A unicorn event, really?
Today, our first Automation Unicorn event is finally taking place. Pascal Stiefel is opening the agile Infometis hackathon. Pascal explains to the 16 Infometis employees present the idea behind the unicorn and what we hope to achieve at this Automation Hackathon. Unicorns are universally beloved mythical creatures; everyone wants one, yet no one has ever seen one. It's a similar story with our customers: everyone talks about DevOps, for example, but who actually has a fully functional DevOps system?
Unicorns – everyone wants one, but no one has one. It's the same with DevOps, for example, at our clients' sites… Pascal Stiefel
We're going to hunt these unicorns today. Let's see if the hunt will be successful.
Hunting planning
During planning, we go through the previously defined unicorn backlog. Benjamin Wyss points out that many stories are missing acceptance criteria. Furthermore, the stories submitted by all the information providers vary considerably in quality, depth, and scope, just like in a real project. Thanks to the "How-To User Story" tool, however, we can efficiently split our stories and prioritize them correctly. Six hunting parties are created for the first sprint.
Automation Unicorn Event – Hunting parties
The hunt
During the implementation phase, we realize just how crucial good preparation is. We had actually prepared the infrastructure, but we still found ourselves missing a license here, a computer there. Pascal and Serge, however, are on hand as impediment runners, supporting the teams. What works even better, though, is the cross-functional team support, meaning everyone helps everyone else, ensuring that each team can achieve a good result. The first sprint is limited to two hours. Within this timebox, some very complex goals need to be achieved, such as: "Our demo environment includes a Cucumber test case that demonstrates the basic principles of the Gherkin language and is integrated with a corresponding automated test case."
Loot display
The moment of truth has arrived, the loot presentation (demo) is about to begin. The 6 teams will present their results:
TAMI Service Virtualization
Niko Messerschmidt and Bernhard Fuchs present the challenges of service virtualization. Our use case focuses on a database API. After a brief review of the top 10 service virtualization solutions and a cross-check of which of these solutions support JDBC, we chose ServiceV Pro from Smartbear for this sprint.
Team Automatic Release Notes
Eveline Scala and Tom Weber took on the challenge of figuring out how to write automated release notes using Atlassian Confluence . The team was able to present a working solution on their first attempt. For our fans at infometis.ch, here's a step-by-step explanation:
- Dummy project created in Jira
- A decision has been made regarding a dummy product, in our case the Infometis Travel App
- In a further step, the first epic is defined
- I created a good dozen stories and linked them to the Epic
- I also created a bug report under the same Epic
- 3-4 stories and the bug from the first fix version were assigned - already existed in Jira → PI1
- I clicked on Releases in the left-hand bar, selected PI1, and then clicked the Release Notes button at the top
- The release notes are in HTML format, which can be copied and published in another tool or simply as an HTML page. Then switch to Confluence and create a JIRA report → changelog
- Enter a corresponding jQuery query as the search text, typically used for the release notes:
- proj = PROJ and fixVersion = PI
- Together, pre-fill the highlights (from the Confluence template page)
- Unfortunately, the page created in Confluence only contains the issues.
- The summary and highlights are unfortunately not included and therefore not automatically pre-filled.
Team Xray BDD & Cucumber
Raffaele Russo and Benjamin Wyss are on the hunt for the unicorn: how to write test cases from Jira using Xray with BDD/Cucumber. They are both amazed at how easy it is. Despite some initial difficulties with the Jira/Xray installation, the two are already showing great results after just two hours:
XRAY GHERKIN BDD TDD
Team Tosca-Jira Integration
Michael Vils and Maximilian Matthäus have taken on the challenge of exploring how Jira, as a test management solution(for example, using Xray), can also serve as a central hub for automated test cases. The team opted for the ToscaAPI and impressively demonstrates how quickly and effectively such an integration can be achieved. Here are the steps for you to follow along:
1) Setup:
- Install a local copy of Jira Atlassian
- Extend Jira with Xray:
- Jira settings → Manage Apps
- Search Xray in the market place (free trial, get license)
- Jira settings → Issues → Issue Type Schemes → Add all available issue types (Xray issue types must be added to the existing project)
- Project Settings → Actions → Actions → Enable Xray Requirement Coverage
2) Linking test case with Tosca:
- Create a test case (and note its URL)
- Create a TestExecution list
- Add the test case to the TestExecution list
- Service Call 1: Inquiry about the current status
- Create GET request in Tosca API scan (URL: http://localhost:8080/rest/raven/1.0/api/testexec/{test execution key}/test)
- Authentication: Basic (Username / Password), click “pre-authentication”
- The answer is in the form: [ { "id": 1, "status": "TODO", "key": "XI-24", "rank": 1 } ]
- Store the "id" (this changes depending on the execution list. The "key" remains unique and can be used as an identifier, for example in the design area of Tosca – search for Key with Constraint)
- Service Call 2: Setting the execution result
- Send a PUT request with pre-authenticate (basic) to the following URL: http://localhost:8080/rest/raven/1.0/api/testrun/{id}/status?status=PASS – the ID is obtained from the previous GET request.
- Possible statuses are: PASS; FAIL; TODO
3) Tips for the Tosca workspace
- Tips for Tosca integration: Use recovery scenarios to set the test case to "Fail". Create a ResusableTestStep block to set the test case to "Passed" (part of the post-condition in the test case).
4) Next steps:
- Start a test case from Jira that runs in Tosca and then updates the status in Jira. This requires a Tosca server installation.
- Create test cases in Jira during execution and save the link in the TDM.
- Add additional information to Jira (for example, why the test case failed).
- Linking to Jira and Tosca with test case name instead of key
Team Jira-Microsoft Azure DevOps connection
Wow, Benjamin Tan and Matthias Aeschbacher have certainly taken on a big challenge. What sounds simple – " Azure DevOps build initiated directly from Jira" – is actually quite complex. The two quickly realize that connecting a Jira server to Azure DevOps isn't so straightforward . But they wouldn't be true Automation Geniuses if they didn't manage to pull it off. We won't reveal any more at this point…
Team Monitoring Avaloq Live System with New Relic
The last team, consisting of Frederic Hesse and Urban Furrer , was tasked with monitoring our server using New Relic . Neither of them were familiar with New Relic , but that wasn't a problem, as this Unicorn Event was also intended to facilitate knowledge sharing. And lo and behold, a monitoring service was set up in just two hours. See for yourselves how it was done:
- Create an account at: https://newrelic.com/signup
- Login:
- Frederic Hesse
- *********<- Password
- Module “Infrastructure” Installing the agent on the server (Instructions at NewRelic)
- Non-GUI Installation → NOTE: No information about successful installation
- Enter key
- Starting the service
- Setting up alerts
Do unicorns actually exist (conclusion)?
Wow, what an event! We were all amazed at how quickly we learned new things and how easy it was, in some cases, to "hunt" the unicorns. Looking back, we were surprised to see how difficult some companies find it to implement these concepts, these unicorns. Often, they simply lack the courage to try new things, to just give it a go. Often, they also lack the necessary platform to do just that. We will definitely repeat this event. It was absolutely worthwhile for us. It will also be worthwhile for you if you employ an Infometen, because we are always striving to empower our clients and share our knowledge.
Unicorn Now!
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