Agile Testing UK User Group

Songkick.com is a web based music startup which from an early age adopted Acceptance tests and Behaviour Driven Development as part of its development cycle. Key to this was the use of the Ruby based BDD framework Cucumber and the idea of working outside in. Having spent more than 2 years growing our system and learning the pain points both technically and culturally we have lots of interesting lessons we would like to share. Covering such areas as how Cucumber fits into our overall process, how Acceptance tests fit in a rapidly evolving startup environment, how we write acceptance tests and who is involved, how we cope with long build times by scaling our tests over distributed machines, examining the dangers of over reliance on just acceptance tests, evolving developer centric acceptance tests to customer focused language, engendering trust in the acceptance tests and using metrics to help limit the time we spend in the red.

Joseph Wilk is a member of the core development team for Cucumber. He has been developing for the web for 10 years in both big and small companies and as an entrepreneur. After stints working with Java and Python he finally found Ruby. He now spends his time in-between eating Cucumbers working at Songkick.com. Having more fun than is healthy working as a Software Gardener building web systems and working on open source projects. He suffers from test obsession and has given up hope of any treatment.

The event will take place at the Skills Matter Exchange in central London, starting from 6:30 PM on October 5th. The event is free to attend, but up-front registration is required. Click here to register.