Software testing, in all its forms, is a crucial part of the software development process. It can take a significant fraction of time and effort but its perceived importance (and therefore allocated funding) is often minimal in all but very large projects. Automated CI/CD systems, for example, are a useful set of tools to streamline and automate some of this important task, increasing testing coverage and confidence in our product, and in turn freeing developers to do more creative work. Nevertheless, as developers we often still find ourselves doing more donkey work in this space than we would prefer, or - worse - decreasing the amount of testing to meet a deadline or create the illusion of decreasing project cost.
This BoF will discuss how we test our software: what works, what doesn’t for small and large projects, and how we can use our experiences to help each other to both improve testing and minimise the effort required to test well. We will encourage participants to pose questions, offer suggestions, and even air dirty laundry in a judgement-free space.