Craig Risi, Old Mutual (ZA)
Contracts for Hire
About the talk
Sub-heading: Breaking Contracts, Breaking Builds: Why Contract Testing is a Game-Changer!
Microservices, APIs, and integrations—modern software systems are a tangled web of dependencies. One small change in a service can trigger a cascade of failures across the ecosystem. So how do we prevent integration nightmares before they happen? Enter contract testing!
In this talk, we’ll explore how contract testing acts as a safety net, ensuring that services play nicely together without relying on slow, brittle end-to-end tests. We’ll cover:
- What contract testing is (and what it’s NOT!)
- Why mocking your consumers is a dangerous game
- How contract tests keep your pipeline fast and your deployments smooth
- Live demo: breaking a contract and watching chaos unfold (then fixing it, of course!)
Whether you’re an API developer, tester, or DevOps engineer, this session will show you why contract testing is one of the secret weapons for reliable, scalable systems. Let’s break some contracts (safely) and have some fun!
Biography
A man of many talents, but no sense of how to use them. Craig could be out changing the world but would prefer to make software instead. Probably the reason why Nick Fury refused to take his calls. He possesses a passion for software design, but more importantly software quality and engineering systems that can achieve this in a technically diverse and constantly evolving tech world. Craig has developed skills in software engineering, quality engineering, and architecture over his 20+ years of experience.
When not playing with software he can often be found spending time with family, writing, designing board games, or running long distances for no apparent reason. He is also a massive fan of comic books and Star Wars, so if you see him concentrating intensely, he is probably just trying to use the force.