools to add the right tests.
Get them to assume that THERE WILL BE NO QA TESTING AFTER THEM. And, that THEIR CODE IS GOING TO PRODUCTION TODAY!!
That’s what got my team over the hump. Yes, it was painful, but once we got the stories down to 1-2 day chunks, small enough to add tests and not feel like they just threw away their engineering degree ;)
Quality is not an afterthought
Everuone tests
We’ve learned that there are so many teaching from Mobile that enable us to peek around the corner of IoT and get prepared now