Ask Me Anything: Shift Left, Shift Right

Tonight we had Marcus Merrell for an Ask Me Anything about “Shift Left, Shift Right”.

It’s a topic I’ve seen discussed a lot but never delved very deep into it during my testing career. If we didn’t get to your question or you’re catching up on the Dojo and have thought of questions you’d like to ask Marcus, please share them here.

Equally, if you’d like to continue the discussions from the chat, why not do so here? :grinning:

Mentioned throughout the session

“Who are the best people to be following, reading, watching and listening to for helping to learn lots more about shifting left/right?”

https://twitter.com/aahunsberger
https://twitter.com/nicolefv
https://twitter.com/techgirl1908
https://twitter.com/a_bangser
https://twitter.com/lisihocke
https://twitter.com/hogfish
https://twitter.com/lisacrispin
https://twitter.com/mipsytipsy

I was also reminded of this post about monitoring from last year

Questions we didn’t get to in the evening:

Shift right can be used to improve testing process. Can shift left exist without shift right?

My initial answer to the unanswered question:

Shift right can be used to improve testing process. Can shift left exist without shift right?

I think it can, for sure. What you’ll end up with will be respectable: you’ll be efficient at your testing, you’ll have the developers involved, you’ll release with confidence, and you’ll probably achieve some measure of stability. It can be rewarding enough in and of itself.

What “shifting right” gives you is “wisdom”: are you testing the right thing? Are you spending too much energy on things the users don’t care about? Are you testing your software the way your users test it? Are there some insights you can gain by taking the post-release analytics traffic into account?

Shift left can exist without shift right, but in my opinion you’ll be left with a missing puzzle piece: one that you may not even realize has been missing until you inquire about it.

Shifting right gives you a virtual guarantee that your testing is guided by what the business (i.e. the CEO) cares about.

Hope that helps!
MM

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Woo! Thanks for popping the list here :slight_smile: Awesome AMA

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Hi all, Really enjoyed this Ask Me Anything. It was so informative, especially regarding what shift right is (turns out I didn’t really know what it was before). I’ve already arranged a meeting next week with my colleagues where we will discuss these ideas.

I recall you mentioning that different people/disciplines might be required for shift right compared to shift left. Who would you go to to get the different information required to shift right? And how would that information be used?

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