Thomas E. Murphy
Research Director
4 years at Gartner
27 years IT industry
Thomas Murphy is a research director with Gartner, where he is part of the Application Strategies and Governance group. Mr. Murphy has more than 25 years of experience in IT as a developer, product manager, technical editor and industry analyst. Read Full Bio
by Thomas Murphy | January 31, 2012 | 1 Comment
DVCS has become a popular trend in agile development with many open source projects making use of GIT and Mercurial and other vendors offering DVCS like function (see Hype Cycle for Application Development, 2011) but they are still a bit too on the edge for most enterprise use. Concerns about security, a still emerging toolset for understanding revision history and ties to other existing tools are among the concerns. Accurev announced today support for using GIT as a backend for its SCM product. This will enable a much greater number of organizations to utilize the distributed development abilities of a DVCS while also having their enterprise SCCM governance needs met. This should also enable a broader number of users to tie GIT into their ALM systems.
Category: ALM Agile Open Source SCCM Tags:
by Thomas Murphy | January 23, 2012 | Submit a Comment
An element of software quality often overlooked is the issue of usability. With internal applications you train users on the process to follow and this may make up for a world of ugly. The web has changed our perceptions and devices and Apps will continue to drive home the need to deliver applications that are intuitive and efficient. However, usability isn’t just something we ignore, it is something for which most companies are ill equipped to perform. Part of this is skill and part of this is tools.
There are many ways to go about usability testing and many new tools are appearing to aid with performing more effective tests. Examples include UsabilityTesting.com where crowd-sourcing and video capture is employed and www.optimalworkshop.com where a set of tools are offered to gain insight into customer patterns. But you can’t just go after these tools, skills are required which either means gaining them internally or hiring consultants. A great blog post on the challenges of usability testing we published recently by Extractable on avoiding pitfalls. If you are working on a Testing COE, consider the need for skills in usability as something that should be on the map and the path to skills or relationships you will use.
Category: Testing Usability Tags:
by Thomas Murphy | January 23, 2012 | 1 Comment
The explosion of devices and apps is creating a strain on testing organizations. A broad number of tools have hit the market and we expect to see strong growth in the number of options during the next three years. A plethora of challenges exist: gestures, geolocation, motion, and how to realistically conduct load tests to name a few. Many will rely on manual tests and a prayer.
Today SOASTA announced 3 new products in the mobile space that show a lot of promise. With a Cloud delivered testing solution the company is able to get to market and evolve the product more readily than traditional software delivery which will be important in an area that sees constant evolution in platforms and devices. The ability to deliver full automation without jailbreaking or tethering a device coupled with the high maintainability we have seen in SOASTA’s testing product will give users another solid option. As devices shift to business critical application platforms the ability to have consistent test automation will be a key to success.
Category: Mobile Testing Tags: Cloud Testing, Functional Automation, SOASTA
by Thomas Murphy | December 2, 2011 | 3 Comments
For a long time, (a really long time) the term Application Life-cycle Management (ALM) has bothered me. Why, because what we typically call ALM tools are tools that govern the development and delivery of a software project and that is only part of the life-cycle of an application. To really be ALM you would need to talk about the portfolio of apps (APM) and the management of those assets from cradle to production to (a place more should probably get to sooner) the digital grave.
During AADI we held a roundtable on ALM Practices and had a fairly quick conversation on this topic. The nut of the conversation is that no-one in IT uses the term ALM. Either SDLC (software development life-cycle) or more specific terms: requirements management, project management, defect management, etc. are used. There is a slowly emerging convergence of APM and PPM tools with ALM and a convergence between ALM and Release Management in DevOps that at some point may deliver a real “ALM” suite or solution set but the reality at this point is we probably should modify our terminology to say ADLM. I would love to get your input either here or tweet me @metamurph
Category: ALM Tags:
by Thomas Murphy | November 30, 2011 | Submit a Comment
Gartner’s Application Architecture, Development and Integration Summit conference began yesterday (http://bit.ly/rAazgw) with over 1000 attendees and an agenda full of great presentations. This year there Cloud Computing is a major theme and I will be presenting along with Jim Duggan today on the affect that Cloud is having on AD and ALM. We will talk about more mature areas like testing and lab management, and more emergent areas such as the shift of ALM tools from SaaS to PaaS and how Cloud AD platforms are evolving to support both traditional IT as well as the Consumerization of IT.
Jim and I are also taking the time together to work on completing the Magic Quadrant for ALM. This has been a challenging process over the last 6 months given the ever growing size of the market and the evolving nature of ALM. One of the key things we have noted is that in general most tools aiming at enterprise use have gained strong integration facilities recognizing that they won’t be the single stack provider. There are single provider solutions and a few vendors still oriented toward these solutions but in general most organizations won’t have all ALM tasks managed in one single tool. We have noted this in two notes recently: Selection Criteria for Success in Choosing ALM Products and Application Life Cycle Management Matters Where Diversity Persists. In the near term, it would appear that Cloud delivery of solutions will only better enable users to choose governance tools that fit the various roles in an organization and this is a good thing.
Category: ALM Cloud MQ Tags:
by Thomas Murphy | June 23, 2011 | 4 Comments
The rapid movement to build and deploy applications to devices is creating a challenge for testing teams. Solutions from the leading testing vendors are missing, or provided by partner extensions, and the pace of technology evolution will keep them chasing for several more years. Organizations should recognize that testing choices (tools, services, etc) will be tactical during this time period. During this time consider the following:
- Scenarios under test: customer facing, App Store, location, motion
- Breadth of devices: phones, tablets, carriers
- Development technology: MEAP, native, cross platform
- Load vs. Functionality
- Skill set – devices will require more technical testers and more usability experts
There are a growing number of options based on these needs including crowdsourced testing with Utest, outsourced with companies like InfoStretch, tools that extend existing frameworks and stand-alone device testing solutions such as (DeviceAnywhere, eggPlant, Jamo Solutions, Perfecto Mobile) but this market will continue to evolve, we expect acquisitions and general disruptive behavior for the next 3-5 years.
Category: Mobile Testing Tags:
by Thomas Murphy | June 17, 2011 | 1 Comment
I have been to lots of daily stand-up meetings in many different companies. It is great to see how different Scrum teams work and fit agile practices into their culture and to their needs. I saw a more unique instance this week on a visit to Rally Software. This wasn’t the traditional development team stand-up or even a product manager oriented scrum of scrums. No, this was the executive team daily stand-up. I thought it was great to see that outside of development the company taking the concept and putting it to use and the insight that this provides to the company about one of the core agile processes that the company espouses to its customers. Quick, simple, and efficient the meeting keeps the team on the same page and enables them to communicate with greater authenticity to customers and prospects. I think it is a great pattern for IT teams to socialize within their companies. For agile development to scale it has to work not just at the development layer but across the organization. Get them a Scrum spreadsheet and introduce the daily standup so they can experience the value directly.
Category: ALM Agile Tags:
by Thomas Murphy | April 7, 2011 | Submit a Comment
Companies often wonder about the economic value of testing. For functional testing this generally boils down to defect containment and reducing the cost of fixing defects by finding them earlier but putting performance in economic terms has been more of a challenge. However we continue to see high numbers of sites with performance failures and often during critical times especially in the e-commerce arena. Recently Strangeloop (a site optimization company) built an interesting infographic pointing to the growing performance problem and putting it in economic terms http://bit.ly/e4WCxT
The case for testing is never one dimensional it must be built to the specific needs of the organization e.g. risk, regulation, agility, cost, can all be focus factors as well as understanding the types of issues being produced currently. But seeing the cost to your ecommerce efforts of slow page response is quickly eye opening.
Category: Load/Stress Testing Tags:
by Thomas Murphy | March 16, 2011 | Submit a Comment
As organizations increasingly adopt Agile development practices they often do this on top of open source tools for life-cycle (e.g. Git, Subversion, Hudson, Eclipse, Mylin, ApacheJira) and while price is a factor (especially when the Agile team is an unofficial skunk-works) it is the fact the many open source projects are themselves Agile. This means the “development team” is clearly connected to the challenges of distributed agile development and also is attuned to the concept of frequent releases and continuous innovation. These teams don’t have a hierarchy, they believe in transparency, developer productivity is paramount.
This however points out how tools may or may not fit for your company. Open source tools evolve “naturally” without the rigor of planning and there are few open source planning facilities, and the tools themselves are often a patchwork that has to be carefully assembled by the user.
As companies mature in their use of Agile and it moves from dark corners to mainstream development, open source will still be an important driver of innovation but I expect that commercial tools will adapt: more frequent product releases, published defect repositories, greater community involvement to shape directions and ways for the community to extend and often freemium type offerings. These behaviors or the ability to effectively utilize them will separate traditional structured ALM from Agile ALM.
Category: Uncategorized Tags:
by Thomas Murphy | February 24, 2011 | 3 Comments
As we worked through the MQ for Integrated Software Quality Suites one of the key issues we are seeing is that tools are lagging behind the pace of innovation and are often lacking support for platforms and technologies that are becoming popular leaving organizations to perform a lot of manual testing. Key in these areas are lack of support for Apple and its Safari browser (best option is TestPlant) and generally poor support for devices (one good option is InfoStretch). With the continued fast pace of change in client technologies we expect this disparity to continue and most organizations will continue to see a need to have testing tools from multiple vendors.
Category: Mobile Testing Tags:
