Herding Cats: Managing Large Test Suites

Abstract

This is the story of staying green in the midst of the challenges we faced as we accumulated an increasing number of automated tests. Iowa Student Loan (ISL) is well beyond the adoption phase of agile. Our commitment to writing tests has resulted in an enormous set of tests. We faced many challenges in keeping our tests under control. A few of the challenges that surfaced include: overly coupled tests, volatile dependencies and turned off tests. It took a lot of energy, discipline, and resources to overcome these challenges. We would like to share the techniques and experiences that emerged as we struggled to stay on green bar.