Team Guide to Software Testability
Team Guide to Software Testability
Better software through greater testability
About the Book
Learn practical insights on how testability can help bring teams together to observe, control and understand the systems they build, enabling them to better meet customer needs, and achieve a transparent level of quality and predictability of delivery.
The Team Guide to Software Testability is the third guidebook in the collection from Conflux Books.
The ‘Team Guide’ collection is designed to help teams building and running software systems to be as effective as possible. Guides are curated by experienced practitioners and emphasise the need for collaboration and learning, with the team at the centre.
Bundles that include this book
About the Contributors

Manuel Pais is an independent DevOps and Delivery Consultant, focused on teams and flow.
With a diverse experience including development, build management, testing and QA, Manuel has helped large organizations in finance, legal, and manufacturing adopt test automation and continuous delivery, as well as understand DevOps from both technical and human perspectives.
Manuel is co-author of the Team Guide to Software Releasability book and lead editor for the remaining books in the Team Guide series.

Matthew Skelton is co-author of Team Topologies: organizing business and technology teams for fast flow. Recognised by TechBeacon in 2018, 2019, and 2020 as one of the top 100 people to follow in DevOps, Matthew curates the well-known DevOps team topologies patterns at devopstopologies.com. He is Head of Consulting at Conflux and specialises in Continuous Delivery, operability, and organisation dynamics for modern software systems.
Table of Contents
- Team Guides for Software
- Conflux Books
- Acknowledgements
- Praise for Software Testability
- Exercises
-
Introduction
- Why is testability important?
- What does hard-to-test feel like?
- What does testable feel like?
- What leads to testability being neglected?
- What is covered in this book?
- How to use this book
- Why we wrote this book
- Feedback and suggestions
-
1. Set a pragmatic direction for improving testability using trade-off sliders
- 1.1 Overcome common challenges to setting a team testability focus
- 1.2 Exercise: do the Team Test for Testability for a quick testability health check
- 1.3 Exercise: use Trade-Off Sliders to guide your testability focus
- 1.4 Summary
-
2. Create testability targets to improve interactions with dependencies
- 2.1 Recognize needs and contributions from different roles to create an effective testability mindset
- 2.2 Exercise: employ Testability Dependency Targets to improve interactions with dependent teams and systems
- 2.3 Summary
-
3. Adopt testability mapping to expose hard-to-test architectures
- 3.1 Poor architectural testability causes slow feedback and flawed decisions
- 3.2 Identify the symptoms of poor architectural testability
- 3.3 Exercise: Use testing smells to diagnose poor architectural testability
- 3.4 Exercise: adopt testability mapping to measure testing feedback and waste
- 3.5 Summary
-
4. Apply the CODS model to increase architectural testability for faster feedback
- 4.1 Explicitly design your architecture for testability
- 4.2 Principles of implementing high testability architectures
- 4.3 Exercise: Use ‘CODS’ to increase architectural testability
- 4.4 Moving from hard-to-test to high architectural testability
- 4.5 Summary
-
5. Adopt ephemeral development environments for fast feedback
- 5.1 Common challenges with static test environments
- 5.2 Use your development environment for fast feedback
- 5.3 Exercise: Use the Agile Test Quadrants to extend testing in your development environment
- 5.4 Summary
-
6. Use production data to enhance your testing strategy
- 6.1 Static test strategies cause problems in dynamic production environments
- 6.2 Exercise: employ data from production to keep your test strategy relevant
- 6.3 Use deploy and release patterns for feedback on high risk changes
- 6.4 Summary
-
7. Use team testing reviews to enable sustainable delivery
- 7.1 Testing debt affects wellbeing and sustainable delivery
- 7.2 Adopt a whole-team approach to minimizing testing debt
- 7.3 Exercise: use the 10 P’s of Testability to track team testing culture
- 7.4 Exercise: adopt incident reviews to target testability improvement actions
- 7.5 Create a board to visualize & prioritize testing debt
- 7.6 Summary
- Terminology
-
References
- Chapter 1 - Testability Priorities
- Chapter 2 - Testability and Dependencies
- Chapter 3 - Testability Mapping
- Chapter 4 - Architectural Testability
- Chapter 5 - Ephemeral Development Environments
- Chapter 6 - Use Production to Enhance Test Strategy
- Chapter 7 - Team Testing Reviews for Sustainable Testability
-
Appendix - Notes on 10 P’s of Testability
- 1 - People
- 2 - Philosophy
- 3 - Product
- 4 - Process
- 5 - Problem
- 6 - Project
- 7 - Pipeline
- 8 - Productivity
- 9 - Production Issues
- 10 - Proactivity
- About the authors
- Index
About the Publisher

This book is published on Leanpub by Conflux Books
Conflux Books publishes books for the global technology community from experienced practitioners.
The Leanpub 60-day 100% Happiness Guarantee
Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.
See full terms
Do Well. Do Good.
Authors have earned$11,714,583writing, publishing and selling on Leanpub, earning 80% royalties while saving up to 25 million pounds of CO2 and up to 46,000 trees.
Learn more about writing on Leanpub
Free Updates. DRM Free.
If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).
Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers), EPUB (for phones and tablets) and MOBI (for Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.
Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.
Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them
Top Books
Recipes for Decoupling
Matthias NobackWrite software that survives
OpenIntro Statistics
David Diez, Christopher Barr, Mine Cetinkaya-Rundel, and OpenIntroA complete foundation for Statistics, also serving as a foundation for Data Science.
Leanpub revenue supports OpenIntro (US-based nonprofit) so we can provide free desk copies to teachers interested in using OpenIntro Statistics in the classroom and expand the project to support free textbooks in other subjects.
More resources: openintro.org.
C++20 - The Complete Guide
Nicolai M. JosuttisAll new language and library features of C++20 (for those who know previous C++ versions).
The book presents all new language and library features of C++20. Learn how this impacts day-to-day programming, to benefit in practice, to combine new features, and to avoid all new traps.
Buy early, pay less, free updates.
Other books:
CQRS by Example
Carlos Buenosvinos, Christian Soronellas, and Keyvan Akbary- Leverage your Software Architecture skills by learning everything about CQRS in detail with lots of examples
- Develop faster applications by applying CQRS and fostering Read Models and Projections
- Learn how to apply CQRS into a brownfield project from a pragmatic approach
Ansible for DevOps
Jeff GeerlingAnsible is a simple, but powerful, server and configuration management tool. Learn to use Ansible effectively, whether you manage one server—or thousands.
Maîtriser Apache JMeter
Philippe Mouawad, Bruno Demion (Milamber), and Antonio Gomes RodriguesToute la puissance d'Apache JMeter expliquée par ses commiteurs et utilisateurs experts. De l'intégration continue en passant par le Cloud, vous découvrirez comment intégrer JMeter à vos processus "Agile" et Devops.
If you're looking for the newer english version of this book, go to Master JMeter : From load testing to DevOps
Jetpack Compose internals
Jorge CastilloJetpack Compose is the future of Android UI. Master how it works internally and become a more efficient developer with it. You'll also find it valuable if you are not an Android dev. This book provides all the details to understand how the Compose compiler & runtime work, and how to create a client library using them.
The PowerShell Scripting and Toolmaking Book
Don Jones and Jeff HicksLearn the patterns, practices, and details of PowerShell Scripting and Toolmaking from the industry's two most recognized experts on the subject.
Mastering STM32 - Second Edition
Carmine NovielloWith more than 1200 microcontrollers, STM32 is probably the most complete ARM Cortex-M platform on the market. This book aims to be the most complete guide around introducing the reader to this exciting MCU portfolio from ST Microelectronics and its official CubeHAL and STM32CubeIDE development environment.
Introduction to Data Science
Rafael A IrizarryThe demand for skilled data science practitioners in industry, academia, and government is rapidly growing. This book introduces concepts from probability, statistical inference, linear regression and machine learning and R programming skills. Throughout the book we demonstrate how these can help you tackle real-world data analysis challenges.
Top Bundles
- #1
Software Architecture
2 Books
"Software Architecture for Developers" is a practical and pragmatic guide to modern, lightweight software architecture, specifically aimed at developers. You'll learn:The essence of software architecture.Why the software architecture role should include coding, coaching and collaboration.The things that you really need to think about before... - #2
CCIE Service Provider Ultimate Study Bundle
2 Books
Piotr Jablonski, Lukasz Bromirski, and Nick Russo have joined forces to deliver the only CCIE Service Provider training resource you'll ever need. This bundle contains a detailed and challenging collection of workbook labs, plus an extensively detailed technical reference guide. All of us have earned the CCIE Service Provider certification... - #4
Pattern-Oriented Memory Forensics and Malware Detection
2 Books
This training bundle for security engineers and researchers, malware and memory forensics analysts includes two accelerated training courses for Windows memory dump analysis using WinDbg. It is also useful for technical support and escalation engineers who analyze memory dumps from complex software environments and need to check for possible... - #6
All the Books of The Medical Futurist
6 Books
We put together the most popular books from The Medical Futurist to provide a clear picture about the major trends shaping the future of medicine and healthcare. Digital health technologies, artificial intelligence, the future of 20 medical specialties, big pharma, data privacy, digital health investments and how technology giants such as Amazon...