Ray is recognised as an Agile evangelist with over 15 years’ experience of implementing Agile practices into some of the world’s most prestigious companies. Now leading GT Agile, the consultancy division of Grid-Tools Limited, Ray will focus on why test data can no longer be trivialised in Agile teams during his talk on Wednesday, 7^th November.

“Without high quality test data, teams face serious consequences,” Ray said, “I will talk about strategies and best practices but also the softer side of team building such as relationship modelling and creating an effective cohesive work space for testers, DBAs and test data engineers.”

A certified SCRUM Master and Practitioner and a recognised Test Methodologist,

Ray Scott led one of the largest Agile projects in the US as well as a range of Development and Quality System implementations in the areas of finance (security, wholesale and retail), healthcare, media, logistics and entertainment.

It is this experience which Ray’s audience’s value and he will also speak on the final day of ‘Agile Testing Days’, the fourth annual European conference for international professionals involved in the agile world which runs from November 19^th – 22^nd in Potsdam/Berlin, Germany.

For those unable to attend the presentations in November, there is an opportunity to book a place at two workshops organised in partnership with UNICOM Seminars this May.

The first workshop on 22^nd May, ‘Agile Solutions – Leading with Test Data Management’  examines concerns for Agile and complex development projects and programmes committed to the provisioning of strong, secure and usable distributive data. 

The second workshop, ‘Influencing Quality in Large Agile Projects’, will be held on 24^th May and will look at the best practices for large Agile implementations and the ability to influence changes in the areas of Program Quality.

To find out more visit http://www.gtagile.com/GT_Agile/Workshops.html or email: info@gtagile.com

Who are Grid-Tools

Grid-Tools are the leading test data management vendor internationally, offering holistic, end-to-end test data solutions for traditional and Agile development and testing environments, including Cloud and Virtualized Services.

Their innovative solutions offer companies of any size and market sector the ability to provision high quality test data for non-production environments such as testing, development and training, as well as for outsourcing operations.

Grid-Tools have revolutionized the way companies think about provisioning data by developing solutions for synthetic test data creation, data masking, subsetting, data analysis and SOA virtualization.

GT Agile, the Consultancy division of Grid-Tools Limited, helps organizations to facilitate changes in culture and mindset to enable test and development teams to move away from ‘waterfall’ practices and adopt Agile principles.

Press Contacts:

Ivanka Vankova

Head of Marketing and PR
Grid-Tools Ltd

11 Oasis Business Park

Eynsham

Oxfordshire

OX29 4TP

+44(0) 1865 884 600

marketing@grid-tools.com

www.grid-tools.com

Email: info@grid-tools.com

Ray Scott, Director of Agile Services at GT Agile, the consultancy division of Grid-Tools, will be running two workshops organised in partnership with UNICOM Seminars in May 2012.

The first workshop, “Agile Solutions – Leading with Test Data Management” looks at the growing concern for Agile and complex development projects and programmes that are serious about the provisioning of strong, secure and usable distributive data. Attendees will learn about the strategies and best practices which support the distribution of test data for cross-functional teams. Learn what infrastructure is needed to provide high quality data for development, functional testing, performance, user acceptance and security teams and how to avoid devastating symptoms including decreased velocity, increased defect rate, reduction of test coverage and low product owner trust.

The second workshop, “Influencing Quality in Large Agile Projects”, looks at the best practices for large Agile implementations and the ability to influence changes in the areas of Program Quality. Attendees will leave this session with an understanding of the challenges that large Agile programs face and also with solutions to address a consistent Quality implementation. 

Ray Scott, a mentor in Agile principles, has over 25 years’ experience in the IT industry, including 15 years as a project development lead.  Ray has experience of leading a range of Development and Quality System implementations in the areas of finance (security, wholesale and retail), healthcare, media, logistics and entertainment.

Often seen as an evangelist, specializing in SCRUM and extreme programming methodologies, Ray is a certified SCRUM Master and Practitioner, as well as a recognised Test Methodologist. Ray presents on subjects including development methodologies, testing practices and Agile best practices.

Dates

Agile Solutions – Leading with Test Data Management – 22^nd May 2012, London

Influencing Quality in Large Agile Projects – 24^th May 2012, London

For more information visit http://www.gtagile.com/GT_Agile/Workshops.html

Or email: info@gtagile.com

Who are Grid-Tools?

The leading test data management vendor internationally; specializing in test data management tools and solutions.

Headquartered in Oxford, UK (with offices in Chicago and India), Grid-Tools specializes in data masking, data creation and test data management tools, solutions and services. Our experienced personnel have been writing and developing solutions for large companies in both the private and public sectors for nearly 30 years.

The majority of automated tests fail, regardless of the tool, because of an inability to provision data in the right state, to the right place, at the right time. Therefore, we are pleased to announce the addition of powerful new test matching functionality to our flagship solution, Datamaker™.

Datamaker 3.0 offers users the ability to quickly identify and match appropriate data to user-defined test criteria, ensuring effective, rigorous automated testing. Once the user has defined the test attributes required, Datamaker™’s powerful data mining functionality quickly searches for, identifies, and collects appropriate data from multiple, disparate systems across the enterprise.

‘Data mining’ is a statistical analysis for discovering interesting patterns from databases. It allows users to extract groups of data patterns, dependencies or unusual records, which can be used to increase the strength of your testing. What makes Datamaker™ stand out from the crowd is its ability to connect to multiple, disparate system to mine data. This allows users to build an integrated view of the data as it flows through the system, and discover the data needed for rigorous testing.

Once the data has been mined, it is matched to each test, based on its defined criteria, using the intelligent, new test data matching functionality in Datamaker™. The result is that each test is assigned a unique set of data, in the perfect state to run without data errors. This matched data can be fed directly from Datamaker™ into your automated test tools, for example, QTP.

By matching the ‘right’ data to each test, you can perform higher quality, more robust tests, whilst ensuring that tests don’t fail due to data errors. More efficient, stronger test cycles help you to test more often, improving the detection of bugs and defects earlier in the development lifecycle. This can have a significant positive effect on your bottom line, reducing costs and inefficiencies.

Who are Grid-Tools?

The leading test data management vendor internationally; specializing in test data management tools and solutions.

Headquartered in Oxford, UK (with offices in Chicago and India), Grid-Tools specializes in data masking, data creation and test data management tools, solutions and services. Our experienced personnel have been writing and developing solutions for large companies in both the private and public sectors for nearly 30 years.

Apparently, 90% of the world’s data has been generated in the last two years. (A note to grammarians, I’m using ‘data’ as a mass noun although I’m aware that data is plural – somehow, ‘data have’, just sounds odd. Perhaps it’s worthy of an online debate, where we can add to the 2.5 quintillion bytes of data that we generate each day.)

Faced with the challenge of Big Data, the issue for commercial companies is at once very simple and mind numbingly complex – how to make sense of it all. What do customers want? What information and content is meaningful? How is it possible to create a single customer view and maintain communication that is likely to engender brand loyalty?

Volume is not the only problem of course; this unstructured deluge will also have elements that are time sensitive and so dealing with what is important, when it is important presents serious challenges for those companies looking to gain market advantage.

No one disputes that technology is now at the heart of managing consumer relationships but very few companies are in a position to start with a blank slate – there are legacy systems that lie like layers of sediment beneath the operations of most major brands and orchestrating how they can serve both customers and the company’s bottom line is where the challenge now lies for most CIOs.
Grid-Tools have developed IVS – Intelligent Virtual Services – and whilst I’m not going to talk (tech) turkey here, there is one aspect of the offer that is a pointer not only as how to solve the SOA development issues but the whole conundrum of Big Data.

IVS creates a virtual service layer that replicates the behaviour and structure of SOA message systems. In essence, it gifts teams the time and space to deal with the task in hand – leaving them to work with structured and fit-for-purpose test data, without having to wait for data to flow downstream for example.

How else can we start to shape the customer experience if we are unable to craft solutions without constraints? The next evolution in the land of Big Data is going to take a great deal of vision as well as an awful lot of know-how and so any solution, IVS or otherwise, that helps shrink Big Data into practical ways to deliver what customers want is a welcome development.

Oxford, UK – Grid-Tools Limited, the leading award-winning vendor of test data generation, data masking and test data management is pleased to announce a new partnership with Ostia, provider of pioneering solutions for organizations seeking to access, extract and manage data from legacy systems.

The partnership brings together the capabilities of Grid-Tools and Ostia and has fostered a breakthrough in Intelligent Virtual Services for SOA (Service-Orientated Architecture) testing.

Currently, SOA development poses many challenges for testers. Modern IT systems have large, complex infrastructures, containing numerous cross-system dependencies and existing solutions offer little in the way of building the complex data required to improve the quality of test cycles.

Huw Price, Grid-Tools’ Managing Director, comments: “We welcome the opportunity to work with Ostia as this represents an exciting opportunity to introduce new virtualization solutions that will transform current SOA testing.

“The partnership demonstrates our commitment to creating solutions for our clients and strengthens our position as market leaders in test data management.”

Ostia is headquartered in Ireland and has worked with leading organisations in the financial services, educational, aerospace and manufacturing industries since 2003.

John Power, CEO of Ostia, said: “This partnership with Grid-Tools is of strategic importance to both organizations. Our products are hugely complementary and enable us to jointly provide unique and powerful Rapid SOA Development, Legacy Empowerment and Message Virtualization capabilities to the testing marketplace.

“It is an exciting prospect for both companies and as our partnership strengthens, we expect that organizations will benefit enormously from the control and efficiencies that we can deliver.”

About Grid Tools Limited

Visionary and innovative, Grid-Tools has developed test data management strategies for some of the largest international organizations and its experienced personnel have been writing and developing solutions for companies in both the private and public sectors for nearly 30 years.

Specializing in test data generation, data masking and test data management solutions and tools, Grid-Tools has re-defined how organizations go about provisioning secure, high quality data for testing and development.

Grid-Tools’ solutions include a wide range of tools for complete test data management.  Its signature solution, Datamaker™, creates and publishes test data with the referential and business integrity of production environments for testing and development.

About Ostia Software Solutions

Ostia Software Solutions is an Irish technology company providing infrastructure to access, discover and extract, manage and control data. The company’s flagship product, Portus, addresses customers who have considerable wealth of data / information locked up in ‘legacy’ or ‘heritage’ systems with a wide range of underlying technologies, database systems, operating environments and access mechanisms. Portus empowers business access to corporate data resources that are complete, consistent, current and authoritative.

Who are Grid-Tools?

The leading test data management vendor internationally; specializing in test data management tools and solutions.

Headquartered in Oxford, UK (with offices in Chicago and India), Grid-Tools specializes in data masking, data creation and test data management tools, solutions and services. Our experienced personnel have been writing and developing solutions for large companies in both the private and public sectors for nearly 30 years.

Parents of children in secondary schools will be aware that a slow walk through the basics of PowerPoint doesn’t exactly set the world alight for many teens but Gove went further by saying that current content isn’t just dull, it’s harmful.

Not injurious for our young citizens, of course, but a threat to our economic and entrepreneurial prospects. The mistake that has been made is teaching children how to use applications, not how to develop them.

Here’s a view worth listening to: “Programming a computer is really, really creative. And what’s disappointing now is that for lot of kids in school, the way they meet the computer is like the way they meet a fridge, it’s white goods.

“They don’t know that if they can imagine the computer doing something differently, they could program it.” So said Tim Berners-Lee.

Clearly, we don’t need to foster passive office skills but need to fire up the imagination of the able. Our global, inter-connected, furiously paced world demands that we continue to develop what Berners-Lee describes as ‘a human system mediated by technology’.

Shaping the future is the work of today and innovation only happens through a fierce engagement of the creative and the analytical. We need more of it. It’s out there; we just have to nurture it.

This is a nice video that outlines how you would improve your back management of data in QTP

The cube can be used to:

• Analyze coverge metrics of occurences of different attributes (reverse all pairs)
• Allow subset selection of n occurences of a particular distinct set of attributes
• See if a particular set of combinations of data already exists in your target database
• To provide strong data visualization of the types of data you have in development and production
• Identify invalid data and data quality problems.

This feature expands the data sources available with Datamaker and will help users create data by accessing useful information currently only available as web services.