Agile testing : A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams

from Lisa Crispin & Janet Gregory

Pitch

Two of the industry’s most experienced agile testing practitioners and consultants, Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory, have teamed up to bring you the definitive answers to these questions and many others. In Agile Testing, Crispin and Gregory define agile testing and illustrate the tester’s role with examples from real agile teams. They teach you how to use the agile testing quadrants to identify what testing is needed, who should do it, and what tools might help. The book chronicles an agile software development iteration from the viewpoint of a tester and explains the seven key success factors of agile testing. Readers will come away from this book understanding

• How to get testers engaged in agile development

• Where testers and QA managers fit on an agile team

• What to look for when hiring an agile tester

• How to transition from a traditional cycle to agile development

• How to complete testing activities in short iterations

• How to use tests to successfully guide development

• How to overcome barriers to test automation

This book is a must for agile testers, agile teams, their managers, and their customers.

Notes

10 principles

• Provide continuous feedback

• Deliver value to the customer

• Enable face to face communication

• Have courage

• Keep it simple

• Practice continuous improvement

• Respond to change

• Self-organize

• Focus on people

• Enjoy

Change organizational culture

Barriers

• Lack of training

• Not understanding agile principles

• Loss of identity

• Additional roles

XP radar charts

• Programming

• Planning

• Customer

• Pairing

• Team

Team logistics

• Build a true team

  • Self organized

  • Each member has an equal value

• Hire an agile tester

• Structure

  • Independent QA team

  • Integrate testers in the team

Transitioning

• Audit existing processes (tools, frameworks, standards,...)

• Metrics

  • Starting and ending metrics

  • Daily build results

  • Defect Tracking System (DTS)

    • Large and distributed teams

    • Customer support

    • Traceability

    • NOT a communication tool

    • NOT a waste of time and inventory

• Test strategy vs test planning

  • TS : Long term plan

  • TP : Identify possible issues and dependencies Identify risks

Agile testing quadrants

4 parts

• Supporting the team

• Business facing

  • Help to design the desired product

    • Involve business expert

  • Mitigate the risks

  • Tools to elicit Examples/requirements

    • Checklists

    • Mind maps

    • Spreadsheets

    • Mock-ups

    • Flow diagrams

    • Software based tools

  • Api/Gui tests

• Critique the product

• Technology facing

  • Foundation of agile testing

    • Unit tests

    • Supporting infrastructure

  • Why ?

    • Go faster

    • Value to testers + business

    • Designing for Testing

    • Feedback

  • If you don't do those ?

    • What testers can do ?

      • Animate brown bags on TDD

      • Ask for help

        • Pair with a dev

      • Testers do not write the Unit tests

    • What managers can do ?

      • Work with the PO on product quality

      • Give time to the team

    • Team approach

      • A team problem

        • Not finished tests during this sprint for example vs a testers problem

  • Test Driven Development

4 quadrants

• Q1 : TDD

• Q2 :

  • Support work of the dev team but higher level

  • TDD also but higher level

• Q3 :

  • Business facing exemples

  • Help to design the desired product

  • Involve business expert

• Q4 : Technology facing tests

  • Performance tests for example

No story is done until it's tested

Automation

Reasons to

• Manual testing are long

• Reduce error-prone testing tasks

• Free up to do valuable work

• Safety net

• Provide feedback early and often

• Tests and examples that drive coding can do more

• Test provide documentation

• ROI / Investment

An iteration in the life of a tester

Release / theme planning : agile testing role

• Test plan alternatives :

  • Lightweight test plan

  • Test matrix

  • Spreadsheet

  • Whiteboard

  • Automated test list

• Sizing : Identify Ripple effects

• Test planning

• Prioritization

• Scope

• Preparing for Visibility

Mind map