Tod1d's Thought Process

A tester can use Maddog within their office to build a query of tests to run (selecting either a sub-node of feature areas – or doing a search for tests based on some other criteria), then pick what hardware and OS version the tests should run on, pick what language they should be run under (Arabic, German, Japanese, etc), what ASP.NET and Visual Studio build should be installed on the machine, and then how many machines it should be distributed over.

Maddog will then identify free machines in the lab, automatically format and re-image them with the appropriate operating system, install the right build on them, build and deploy the tests selected onto them, and then run the tests. When the run is over the tester can examine the results within Maddog, investigate all failures, publish the results (all through the Maddog system), and then release the machines for other Maddog runs. Published test results stay in the system forever (or until we delete them) – allowing test leads and my test manager to review them and make sure everything is getting covered. All this gets done without the tester ever having to leave their office.