One part startup exposition, one part summer internship fair, and one part launch of Startup Georgia - startup led, a statewide initiative to raise the profile of Georgia startups as part of the national network Startup America Partnership.
What are the odds that a Georgia street/country kid would use college students from Emory University to start his company? Although he started his tremendous success story by finding the best party thrower at Emory, he admits it was a lot of hard work, a lot of hit and miss. The party thrower is now manager to many artists, including, Justin Bieber.
He spoke about his $200,000 website that had a lot of moving parts but was virtually invisible in search engines. He started a free blog and received more hits than his official website! He enjoyed the ability to communicate with his fans, so his new venture, Global 14.com is his personal social networking site. He is into tech now, and his new site is very nice - another one of his visions.
A number of soon-to-be well-known entrepreneurs spoke about their vision. Students met with startups from multiple sectors and industries to find out about summer internships. Developers, computer science, designers, business students, and all majors are encouraged to explore the opportunities available to them right here in Atlanta.
Good Planning is critical to the success of any project. Start off a project by creating a simple purpose statement. This is just a one-sentence description of the problem that needs to be solved. An example would be something like this:
"Our website will engage visitors to learn about the products we sell through great content and images and ensure an easy purchase through our secure shopping cart."
Just like submitting a screenplay to movie producers, you have to produce a one-sentence description summarizing the plot of the script.
Once you get a concise idea of what it is you are going to develop, you can then write a program specification (or spec) that is very detailed. It forces you to think through a project from start to finish before you write a single line of code. This is where you interview anyone with an opinion about the project happens. Requiring your customer or employer to review and approve your spec before you start writing code will help to avoid errors, misunderstandings, and conflicts down the line. It might include the history and what problems the program is intended to fix, what existing processes are being replaced (if any), what the program is expected to accomplish, and what benefits the new program will bring.
The program spec goes further in detail with important assumptions about the project, including the languages it will be written in, who will be the audience, what level of security is needed, who will be using the program, and perhaps what components might be divided up and to whom. Of course, depending on the size of the project, it can be a few paragraphs or many pages.
The requirements part of the spec is the most important. This is the painstaking, step-by-step detailed explanation of how the program will work and what it will look like. What is the overall feel, look, and objective of the company? What will the user be presented with and what will they need to provide, what information will they get, how the input is transformed to the output, how the information will be stored, how it will be retrieved, and what to do if there are problems. This is also where you nail down imagery, font choice, color scheme, and layout. List the information you need and the feedback you require and interview those individuals who will be giving the feedback. Nailing down the design and function details is critical. You don't want this part of the process to drag on - which it can - but changes to the design or layout after you've started developing can become very problematic.
The importance of a detailed spec is what will determine the timeline and cost. Depending on the project, you may need to set milestones. Milestones are dates that you expect major pieces of the program to fall into place. Give yourself plenty of leeway because things might not work out as expected, which can often be the case. Milestones are great because they help the developer plan his/her work and monitor the timeline. This can help with documenting any further changes beyond the agreed-upon spec. Unforeseen changes will affect the timeline and the overall cost of development. This is a vital component for designers, developers, or programmers. Changes made to the agreed-upon spec are fine as long as they are approved or there is appropriate compensation for changes affecting your scheduled timeline. It is paramount that everyone with an opinion agrees to and understands the purpose of the spec and the timeline. If you are a freelancer or contractor and find yourself in a position where a project is going longer than anticipated or agreed to without compensation, this can spell disaster. This is serious business and your time and effort shouldn't be dismissed.
You need to be thorough and keep your explanations simple and clear. There is no right or wrong way to write a spec. You are creating a blueprint that you and someone else can understand and work from. Don't leave anything open to misinterpretation. Use graphics, illustrations, tables (wireframes) to clarify the details because you really don't want to be derailed in the middle of the project after you've started writing the code.
An important thing to remember - your client or employer expects you to do the job you were hired for, and you expect them to trust your judgment and ability to do the agreed-upon project as stated in the spec and timeline. Any changes to the spec are pretty big issues and shouldn't be taken lightly. Respect is a two-way street.
If you write an accurate, detailed, and easy-to-understand program, application, or design spec that your employer or client approves, your project will just about write itself. Happy coding!
Import the photos into a single file, or open a .psd file with the images you want to use in the file.
Note that a number of new layers have been created in the Layers panel. These individual layers will become the frames of the animated GIF.
You can also import a video, and you'll need to convert the frames of the video into individual layers. Go to File > Import > Video Frames to Layers. Locate and select the video file you want to use and click Open. Click OK to convert the video frames to a single-layered file.
Note: Photoshop may not be able to fully import a video that is too long. Use the options in the Import window to limit the number of frames imported. You can select to import the entire video or choose just a segment of the video. You can also limit the number of frames imported to a set interval, such as every 2 frames.
Make sure you open the Timeline panel under Window. Click the arrow on the button in the middle of the panel and select Create Frame Animation. Then click the button to create a new frame animation. Click the menu icon from the upper right corner of the Timeline panel. Click Make Frames From Layers. This will convert all the layers in the Layers panel into individual frames in your animation.
Click the Play button from the bottom of the Timeline panel (or press the Spacebar on your keyboard) to preview the animation.
To export the animation as a GIF go to File > Export > Save for Web (Legacy). Select GIF 128 Dithered from the Preset menu. Select 256 from the Colors menu. If you are using the GIF online or want to limit the file size of the animation, change the Width and Height fields in the Image Size options. Select Forever from the Looping Options menu. Click the Preview button in the lower-left corner of the Export window to preview your GIF in a web browser.
Click Save and select a destination for your animated GIF file.
This is also how you make cinemagraphs. Enjoy your creations!
Credit to Adobe at: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/how-to/make-animated-gif.html
Here are five questions to ask your SEO provider. If you have a website and include your email or phone number anywhere within the site, you will receive emails and phone calls from any number of companies offering this service. It is big business right now. Many of them are scams. They make it sound very intriguing and like most scammers, promise you the world.
First, let's get some of the terminologies that SEO companies are using:
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS - look at your competitors and where you rank on searches.
KEYWORD RESEARCH - what power words reference your business or service?
UNIQUE TITLES, DESCRIPTION, AND KEYWORD TAGS - browsers look at titles of pages, articles, etc., description, and meta tags and should have been built into the site from the beginning.
MANAGE KEYWORD DENSITY - measures the number of times a keyword or phrase appears within a page against the total number of words on that page and needs to be related to the products or services.
KEYWORD PROMINENCE - indicates how many significant keywords are used in titles, meta tags, or anywhere near the top of the page and should have been built into the site from the beginning.
KEYWORD FREQUENCY - measures the number of times a keyword or phrase appears within a web page but DENSITY matters because it also measures frequency but also as it appears within the other content on the page.
LINKING - usually links that are internal to your site like anchor tags and should have been built into the site from the beginning. Also includes submitting your site to the browsers and perhaps some directories.
These are great terms and certainly, need to be understood if you have a website. If you built your own website, you should consider using a service or any number of optimizers that are out there. If a professional built your site, they should already be aware of how content, meta tags, conscientious linking, and keywords work, and also know that your site's code should be validated and submitted to the browsers - then you will be truly optimized.
Consultation: The provider should ask you questions about your business and get to know your website. They should ask about your target customer, target market, locations, etc.
Keyword Research: What keywords are your target customers asking a search engine to find? A website should contain these keywords not only in meta tags but should be written within the content of your website.
Content: A good SEO content writer will write content not only to appeal to search engines but makes sense to your visitors.
Link Building: Your site needs to be submitted to directories and added to the growing number of business profile sites that have a description and link to your website.
Reporting and Tracking: You should receive some kind of report where you see traffic results, search engine rankings, etc.
Search engines must crawl your site - and thousands others - to determine what each site is about. It may take three to six months. If someone tells you they can do this within days or weeks, this is a red flag.
They are either very inexperienced, scamming, or maybe using "black hat" methods that could result in your site getting banned from the Google index and not rank at all in other search engines. Ranking reports should be sent to you on a regular basis.
Honesty is always the best policy. SEO techniques should be transparent, focused on content that is engaging and informative to readers.
Websites should be designed and built with a focus on all of the above right from the beginning. A professional Designer or Developer with a few years of experience should have a total understanding of the issues mentioned in this article.
Christina Descalzo
Web Design and Development
770-316-1654
Adjustment layers are great for making changes to any part of an image. Swapping colors is an easy thing to do:
It is that easy....!
Christina Descalzo
Web Design and Development
770-316-1654
In February 2001, 17 software developers met at the Snowbird resort in Utah to discuss lightweight development methods. They published the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, in which they shared that through their combined experience of developing software and helping others to do it they had come to value:
Self-organization and motivation are important, as are interactions like co-location and pair programming.
Working software is more useful and welcome than just presenting documents to clients in meetings.
Requirements cannot be fully collected at the beginning of the software development cycle, therefore continuous customer or stakeholder involvement is very important.
Agile methods are focused on quick responses to change and continuous development.
Some of the authors formed the Agile Alliance, a non-profit organization that promotes software development according to the manifesto's values and principles. Introducing the manifesto on behalf of the Agile Alliance, Jim Highsmith said,
The Agile movement is not anti-methodology, in fact many of us want to restore credibility to the word methodology. We want to restore a balance. We embrace modeling, but not in order to file some diagram in a dusty corporate repository. We embrace documentation, but not hundreds of pages of never-maintained and rarely-used tomes. We plan, but recognize the limits of planning in a turbulent environment. Those who would brand proponents of XP or SCRUM or any of the other Agile Methodologies as "hackers" are ignorant of both the methodologies and the original definition of the term hacker.
— Jim Highsmith, History: The Agile Manifesto
Customer satisfaction by early and continuous delivery of valuable software
There are many specific agile development methods. Most promote teamwork, collaboration, and process adaptability throughout the product development life-cycle.
Most agile development methods break product development work into small increments that minimize the amount of up-front planning and design. Iterations are short time frames (timeboxes) that typically last from one to four weeks. Each iteration involves a cross-functional team working in all functions: planning, analysis, design, coding, unit testing, and acceptance testing. At the end of the iteration a working product is demonstrated to stakeholders. This minimizes overall risk and allows the product to adapt to changes quickly. An iteration might not add enough functionality to warrant a market release, but the goal is to have an available release (with minimal bugs) at the end of each iteration. Multiple iterations might be required to release a product or new features.
Working software is the primary measure of progress.
No matter which development method is followed, every team should include a customer representative (product owner in Scrum). This person is agreed by stakeholders to act on their behalf and makes a personal commitment to being available for developers to answer questions throughout the iteration. At the end of each iteration, stakeholders and the customer representative review progress and re-evaluate priorities with a view to optimizing the return on investment (ROI) and ensuring alignment with customer needs and company goals.
In agile software development, an information radiator is a (normally large) physical display located prominently near the development team, where passers-by can see it. It presents an up-to-date summary of the product development status. A build light indicator may also be used to inform a team about the current status of their product development.
A common characteristic in agile development is the daily stand-up (also known as the daily scrum). In a brief session, team members report to each other what they did the previous day toward their team's iteration goal, what they intend to do today toward the goal, and any roadblocks or impediments they can see to the goal.
Specific tools and techniques, such as continuous integration, automated unit testing, pair programming, test-driven development, design patterns, domain-driven design, code refactoring and other techniques are often used to improve quality and enhance product development agility.
Compared to traditional software engineering, agile software development mainly targets complex systems and product development with dynamic, non-deterministic and non-linear characteristics, where accurate estimates, stable plans, and predictions are often hard to get in early stages—and big up-front designs and arrangements would probably cause a lot of waste, i.e., are not economically sound. These basic arguments and previous industry experiences, learned from years of successes and failures, have helped shape agile development's favor of adaptive, iterative and evolutionary development.
Development methods exist on a continuum from adaptive to predictive. Agile methods lie on the adaptive side of this continuum. One key of adaptive development methods is a "Rolling Wave" approach to schedule planning, which identifies milestones but leaves flexibility in the path to reach them, and also allows for the milestones themselves to change. Adaptive methods focus on adapting quickly to changing realities. When the needs of a project change, an adaptive team changes as well. An adaptive team has difficulty describing exactly what will happen in the future. The further away a date is, the more vague an adaptive method is about what will happen on that date. An adaptive team cannot report exactly what tasks they will do next week, but only which features they plan for next month. When asked about a release six months from now, an adaptive team might be able to report only the mission statement for the release, or a statement of expected value vs. cost.
Predictive methods, in contrast, focus on analysing and planning the future in detail and cater for known risks. In the extremes, a predictive team can report exactly what features and tasks are planned for the entire length of the development process. Predictive methods rely on effective early phase analysis and if this goes very wrong, the project may have difficulty changing direction. Predictive teams often institute a change control board to ensure they consider only the most valuable changes.
Risk analysis can be used to choose between adaptive (agile or value-driven) and predictive (plan-driven) methods. Barry Boehm and Richard Turner suggest that each side of the continuum has its own home ground, as follows:
Agile methods | Plan-driven methods | Formal methods |
---|---|---|
Low criticality | High criticality | Extreme criticality |
Senior developers | Junior developers(?) | Senior developers |
Requirements change often | Requirements do not change often | Limited requirements, limited features see Wirth's law |
One of the differences between agile and waterfall is the approach to quality and testing. In the waterfall model, there is always a separate testing phase after a build phase; however, in agile development testing is completed in the same iteration as programming.
Because testing is done in every iteration—which develops a small piece of the software—users can frequently use those new pieces of software and validate the value.
After the users know the real value of the updated piece of software, they can make better decisions about the software's future. Having a value retrospective and software re-planning session in each iteration—Scrum typically has iterations of just two weeks—helps the team continuously adapt its plans so as to maximize the value it delivers.
This iterative approach supports a product rather than a project mindset. This provides greater flexibility throughout the development process; whereas on projects the requirements are defined and locked down from the very beginning, making it difficult to change them later. Iterative product development allows the software to evolve in response to changes in business environment or market requirements.
Because of the short iteration style of agile software development, it also has strong connections with the lean startup concept.
In a letter to IEEE Computer, Steven Rakitin expressed cynicism about agile development, calling it "yet another attempt to undermine the discipline of software engineering" and translating "Working software over comprehensive documentation" as "We want to spend all our time coding. Remember, real programmers don't write documentation."
This is disputed by proponents of agile software development, who state that developers should write documentation if that's the best way to achieve the relevant goals, but that there are often better ways to achieve those goals than writing static documentation. Scott Ambler states that documentation should be "Just Barely Good Enough" (JBGE), that too much or comprehensive documentation would usually cause waste, and developers rarely trust detailed documentation because it's usually out of sync with code, while too little documentation may also cause problems for maintenance, communication, learning and knowledge sharing. Alistair Cockburn wrote of the Crystal Clear method:
Crystal considers development a series of co-operative games, and intends that the documentation is enough to help the next win at the next game. The work products for Crystal include use cases, risk list, iteration plan, core domain models, and design notes to inform on choices...however there are no templates for these documents and descriptions are necessarily vague, but the objective is clear, just enough documentation for the next game. I always tend to characterize this to my team as: what would you want to know if you joined the team tomorrow. <div — Alistair Cockburn.
Software development life-cycle support
Agile methods support a broad range of the software development life cycle. Some focus on the practices (e.g., XP, pragmatic programming, agile modeling), while some focus on managing the flow of work (e.g., Scrum, Kanban). Some support activities for requirements specification and development (e.g., FDD), while some seek to cover the full development life cycle (e.g., DSDM, RUP).
Agile development is supported by a number of concrete practices, covering areas like requirements, design, modelling, coding, testing, planning, risk management, process, quality, etc. Some notable agile practices include:
The Agile Alliance has provided a comprehensive online guide to applying agile these and other practices.
In the literature, different terms refer to the notion of method adaptation, including 'method tailoring', 'method fragment adaptation' and 'situational method engineering'. Method tailoring is defined as:
A process or capability in which human agents determine a system development approach for a specific project situation through responsive changes in, and dynamic interplays between contexts, intentions, and method fragments. <div — Mehmet Nafiz Aydin et al., An Agile Information Systems Development Method in use
Potentially, almost all agile methods are suitable for method tailoring. Even the DSDM method is being used for this purpose and has been successfully tailored in a CMM context. Situation-appropriateness can be considered as a distinguishing characteristic between agile methods and traditional software development methods, with the latter being relatively much more rigid and prescriptive. The practical implication is that agile methods allow product development teams to adapt working practices according to the needs of individual products. Practices are concrete activities and products that are part of a method framework. At a more extreme level, the philosophy behind the method, consisting of a number of principles, could be adapted (Aydin, 2004).
Some approaches, such as Scrum and extreme programming, make the need for method adaptation explicit. With these less-prescriptive frameworks, one of the principles is that no single process fits every product development, but rather that practices should be tailored to the needs of the product. Mehdi Mirakhorli proposes a tailoring practice that provides a sufficient road-map and guidelines for adapting all the practices. RDP Practice is designed for customizing XP. This practice, first proposed as a long research paper in the APSO workshop at the ICSE 2008 conference, is currently the only proposed and applicable method for customizing XP. Although it is specifically a solution for XP, this practice has the capability of extending to other methodologies. At first glance, this practice seems to be in the category of static method adaptation but experiences with RDP Practice says that it can be treated like dynamic method adaptation. The distinction between static method adaptation and dynamic method adaptation is subtle.
Scrum isn't designed for method tailoring. Schwaber notes that "Scrum is not a methodology that needs enhancing. That is how we got into trouble in the first place, thinking that the problem was not having a perfect methodology. Effort centers on the changes in the enterprise that is needed." Bas Vodde reinforces this statement, suggesting that Scrum isn't like traditional, large methodologies that require you to "pick and choose" elements. It is the basics on top of which you add additional elements to localise and contextualise its use.
Agile methods have much in common with the Rapid Application Development techniques from the 1980/90s as espoused by James Martin and others. In addition to technology-focused methods, customer-and-design-centered methods, such as Visualization-Driven Rapid Prototyping developed by Brian Willison, work to engage customers and end users to facilitate agile software development.
Further, James M. Kerr and Richard Hunter wrote a book on the subject that presented a day-by-day diary of a real RAD development. It covered work right from inception through to production and contains many of the techniques that forge the backbone of, and are very much present in, today's agile product development approaches.
In 2008 the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) published the technical report "CMMI or Agile: Why Not Embrace Both" to make clear that the Capability Maturity Model Integration and agile methods can co-exist. Modern CMMI-compatible development processes are also iterative. The CMMI Version 1.3 includes tips for implementing CMMI and agile process improvement together.
Organizations that adopt agile development see more frequent releases; which led to the concepts of continuous delivery and DevOps. While DevOps and agile software development both embody many Lean philosophies, such as collaboration and communication, they are distinct concepts. While agile principles represent a change in thinking, DevOps seeks to implement actual organizational cultural change.
Agile development has been widely seen as highly suited to certain types of environments, including small teams of experts working on greenfield projects, and the challenges and limitations encountered in the adoption of agile methods in a large organization with legacy infrastructure are well-documented and understood.
In response, a range of strategies and patterns has evolved for overcoming challenges with large-scale development efforts (>20 developers) or distributed (non-colocated) development teams, amongst other challenges; and there are now several recognised frameworks that seek to mitigate or avoid these challenges, including:
There are many conflicting viewpoints on whether all of these are effective or indeed fit the definition of agile development, and this remains an active and ongoing area of research.
When agile software development is applied in a distributed setting (with teams dispersed across multiple business locations), it is commonly referred to as distributed agile development. The goal is to leverage the unique benefits offered by each approach. Distributed development allow organizations to build software by strategically setting up teams in different parts of the globe, virtually building software round-the-clock (more commonly referred to as follow-the-sun model). On the other hand, agile development provides increased transparency, continuous feedback and more flexibility when responding to changes.
Agile methods were initially seen as best suitable for non-critical product developments, thereby excluded from use in regulated domains such as medical devices, pharmaceutical, financial, nuclear systems, automotive, and avionics sectors, etc. However, in the last several years, there have been several initiatives for the adaptation of agile methods for these domains.
There are numerous standards that may apply in regulated domains, including ISO 26262, ISO 9000, ISO 9001, and ISO/IEC 15504. A number of key concerns are of particular importance in regulated domains:
The Scrum framework in particular has received considerable attention. Two derived methods have been defined: R-Scrum (Regulated Scrum) and SafeScrum.
Teams and organizations choosing to adopt more agile ways of working typically undertake an agile transformation with the support of one or more agile coaches. The agile coach guides teams through the transformation. There are typically two styles of agile coaching: push based and pull-based agile coaching.
Although agile methods can be used with any programming paradigm or language in practice, they were originally closely associated with object-oriented environments such as Smalltalk and Lisp and later Java. The initial adopters of agile methods were usually small to medium-sized teams working on unprecedented systems with requirements that were difficult to finalize and likely to change as the system was being developed. This section describes common problems that organizations encounter when they try to adopt agile methods as well as various techniques to measure the quality and performance of agile teams.
Organizations and teams implementing agile development often face difficulties transitioning from more traditional methods such as waterfall development, such as teams having an agile process forced on them. These are often termed agile anti-patterns or more commonly agile smells. Below are some common examples:
A goal of agile software development is to focus more on producing working software and less on documentation. This is in contrast to waterfall models where the process is often highly controlled and minor changes to the system require significant revision of supporting documentation. However, this does not justify completely doing without any analysis or design at all. Failure to pay attention to design can cause a team to proceed rapidly at first but then to have significant rework required as they attempt to scale up the system. One of the key features of agile software development is that it is iterative. When done correctly design emerges as the system is developed and commonalities and opportunities for re-use are discovered.
In agile software development, stories (similar to use case descriptions) are typically used to define requirements and an iteration is a short period of time during which the team commits to specific goals. Adding stories to an iteration in progress is detrimental to a good flow of work. These should be added to the product backlog and prioritized for a subsequent iteration or in rare cases the iteration could be cancelled.
This does not mean that a story cannot expand. Teams must deal with new information, which may produce additional tasks for a story. If the new information prevents the story from being completed during the iteration, then it should be carried over to a subsequent iteration. However, it should be prioritized against all remaining stories, as the new information may have changed the story's original priority.
Agile software development is often implemented as a grassroots effort in organizations by software development teams trying to optimize their development processes and ensure consistency in the software development life cycle. By not having sponsor support, teams may face difficulties and resistance from business partners, other development teams and management. Additionally, they may suffer without appropriate funding and resources. This increases the likelihood of failure.
A survey performed by Version One found respondents cited insufficient training as the most significant cause for failed agile implementations Teams have fallen into the trap of assuming the reduced processes of agile development compared to other methodologies such as waterfall means that there are no actual rules for agile development. Agile development is a set of prescribed methodologies, and training/practice is a requirement.
The product owner is responsible for representing the business in the development activity and is often the most demanding role.
A common mistake is to have the product owner role filled by someone from the development team. This requires the team to make its own decisions on prioritization without real feedback from the business. They try to solve business issues internally or delay work as they reach outside the team for direction. This often leads to distraction and a breakdown in collaboration.
The agile process requires teams to meet product commitments, which means they should focus only on work for that product. However, team members who are seen as have spare capacity are often expected to take on other work, which means it is then difficult for them to help complete the work to which their team had commmited.
Teams may fall into the trap of spending too much time preparing or planning. This is a common trap for teams less familiar with the agile process where the teams feel obligated to have a complete understanding and specification of all stories. Teams should be prepared to move forward only with those stories in which they have confidence, then during the iteration continue to discover and prepare work for subsequent iterations (often referred to as backlog refinement or grooming).
A daily standup should be a focused, timely meeting where all team members disseminate information. If problem-solving occurs, it often can only involve certain team members and potentially is not the best use of the entire team's time. If during the daily standup the team starts diving into problem-solving, it should be tabled until a sub-team can discuss, usually immediately after the standup completes.
One of the intended benefits of agile development is to empower the team to make choices, as they are closest to the problem. Additionally, they should make choices as close to implementation as possible, to use more timely information in the decision. If team members are assigned tasks by others or too early in the process, the benefits of localized and timely decision making can be lost.
Being assigned work also constrains team members into certain roles (for example, team member A must always do the database work), which limits opportunities for cross-training. Team members themselves can choose to take on tasks that stretch their abilities and provide cross-training opportunities.
Another common pitfall is for a scrum master to act as a contributor. While not prohibited by the Scrum methodology, the scrum master needs to ensure they have the capacity to act in the role of scrum master first and not working on development tasks. A scrum master's role is to facilitate the process rather than create the product.
Having the scrum master also multitasking may result in too many context switches to be productive. Additionally, as a scrum master is responsible for ensuring roadblocks are removed so that the team can make forward progress, the benefit gained by individual tasks moving forward may not outweigh roadblocks that are deferred due to lack of capacity.
Due to the iterative nature of agile development, multiple rounds of testing are often needed. Automated testing helps reduce the impact of repeated unit, integration, and regression tests and frees developers and testers to focus on higher value work.
Test automation also supports continued refactoring required by iterative software development. Allowing a developer to quickly run tests to confirm refactoring has not modified the functionality of the application may reduce the workload and increase confidence that cleanup efforts have not introduced new defects.The agile movement is in some ways a bit like a teenager: very self-conscious, checking constantly its appearance in a mirror, accepting few criticisms, only interested in being with its peers, rejecting en bloc all wisdom from the past, just because it is from the past, adopting fads and new jargon, at times cocky and arrogant. But I have no doubts that it will mature further, become more open to the outside world, more reflective, and also therefore more effective. — Philippe Kruchten