Crispin, Lisa - Agile Testing - A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams

The whole-team approach means everyone takes responsibility for testing tasks. It means team members have a range of skill sets and experience to employ in attacking challenges such as designing for testability by turning examples into tests and into code to make those tests pass. These diverse viewpoints can only mean better tests and test coverage.

Most importantly, on an agile team, anyone can ask for and receive help. The team commits to providing the highest possible business value as a team, and the team does whatever is needed to deliver it. Some folks who are new to agile perceive it as all about speed. The fact is, it’s all about quality—and if it’s not, we question whether it’s really an “agile” team.

Your situation is unique. That’s why you need to be aware of the potential testing obstacles your team might face and how you can apply agile values and principles to overcome them.

Summary

Understanding the activities that testers perform on agile teams helps you show your own team the value that testers can add. Learning the core practices of agile testing will help your team deliver software that delights your customers.

In this chapter, we’ve explained what we mean when we use the term “agile testing.

We showed how the Agile Manifesto relates to testing, with its emphasis on individuals and interactions, working software, customer collaboration, and responding to change.

We provided some context for this book, including some other terms we use such as “tester,” “programmer,” “customer,” and related terms so that we can speak a common language.

We explained how agile testing, with its focus on business value and delivering the quality customers require, is different from traditional testing, which focuses on conformance to requirements.

We introduced the “whole-team” approach to agile testing, which means that everyone involved with delivering software is responsible for delivering high-quality software.

We advised taking a practical approach by applying agile values and principles to overcome agile testing obstacles that arise in your unique situation.

Chapter 2 Ten Principles for Agile Testers

Everyone on an agile team is a tester. Anyone can pick up testing tasks. If that’s true, then what is special about an agile tester? If I define myself as a tester on an agile team, what does that really mean? Do agile testers need different skill sets than testers on traditional teams? What guides them in their daily activities?

In this chapter, we talk about the agile testing mind-set, show how agile values and principles guide testing, and give an overview of how testers add value on agile teams.

What’s an Agile Tester?

We define an agile tester this way: a professional tester who embraces change, collaborates well with both technical and business people, and understands the concept of using tests to document requirements and drive development. Agile testers tend to have good technical skills, know how to collaborate with others to automate tests, and are also experienced exploratory testers. They’re willing to learn what customers do so that they can better understand the customers’ software requirements.

Who’s an agile tester? She’s a team member who drives agile testing. We know many agile testers who started out in some other specialization. A developer becomes test-infected and branches out beyond unit testing. An exploratory tester, accustomed to working in an agile manner, is attracted to the idea of an agile team. Professionals in other roles, such as business or functional analysts, might share the same traits and do much of the same work.

Skills are important, but attitude counts more. Janet likes to say, “Without the attitude, the skill is nothing.” Having had to hire numerous testers for our agile teams, we’ve put a lot of thought into this and discussed it with others in the agile community. Testers tend to see the big picture. They look at the application more from a user or customer point of view, which means they’re generally customer-focused.

The Agile Testing Mind-Set

What makes a team “agile”? To us, an agile team is one that continually focuses on doing its best work and delivering the best possible product. In our experience, this involves a ton of discipline, learning, time, experimentation, and working together. It’s not for everyone, but it’s ideal for those of us who like the team dynamic and focus on continual improvement.

Successful projects are a result of good people allowed to do good work. The characteristics that make someone succeed as a tester on an agile team are probably the same characteristics that make a highly valued tester on any team.

An agile tester doesn’t see herself as a quality police officer, protecting her customers from inadequate code. She’s ready to gather and share information, to work with the customer or product owner in order to help them express their requirements adequately so that they can get the features they need, and to provide feedback on project progress to everyone.

Agile testers, and maybe any tester with the right skills and mind-set, are continually looking for ways the team can do a better job of producing high-quality software. On a personal level, that might mean attending local user group meetings or roundtables to find out what other teams are doing. It also means trying out new tools to help the team do a better job of specifying, executing, and automating customer requirements as tests.

The bottom line is that agile testers, like their agile teammates, enjoy learning new skills and taking on new challenges, and they don’t limit themselves to solving only testing issues. This isn’t just a trait of testers; we see it in all agile team members. Agile testers help the developer and customer teams address any kind of issue that might arise. Testers can provide information that helps the team look back and learn what’s working and what isn’t.

Creativity, openness to ideas, willingness to take on any task or role, focus on the customer, and a constant view of the big picture are just some components of the agile testing mind-set. Good testers have an instinct and understanding for where and how software might fail, and how to track down failures.

Testers might have special expertise and experience in testing, but a good agile tester isn’t afraid to jump into a design discussion with suggestions that will help testability or create a more elegant solution. An agile testing mind-set is one that is results-oriented, craftsman-like, collaborative, eager to learn, and passionate about delivering business value in a timely manner.

Applying Agile Principles and Values

Individuals can have a big impact on a project’s success. We’d expect a team with more experienced and higher-skilled members to outperform a less talented team. But a team is more than just its individual members. Agile values and principles promote a focus on the people involved in a project and how they interact and communicate. A team that guides itself with agile values and principles will have higher team morale and better velocity than a poorly functioning team of talented individuals.