Global Quality Journal

Performance Testing…..the Integrated Quality Way! (Eclipse, Maven, Cucumber, JMeter)

Greg Margolin:

While working on one of the first e-commerce internet systems in pre-dot.com boom times, I remember a conversation that happened between me and my development counterpart Ken.  We were talking about software quality and specifically about the need for performance testing.  With his characteristic dry humor, Ken quoted a sign that he saw at his dentist’s office -- “If you don’t like to floss, floss at least those teeth that you intend to keep”.

 

I have thought about this expression many times since.  By now, everybody knows that you have to do performance testing.  And everybody says that they do it all the time.  But there are probably more negative anti-patterns than proper patterns in this domain.  To enumerate just a few -- performance testing done right before deployment, testing only after major outages, testing only when the growth in traffic takes on threatening dimensions, assigning performance testing to relatively junior engineers, getting excited about scripting and neglecting analysis, not giving proper time to developing workload user simulation models, etc.  New open source and off the shelf performance testing tools put performance testing within reach of everybody and anybody.  But being able to do it, and doing it right are two different stories.  And as usual, very often the real, meaningful performance testing ends up in the bin of technical debt -- something to take care of one day, once tasks of higher priority are accomplished.  The price we pay for such an approach is staggering and keeps growing.  Alas, we just keep kicking the can down the road.  So what would be a proper approach?

At GQP, our recommended approach to performance testing is through Integrated Quality(™), something I demonstrate in today’s instructional video -- it is about 40 minutes long.  If you watched David’s previous videos, (two last videos on the page) you should be all set as far as the environment is concerned.  In the course of this video I will show you how to drive JMeter functional and performance tests, from Eclipse, using Maven, Cucumber, and writing feature/story step definition scripts in Groovy.  I believe there is a direct advantage in such an approach -- instead of making the testing tool centric, we are making it design specification centric…literally in plain old English.  It is in front of the whole team -- Stakeholders, Dev, QA, and Ops.  The Behavior-Driven-Model forces the team to make an explicit decision about the performance requirements the team wants to live with. The next logical step would be to include such performance tests into a continuous integration/delivery solution, so that such performance testing can be evaluated with each and every build/release.  As far as what to test, I refer you back to my friend Ken’s quote -- if you don’t test performance of all your projects, at least test those that you intend to keep.

 

And now, click here for today’s instructional video, it is the one at the top. Enjoy!

posted by: Greg Margolin

Healthcare Beat: ICD-10, Are You Truly Managing Your Risk?

David Alves:

The healthcare industry is undergoing unprecedented change at this time. Over the past few years, the industry has weathered the "Perfect Storm" of regulations and new initiatives, as they move forward into today's pervasive and omnipresent Information Technology (IT) world. One of the most daunting of these initiatives, and the one that is most likely to have an impact on the bottom-line, is the move from the International Classification of Diseases, Revision 9 (ICD-9) to the International Classification of Diseases, Revision (ICD-10). On one hand, ICD-10 allows for much more precision in the clinical documentation utilized for processing and paying claims, allowing us as a society to classify much more information about current health care services, and allowing us to catalog new diseases and new advances relative to new and old diseases as society moves forward. On the other hand, it will involve enormous costs in training staff, changing healthcare processes and procedures, and the remediation of revenue cycle hardware and software systems that process the claims relative to healthcare services.

As consultants in the field of software quality and risk management, it is the aforementioned software changes to these systems that has us at GQP most concerned. In today's world, the volume of claims processed per day, through any one insurance company, which is also the life's blood of most service providers, is far too much to process any significant volume by hand. Therefore, these revenue cycle systems must work, or services and related payments will be greatly affected. No training or process improvement or adaptation activities will remedy this problem, just time, and the proper methodology of experienced experts. Healthcare.gov is the perfect example of this. However, most private sector payers do not have the same resources or pull as the U.S. government to bring to bear on the problem in order to get back to business so quickly (and I use the term “quickly” lightly when referring to Healthcare.gov). I am sure the preferred approach is to do it right the first time.

The largest consumer of insurance claims is Medicaid/Medicare. If your revenue cycle systems are not ICD-10 compliant, you will not be doing business with the U.S. Federal Government, the largest Healthcare payer on the planet. The most recent deadline to be ready, up until 4 or 5 months ago or so, was October 1, 2014. Most Providers/Payers were not going to be ready, and made their voices heard. The Feds listened, and the date was moved out 1 year to October 1, 2015. No one foresees another extension being granted at this time.

So, here we are, with just over a year remaining to "do it right the first time", and the question is, is the industry making the most of it? Are they truly managing their risk?

Over 1 year ago, I wrote the initial draft of a whitepaper on this subject, which addressed this very issue. It was never published. Here we are 1 year later, and the question is just as relevant. What's even better though, is the industry, as a whole, has even more time to address the challenges this problem presents. Click this link here, and you can read GQP's thoughts on the issue, our recommendations, and the solutions we believe can help you quantifiably say, "YES, our organization IS truly managing our risk"!

posted by: David Alves

Healthcare.gov Stays With Verizon Hosting, for Now...

Gigaom:

SUMMARY:

Verizon keeps most of the site’s business — for now — with subcontracting help from Hewlett-Packard and Amazon Web Services, according to reports. But change is coming.

Not so fast.  A plan by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to move Healthcare.gov from Verizon/Terremark infrastructure over to Hewlett-Packard have been delayed till next year.

Last year, CMS inked a deal to move the troubled insurance sign-up web site to HP after widespread problems. The idea was to make the move after the sign-up period ended last March, but that changed this summer, when CMS decided to keep most of the site on Verizon for the next enrollment period, kicking off in November and ending in February. That was not widely known until the Wall Street Journal (registration required) reported it this week. (read full article) 

posted by: gqjournal

Flaw In Federal Software Lets Employers Offer Plans Without Hospital Benefits

Kaiser Health News:

A flaw in the federal calculator for certifying that insurance meets the health law’s toughest standard is leading dozens of large employers to offer plans that lack basic benefits such as hospitalization coverage, according to brokers and consultants.

The calculator appears to allow companies enrolling workers for 2015 to offer inexpensive, substandard medical insurance while avoiding the Affordable Care Act’s penalties, consumer advocates say.

Insurance pros are also surprised such plans are permitted.

Employer insurance without hospital coverage “flies in the face of Obamacare,” said Liz Smith, president of employee benefits for Assurance, an Illinois-based insurance brokerage. (read full article)

posted by: gqjournal

Bad EHR System Sends Ebola Patient Home

EHR systems received huge subsidies without any mandates on tracking effectiveness. Are we paying the price now, in a different, more lethal way?

TheAtlantic.com:

...On Thursday night, the hospital released a statement explaining exactly how it managed to release an Ebola-infected patient back into America's ninth-largest city.

In short? Blame the robots, not the humans:

Protocols were followed by both the physician and the nurses. However, we have identified a flaw in the way the physician and nursing portions of our electronic health records (EHR) interacted in this specific case.

The hospital's electronic health record contains separate workflows for doctors and nurses. The information about the patient's travel history was on the nurses' side, but "it would not automatically appear in the physician’s standard workflow." Which means the doctor wouldn't know about Duncan's recent trip to Liberia. Which means she'd have no reason to suspect Duncan had Ebola.

The incident underscores how important it is for doctors and hospitals to find EHRs that work well. The federal government has greatly incentivized the use of digital records, as opposed to paper charts, and nearly half of physicians now usethem. Increasingly, EHRs aren't just a convenient way to track appointments and vital signs, they're critical communication links that can make all the difference. (read full article)

posted by: gqjournal

Philly's New Train Car Plagued By Bugs (as in Software)

Lt. Governor promises 500 mile test before putting the car in service. Could we take a look at the regression test suite before taking a ride?

CBS Philly:

By Jim Melwert

CAMDEN, N.J. (CBS) — The rollout of Patco’s refurbished train cars for its High-Speed Line continues to be plagued by problems.

The transit agency had hoped the eight renovated cars would be ready before spring of this year.  That was pushed back to summer, then to last month.

Now, the hope is that the next phase of testing can begin later this month, to squash persistent bugs in thesoftware that lets the cars send control signals to each other.

“What we want to do, obviously, is move forward with all deliberate speed to get this issue — thiscommunications issue — solved, but solved right,” said Pennsylvania lieutenant governor Jim Cawley, also chair of the DRPA board.  “Rather than speed, we’re looking for accuracy here.”(read full article)

posted by: gqjournal

FBI Boss: Every Company Is Hacked by China

Business Insider:

There are two kinds of big companies in the United States. There are those who've been hacked by the Chinese and those who don't know they've been hacked by the Chinese.

When asked whether Chinese hackers were particularly good at gaining access to servers belonging to US companies, Comey said the hackers were not actually skilled when it came to covering their tracks.

I liken them a bit to a drunk burglar. They're kicking in the front door, knocking over the vase, while they're walking out with your television set. They're just prolific. Their strategy seems to be: We'll just be everywhere all the time. And there's no way they can stop us.

Comey said Chinese hackers were not looking to profit from stolen credit-card details or to find personal information. Instead, they're looking for something similar to trade secrets that can be used in China... (read full article)

posted by: gqjournal

Open Source Quality Shellshocked?

Did Shellshock kill the myth of "many eyes" of software quality of open source? Or is it still superior to proprietary model. Good discussion below.

Techrepublic.com:

By Matt Asay October 3, 2014, 6:13 AM PST //  mjasay

It hasn't been a good year for open source. Not for its generally golden reputation for software quality and security, anyway. But in a rush to lay blame for the Bash Shellshock vulnerability (and previously for Heartbleed) some, like Roger Grimes, want to dismantle some of the cardinal tenets of open source, like the suggestion that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow."

Sorry, but the criticism falls flat. Here's why.

Living Linus' Law

Ever since Eric Raymond captured "Linus' Law" in his seminal The Cathedral and the Bazaar, open-source advocates have blithely repeated the "eyeballs" mantra. Pointing to Shellshock and Heartbleed, Grimes declares the principle fallacious at best and destructive at worst. (read full article)

posted by: gqjournal