19 Sep Run Your Testing Pipeline Like the AAU Junior Olympics!
My 11-year-old grandson, Dylan, recently competed in the 2025 AAU Junior Olympic Games in Houston, TX in the 80m hurdles. Naturally, being the proud granddad I am, I attended to vigorously cheer D on. It was more exciting and impressive than I could have imagined!
While I was confident the events would be organized, every aspect exceeded my expectations. About 16,000+ athletes competed at the 2025 AAU Junior Olympic Games in Houston, ages 8 years – 18 years. There were ~30 distinct event types – 100m, 200m, 80m hurdles (my favorite – Go Dylan), javelin (shout out to Tre Z.!), long jump, etc. and over 400 events if you base it on and factor the “number of events” by event × age division × gender × round. Wow!!!
The precision of the scheduling and execution was amazing! The coordinators knew at what pace to keep track events moving so that runners didn’t overtake (or overlap) runners competing in a different event. Being the QA & Software Testing fanatic I am (some might say “nerd”) got me thinking about testing pipelines. So many other similarities!!! While at the events, I spoke with a couple of the planners & volunteers to get their input by asking “what are primary concerns of those responsible for coordinating/scheduling the events to ensure schedule is maintained but safety of athletes is not jeopardized?”
Here’s the list of what we came up with specific to the track and field meet (with my parenthetical asides):
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- Heat & Flight Turnover: Making sure track heats, field flights, and events roll one into the next with minimal dead time. (Think about the scheduling of your tests and the ramping up/down. It may be critical that some tests for specific transactions and functionality finish prior to the execution of subsequent tests. You wouldn’t want the test entering customer account record for Robert Perry to still be running when the test to update that record starts.)
- Overlap Avoidance: Preventing bottlenecks when athletes compete in multiple events scheduled too close together. (Ensure that you are not creating unintended bottlenecks due to poor scheduling or sequencing of tests. It’s expected that you may intentionally create conditions to cause a bottleneck to validate how your system will respond. Does it handle bottlenecks gracefully?)
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- Realistic Buffering: Building in short buffers for delays (false starts, injuries, weather holds) without collapsing the schedule. (You should include buffers to allow the performance of a quick health check on the state of your pipeline. Are all systems still a ‘GO’? This should be an automated process.)
- Technology Reliability: Ensuring timing systems, scoreboards, and result uploads run without glitches. (Yup. ‘Technology Reliability. This is an obvious given.)
- Injury Management: Quick but careful removal of injured athletes without halting events unnecessarily. (Do you know which tests, upon failure, require test execution to stop immediately and which allow testing to continue?)
- Field Safety Zones: Keeping spectators, other athletes, and volunteers outside landing areas – javelin, discus, shot put. (In other words, “Hey, stay out of my environment when I’m testing!”)
- Equipment Readiness: Rapid reset of hurdles, pits, and starting blocks to prevent delays and injuries. (An issue occurs causing a decrease in speed, loss of data integrity, or the environment halts – for any reason. Do you have a plan to quickly reset and ‘get back on track’?)
- Schedule Recovery: Flexible rescheduling (late evenings or early mornings) if major delays occur. (If external factors cause delays – I’m thinking of hurricanes in Florida, blizzards in the Northeast – what’s your plan?)
- Communication: Clear, real-time updates to athletes, coaches, and parents through apps, announcements, or boards. (Simply put…Clear, real-time updates to testers, developers, end-users, stakeholders, and leadership…)
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- Training & Coordination: Many workers are volunteers—ensuring they’re trained well enough to execute smoothly. (While very few software test engineers are ‘volunteers’, it’s still and always imperative they’re trained well enough to execute smoothly.)
- Decision Authority: A clear chain of command so disputes or delays don’t linger. (There will be times when a ‘GO’ or ‘NO GO’ decision is needed? Do find a defect and a decision must be made…do you release into PROD or not? Do you fix the issue now or defer? Who’s the PROD gatekeeper? The chain of command must be clear and understood by everyone.)
A testing pipeline, like a championship event, thrives on discipline, structure, and foresight. Success depends on precise scheduling, clear authority, resilient systems, and constant communication—ensuring quality, efficiency, and reliability remain uncompromised even when pressure is at its peak. I’ll close with…Go Dylan!
Bob Crews
CEO
Checkpoint Technologies
