(Presented at Agile Atlanta on May 1st, 2012 – Prezi)

I’ve been working a lot over the past six months on creating an automation framework for our service development teams. In our relatively large organization, we have have teams devoted to different horizontal strata of software development. So, for good or ill, we have database teams, mainframe/API teams, service layer teams, and UI teams. If you’re at that service layer, and that’s all you do, you should be taking a different approach to testing than if you had to do all of the testing for vertical slices of product functionality. With that in mind, here’s a proposal for a presentation on the strategies and the automation framework we’ve come up with. I welcome any feedback or thoughts!

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How do we ensure appropriate testing and feedback for large Agile Enterprise projects where the value delivered may not be end-user facing features? Such is the case for many enterprises working to establish a Service Oriented Architecture. A lot of knowledge exists for agile teams delivering customer-facing products. Much of that work focuses on acceptance tests being written in clear business language that is understandable by the whole team and stakeholders. This approach becomes more complicated for component delivery teams developing Shared Services that are often seen in large Enterprise development organizations.

Services can be tested in a number of ways and the approach that’s best can vary greatly based on the context of the application and environment. The presentation discusses common patterns of testing services and focuses on an acceptance test solution appropriate for teams working on the shared service layer within a componentized Enterprise model. The solution is based on a “universal” fixture that works for any type of object-based service and is accessed via table-based acceptance tests in FitNesse.

Process/Mechanics
The talk will be of a standard presentation format with slides and discussion. The first part of the presentation provides background on testing in an Agile Enterprise model and the various approaches to Service testing. (15) The second part of the presentation discusses the creation of specific framework to aid in service contract verification that is helpful for specialized teams working in a componentized Enterprise development model. (15) The last part gives examples on basic usage and on how the framework is used in a real-world environment. (30)

Learning outcomes
Knowledge of how Agile in the Enterprise affects our approaches to testing and feedback
Understanding of various methods of service testing and how to choose what’s right for your team
Details and examples of how to employ a framework for testing services appropriate for the componentized Enterprise model.