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There are a number of reasons why user acceptance testing can go off the rails and one of the major reasons is the user acceptance testing team itself.

It's important to remember that while testers may be familiar with legacy software and the operational environment, they may not be completely prepared to take on the task of final software quality testing. Testers may not be fully updated on changes or familiar with the modernized IT involved. Updates such as service-oriented architecture have widened the gap between legacy and updated systems and altered the way software testing is done. Also, testers drawn from user staff may not be familiar with the most up-to-date test management tools.

Ensuring that the right people are involved in the user testing process is a good way to mitigate these problems. One way is to make certain that people are up to speed on testing procedures and testing software. They should not only be computer literate, they should also be recently trained. This is sometimes known as the Hit the Ground Running Method. If people are  unfamiliar with the testing software being used, then they should be trained in its use as close as possible to the start of actual testing. This eliminates the need for people to re-familiarize themselves with the software when they sit down to start and minimizes the chance for errors. In other words, they can hit the ground running.

Users should be involved in earlier stages, where they can actually provide useful information during the software development process. They can then provide advisors or direct contributors when it comes time to develop testing scenarios.

Make sure you involve the right people. They should have an excellent grasp of the business specifications required, understand the tasks involved and, if possible, be the actual owners of those tasks. This will help you get as close as possible to the actual business environment in user experience testing. And it will also help keep testing running smoothly.

User acceptance testing is an important part of software testing, and the key to assembling a winning UAT team is to go with the most knowledgeable people first.

Yet, quality assurance is not treated with the importance it deserves. Ash Conway, CEO & Founder of Bugwolf, will address this issue in a talk entitled, 'In the future software bugs will create catastrophic events,' on day three of the Lisbon Web Summit. The talk will be presented on the Breakthrough Stage beginning at 11:20 AM.

Ash will cover what he has learned from his meetings with one thousand digital leaders on how we are asleep at the wheel when it comes to software quality assurance. Including how software bugs are set to create catastrophic events in the future and how Bugwolf uses gamification and the power of video to solve this 300 billion dollar (and growing) problem.

Web Summit has been expanding since its founding six years ago. It began with only 400 attendees and has now expanded to over 50,000 from over 150 countries. Web Summit is not only the fastest growing technology conference in history, it is also the largest. It is the premier gathering of entrepreneurs and innovators in the digital technology space. It includes people from Fortune 500 companies, tech companies and startups.

Web Summit 2016 runs from November 7th through the 10th at Internacional de Lisboa and Meo Arena on R. Bojador, 1998-010 Santa Maria dos Olivais in Lisbon, Portugal. Other speakers include, Mogens Lykketoft (President of the United Nations), Mike Schroepfer (CTO of Facebook), John Chambers (Executive Chairman of Cisco Systems), as well as Linda Boff (Chief Marketing Officer for General Electric), Mike Lee(Chief Digital Officer for Under Armour) and Andrew McAfee (Principal Research Scientist at MIT and co-author of the New York Times bestseller, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies).

After coming in as runners up in the pitch final last year, out of thousands of global startups,  Bugwolf has been invited to participate in this the world's largest tech startup event.  We are honored to engage with some of the leading minds in the tech and digital industries.

The event is sponsored by KJR, a major provider of expertise in software quality. KJR provides advice to many of Australia’s leading companies and organizations to help them with the digital innovation necessary to meet increasing customer demand. KJR is into mitigating risk while accelerating the pace of digital transformation.

Presentations will launch at 10:00 AM with a keynote presentation by Jonathon Wright Director of Digital Engineering at Hitachi Consulting in the UK.  Mr. Wright will also present on the subject of practical DevOps processes with Visual Studio, later in the day.

Some of the other presenters will be Anne-Marie Charrett and Adam Bird as well as presentations from KJR and Dynatrace. Titles of presentations include Design Thinking, Lean Business and Innovation, User Experience Monitoring: Key Principles and Practices, Practical Approaches to Risk and Maturity in Digital Transformation and Agile Engineering vs Corporate Compliance.

Ash Conway will present along with Jen Storey on Innovation in Design UX and Quality. Ash thoroughly enjoys making such presentations. Bugwolf is dedicated to providing innovative solutions that are applicable in the ever changing digital landscape and it’s great to interface with like minded people who are looking for ways of staying on the cutting edge and don’t mind a little disruption.

Tickets are available at the at the Everbright site.

A key discussion item was customer experience based testing becoming the norm in determining usability, and how geography is an important factor in doing customer experience testing the right way, among other topics.

Bugwolf is a unique company using cloud technology to provide on-demand quality assurance across third party built products both prior to and post deployment. An elite pool of talent of testers that can provide fresh eyes on any application. Cloud testing accelerates product release cycles while reducing the cost of customer experience testing by up to 50%. Bugwolf operates on the principle that accelerated engagement in software testing means lower costs up front and better usability for customers. This creates brand loyalty, better word of mouth and more profit in the long run.

See the complete video interview on Bugwolf's YouTube Channel

Also see ComputerWorld's article on the same topic.

Ash is the CEO and founder of Bugwolf, one of Australia's fastest growing tech startups. He has over 20 years of experience in international business development including 11 years building tech companies and working with startups through to acquisition while generating sales as high as $150 million.

He is also an award-winning designer who has worked in Europe and built and ran a successful agency in Melbourne.

His keynote talk will address how Bugwolf uses game design and employee engagement to reduce the rising cost of digital quality and accelerate delivery for Australia's largest banks.

It's important to remember that we are more and more connected to software in our everyday lives as we move every engagement onto a single pane of glass. This makes software testing increasingly important as society moves forward.

Unfortunately, traditional software testing is struggling to keep up as we transition from shipping software every 6 months to shipping every week.

Test automation is critical in testing, but can be expensive with a high rate of change, and struggles to replicate every customer experience.

Software bugs cost the economy $312 billion (USD) annually in 2013, and this amount continues to grow as we become more connected.

This is why Bugwolf has a fivefold purpose.

1. To extend testing capability and through outsource testing to enable enterprise to remain focused on their core competency.

2. To deliver better quality digital products to customers much faster than traditional testing models.

3. To better engage customers and employees during user acceptance testing while streamlining approvals.

4. To provide a fresh set of eyes to review the quality of digital applications before they are released.

5. To reduce software testing and delivery cycles from weeks to days with a unique gamified approach.

Many large enterprises like National Australia Bank, Australia Post and Treasury Wines engage with teams via the Bugwolf Platform to review the quality of their software prior to releasing them to millions of their customers.

Other important technology and digital industry leaders like Commonwealth Bank, ANZ, NAB, Westpac, ING Direct, UBank, Google, RedBalloon and the world’s most innovative Fintech bank — Fidor Bank AG (Germany), will also be present to showcase their innovation thought leadership at this 1.5 day event.

You can get more information about the conference here.

Containers do have certain advantages over virtual machines, not the least of which is size. Virtual machines require full operating systems and can run into gigabytes. In virtualization each package contains an operating system, while containers only require megabytes and can run off a single OS. This means that multiple containers can be hosted by a single server and in far greater numbers than virtual machines. You can run a single operating system with multiple containers sharing the same operating system kernel. Each container can write to the system independently, while shared OS elements are read only. This is a much more efficient use of resources.

However, it does present a security problem. Sharing an operating system means that security can be circumvented, as there is no user ID isolation. This can lead to root level privileges being used as an open door.

Nevertheless, the sheer convenience of containers means that they are here to stay. It also means that there are a number of groups who are working on ways to make containers more useful and secure. Dashboards, management consoles and integrated registries are on offer, along with additional tools to automate updates and deployment.

Bit by bit containers are becoming a stock item in the software development toolbox. While they may never replace virtualization, they do offer advantages of their own, advantages that software development teams increasingly cannot do without.

Certification testing is never complete

Consider the standard tests types for mobile application testing – iOS8 specifics aside. There are ten major types, not including Certification, Beta, or User Acceptance Testing which include Unit, Functional, Usability, Performance, Security, Compatibility, Interface, Services, Operational and Low Level Resources. Seriously. The development and test team can’t cover all of it, never happens and it never will unless testing is continuous. Which means even certification testing needs to be continuous and not occur only during a specified period.

Perform simple test risk analysis

Continuous testing needs to be part of the test plan so the team knows what’s been done and what needs done. For example, in certification testing for iOS8 your team won’t be able to fully test all the features with each configuration setting against each device. An effective method of focusing testing efforts is having the team perform a simple risk analysis. By simple, I mean a spreadsheet with the known new functionality in iOS8 and how it maps to your application. 

Agree on a test plan and strategy

Each developer on the team knows where the fragile code is, or where code is complex or breaks most often. A simple risk analysis shares knowledge so testers focus testing in the highest risk areas. After you’ve passed certification testing, testing continues on to the next type not yet covered. There’s still time to cover the other 7-10 test types you haven’t gotten to until the next release or consider hiring a test service such as Bugwolf with fresh, varied users to finish off specific testing and reduce defects in production.

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Apple has earned a loyal following by going against the Silicon Valley grain and doing things their own way. While other big companies like Facebook and Google cash in on monetizing user data and pitching heavily targeted advertisements, Apple is taking steps to protect their users' browsing habits and personal information.

There's an old bit of internet wisdom that says, "if you're not paying for it, you're the product being sold," but updates to the Safari web browser coming in macOS 10.14 Mojave are set to make it harder for companies to cash in on their users.

The update puts a stop to "browser fingerprinting," which is a method companies use to identify specific computers that visit their sites by indexing technical details about the hardware and software they're using. Even if you have cookies turned off and browse in incognito mode, browser fingerprinting can be used to identify you as a unique user, allowing companies to track your searching, shopping, and surfing data.

In Mojave, Safari will block browser fingerprinting so that every Apple device identifies in the exact same way. If a company can't tell the difference between Apple users, they can't associate browsing data with any particular individual or demographic, making that data a lot less useful and valuable.

Despite the potential threat to their business model, companies like Google and Facebook that rely heavily on targeted online advertising haven't had much to say on the record about Apple's plans, probably because they know consumers aren't likely to be sympathetic to arguments against stronger privacy protections.

"With Mojave, we're making it much harder for trackers to create unique fingerprints," said Craig Federighi, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, speaking to a conference of Apple developers in June. "It will be dramatically more difficult for data companies to uniquely identify your device and track you."

Currently, macOS 10.14 Mojave is available in public beta. The final version is expected to see a general release no later than October. Other features of the macOS update include an expanded app store that makes it easier for developers to make iPhone and iPad apps available for use on Mac computers.

Like any Operating System update, Mojave can have unexpected and unwelcome implications for your website or app. Bugwolf's best-practice device lab gives you certainty that your digital assets aren't undermined by external changes. Click here to learn more about how we help.

As the never-ending mobile wars wage on, Apple has some good news to celebrate. Their newest operating system update, iOS 12, has hit a 60% adoption rate just one month after it was released—a sharp contrast with the slow rate of adoption for Android 9 Pie, the newest version of their biggest competitor's operating system.

In a keynote speech delivered on October 30 that included the unveiling of a new iPad Pro model, an upgraded Mac mini, and a redesign for the Macbook Air, Apple CEO Tim Cook informed his audience that the latest version of the operating system that powers Apple's mobile devices was enjoying a record-breaking debut.

"iOS 12 is off to an unbelievable start. It's been installed on more systems in the first month than any version in history," Cook said. "This is incredible. It's remaining on a tear. In fact, an amazing 60% of all iOS devices out there are already running IOS 12. This is just unheard of."

Although early reports had suggested that the initial adoption rates for iOS 12 were low, within two weeks of its September 17 launch date there were more devices running iOS 12 than iOS 11. By the time the release was a month old, it was the most rapidly-adopted iOS version Apple had ever released, running on nearly 1.2 billion devices.

Meanwhile, Google's Android 9 Pie has been available for over four months, and according to the most recent statistics Google has published, consumers are leaving it on the proverbial windowsill. Less than 0.1% of Android devices are running the latest version of the OS, with more than half of all Androids using a version that's at least three years old.

Some Android fans may point out that the comparison isn't quite fair—Android is an open-source OS that runs on devices from a wide range of manufacturers, while iOS is made exclusively for Apple hardware. Consumer studies also suggest that Apple users are just more engaged with their smartphones than Android users. However, it has also been noted that some users have noticed reduced battery life on their phones after upgrading to Android 9 Pie.

Apple shares dropped four percent, losing almost twenty-three billion dollars in value following the launch of iPhone 6 and iOS 8 in just one week between 19 and 25 September 2014. Apple apologised repeatedly to iPhone users who had experienced software glitches. This did little to stop the avalanche of negative social media and litany of complaints.

Although the iPhone 6 line was, at the time, Apple's best selling ever, there were a number of software problems and many complained that the phones themselves bent too easily in the pocket. Poor battery life was  a common complaint, causing people to wonder if Apple tended  to improve software but neglecting hardware.

Other problems reported were glitchy connections to both WiFi and Bluetooth. keyboards simply disappearing, debate around security concerns of the iPhone TouchID and others.

While iOS8 addressed some of these glitches, users were forced to seek workarounds such as changing settings. We would certainly hope that with the release of Apple iOS 9 they will have fixed these issues, rather than users having to continue to rely on such workarounds.

Quite obviously the impact of the $23b plunge on the stock market did take a toll on tech company, and  it certainly raised questions around whether the company had the ability to stay in the position of Market Leader. The competition has been cutting down Apple's lead for quite a while now. Tech buyers are picky and, if a company wants to stay out front, it must consistently offer both innovation and quality. If anyone at Apple thinks they can rest on their laurels, they need only remember three little words, Digital Equipment Corporation.