The Bug Stops Here — The State of Georgia Shifts Left
Video Description
Speakers: q0rban, Jasmyne Epps
## How the State of Georgia streamlined their QA and UAT process to ship code faster and catch bugs earlier.
In this session, Jasmyne Epps (Unit Director, Digital Services Georgia) and James Sansbury (former Architect at Lullabot, now owner of Tugboat) reveal how the State of Georgia transformed their software delivery lifecycle (SDLC) for GovHub, their Drupal-based CMS, that powers 80+ state agency websites.
The traditional staging-server bottleneck was creating problems for the State of Georgia: end-of-sprint QA crunches, delayed releases, team burnout, and expensive rework. The task of migrating 80+ websites to an upgraded platform with the existing workflow was infeasible.
We'll share how implementing a "shift left" approach with Tugboat transformed Georgia's development workflow. By moving testing, QA, and stakeholder signoff at the time of the pull request, the team distributed QA throughout the sprint and caught issues earlier in the development cycle. This shift improved the process for developers, QA testers, product managers, and stakeholders alike.
The session will balance leadership insights with technical implementation details, covering:
- How to identify and eliminate bottlenecks in your SDLC
- Practical strategies for implementing "shift left" testing in government environments
- Leveraging Docker, CircleCI, and Tugboat for robust testing infrastructure
- Managing complex migration workflows with parallel testing environments
- Visual regression testing and automated QA integration
- Data handling strategies that maintain security while providing realistic test data
### Learning Objectives:
1. Understand how to identify critical bottlenecks in your software delivery lifecycle that may be causing delays, quality issues, and team burnout
2. Learn practical strategies for implementing "shift left" testing methodologies in government and enterprise environments
3. Discover technical approaches for creating reliable preview environments that accelerate testing and stakeholder feedback
4. Gain insights into managing complex migrations across multiple sites with distributed testing
### Audience:
This session is catered for CTOs, IT Directors, Technical Architects, and agency decision-makers involved in government digital service delivery. While it focuses on Drupal, the principles and approaches apply broadly to any web development workflow.
### Format:
60-minute presentation with slides, visualizations, workflow diagrams, and Q&A.
### Speakers:
- Jasmyne Epps, Unit Director, Digital Services Georgia - Previously QA/Product Manager who experienced the transformation firsthand
- James Sansbury, Owner of Tugboat - Former architect who designed and implemented Georgia's technical solution
## How the State of Georgia streamlined their QA and UAT process to ship code faster and catch bugs earlier.
In this session, Jasmyne Epps (Unit Director, Digital Services Georgia) and James Sansbury (former Architect at Lullabot, now owner of Tugboat) reveal how the State of Georgia transformed their software delivery lifecycle (SDLC) for GovHub, their Drupal-based CMS, that powers 80+ state agency websites.
The traditional staging-server bottleneck was creating problems for the State of Georgia: end-of-sprint QA crunches, delayed releases, team burnout, and expensive rework. The task of migrating 80+ websites to an upgraded platform with the existing workflow was infeasible.
We'll share how implementing a "shift left" approach with Tugboat transformed Georgia's development workflow. By moving testing, QA, and stakeholder signoff at the time of the pull request, the team distributed QA throughout the sprint and caught issues earlier in the development cycle. This shift improved the process for developers, QA testers, product managers, and stakeholders alike.
The session will balance leadership insights with technical implementation details, covering:
- How to identify and eliminate bottlenecks in your SDLC
- Practical strategies for implementing "shift left" testing in government environments
- Leveraging Docker, CircleCI, and Tugboat for robust testing infrastructure
- Managing complex migration workflows with parallel testing environments
- Visual regression testing and automated QA integration
- Data handling strategies that maintain security while providing realistic test data
### Learning Objectives:
1. Understand how to identify critical bottlenecks in your software delivery lifecycle that may be causing delays, quality issues, and team burnout
2. Learn practical strategies for implementing "shift left" testing methodologies in government and enterprise environments
3. Discover technical approaches for creating reliable preview environments that accelerate testing and stakeholder feedback
4. Gain insights into managing complex migrations across multiple sites with distributed testing
### Audience:
This session is catered for CTOs, IT Directors, Technical Architects, and agency decision-makers involved in government digital service delivery. While it focuses on Drupal, the principles and approaches apply broadly to any web development workflow.
### Format:
60-minute presentation with slides, visualizations, workflow diagrams, and Q&A.
### Speakers:
- Jasmyne Epps, Unit Director, Digital Services Georgia - Previously QA/Product Manager who experienced the transformation firsthand
- James Sansbury, Owner of Tugboat - Former architect who designed and implemented Georgia's technical solution