[HN Gopher] Show HN: Cycle Labs - Testing software after it gets...
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: Cycle Labs - Testing software after it gets deployed to
production
Author : joshhowen
Score : 10 points
Date : 2021-12-02 15:33 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| joshhowen wrote:
| Hey all, Josh here, Co-founder and CEO at Cycle Labs
| (https://cyclelabs.io/). In 2007, I was on site at the original
| iPhone launch at the only distribution center in the nation that
| was slated to ship the first iPhone. I spent a decade working on
| the systems powering this facility (their execution systems
| Warehouse Management Systems). Since that date in 2007 we were
| only able to install 3 major system upgrades into that production
| facility because of the difficulty of it. That's a scarily slow
| technology adoption velocity but very common in the enterprise
| space - particularly the supply chain space as these systems are
| incredibly complex and often drive physical processes such as
| conveyors, robotics, and orchestrate the movement of humans and
| inventory throughout a warehouse. These complexities combined
| with no automated testing solutions meant the cutover to
| production was always miserable and riddled with issues.
|
| These experiences made me realize that there is a secondary
| deployment cycle that goes largely untested because of a lack of
| appropriate tooling. In the primary software deployment
| lifecycle, testing stops when the software is deployed to
| production. However, today there is a secondary lifecycle where
| software is integrated with other solutions and even modified and
| extended for a particular organization by the end users or an
| implementation team. This secondary lifecycle falls prey to the
| same pitfalls of primary software development such as missed
| requirements, misunderstandings and miscommunications. This
| unique context requires different tooling and different
| expertise. Cycle (that's the name of our system) is test
| automation targeted at deployment/implementation teams and not
| development teams.
|
| Generally speaking, the teams responsible for integrating and
| deploying these packaged solutions into their production systems
| aren't developers in the traditional sense; so the testing
| solution needs to be less technical but also approachable by
| business users. Furthermore, the business processes powered by
| these solutions often span multiple technologies, applications
| and teams so there needs to be a single platform to manage tests
| that will not require specific expertise on the many different
| underlying technologies. The tests need to exist at the highest
| level, testing the way the system is used -- not how it's built.
|
| The initial version of Cycle, which we built in 2014, is a
| continuous testing platform targeted at the enterprise deployment
| space and delivered as an on-premise solution. It works across
| web, native, java, api, database and OS interactions.
|
| To make Cycle more available, we've launched a cloud-native
| version of (https://app.cyclelabs.io/signup) which is free for
| use. We've attempted to be iterative in our approach and so this
| MVP is web-only for right now. After signup, you can write
| behavior-focused tests for any public facing web application.
| Admittedly it's rough around the edges but we'd like to get
| feedback in realtime and iterate.
|
| If you want to give it a try, you can access the application here
| (https://app.cyclelabs.io/signup), and review the getting started
| guide here (https://my.cycleautomation.com/user-manual/cycle-
| cloud-manua...). We have an example project
| (https://github.com/CycleLabsCloud/cycle-cloud) if you just want
| to quickly see how tests execute and get a feel for what the
| application is like and how it works.
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-12-02 23:02 UTC)