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

Development team

The development team is the technical team that produces the software requested by the customer team. Everyone involved in delivering software is a developer, including programmers, testers, database experts, system administrators, technical writers, architects, usability experts, and analysts. This development team works together to produce the software and deliver value to the business, whether they are a co-located team or a virtual team.

Epic

An epic is a piece of functionality, or feature, described by the customer and is an item on the product backlog. An epic is broken up into related stories that are then sized and estimated. Some teams use the term “theme” instead of epic.

Exploratory testing

Exploratory testing is interactive testing that combines test design with test execution and focuses on learning about the application. See Chapter 10, “Business-Facing Tests that Critique the Product,” for an extensive definition of exploratory testing.

Fake object

A fake object replaces the functionality of the depended-on component with a simpler implementation. It emulates the behavior of the real depended-on component but is easier to use for testing purposes.

Feature

A feature is a piece of functionality described by the customer and is an item on the product backlog. A feature is broken up into related stories that are then sized and estimated. In agile development, the terms “epic” or “theme” are often used in place of “feature.”

Functional test

Functional tests verify the system’s expected behavior given a set of inputs and/or actions.

Greenfield

Greenfield projects are new application development projects starting from scratch with no existing code base. There are no constraints, so development teams have many options open to them.

Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

An Integrated Development Environment, or IDE, is a set of tools that support programming and testing. It usually includes an editor, compiler or intepreter debugger, refactoring capabilities, and build automation tools. IDEs usually enable integration with a source code control system and provide language-specific support to help with code design.

Iteration

An iteration is a short development cycle, generally from one to four weeks, at the end of which production-ready code can potentially be delivered. Several iterations, each one the same length, may be needed to deliver an entire theme or epic. Some teams actually release the code to production each iteration, but even if the code isn’t released, it is ready for release.

Java Messaging Service (JMS)

The Java Messaging Service (JMS) API is a messaging standard that enables application components based on the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) to create, send, receive, and read messages.

Legacy System

A legacy system is one that does not have any (or few) automated regression tests. Introducing changes in legacy code, or refactoring it, might be risky because there are no tests to catch unintended changes in system behavior.

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME)

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, or MIME, extend the format of Internet mail to enable non-textual messages, multipart message bodies, and non-US-ASCII textual messages and headers.

Mock Object

A mock object simulates the responses of an existing object. It helps with designing and testing interactions between objects, replacing a real component so that a test can verify its indirect outputs.

Product Backlog

Product Backlog is a Scrum term for the prioritized master list of all functionality desired in the product. This backlog grows over time as the organization thinks of new features they may need.

Product Owner

Product Owner is a Scrum term for the person responsible for prioritizing the product backlog, or stories. He or she is typically someone from a marketing role or a key business expert involved with development.

Quality Assurance (QA) Team

Quality Assurance, or QA, can be defined as actions taken to ensure compliance with a quality standard. In software development, the term “QA Team” is often used to refer to the team that does software testing. Test teams (see Test Team ) provide stakeholders with information related to the quality of the software product. They perform activities to learn how the system under test should behave and verify that it behaves as expected. In agile development, these activities are fully integrated with development activities. Testers are often part of the development team along with everyone else involved in developing the software.

Production Code

Production code is the code for the system that is, or will be, used in production, as distinguished from the code that is written to test it. Test code invokes or operates on production code to verify its behavior.

Refactoring

Refactoring is changing code, without changing its functionality, to make it more maintainable, easier to read, easier to test, or easier to extend.

Regression Test

A regression test verifies that the behavior of the system under test hasn’t changed. Regression tests are usually written as unit tests to drive coding or acceptance tests to define desired system behavior. Once the tests pass, they become part of a regression test suite, to guard against unintended changes being introduced. Regression tests should be automated to ensure continual feedback.

Release Candidate

A release candidate is a version or build of the product that can potentially be released to production. The release candidate may undergo further testing or be augmented with documentation or other materials.

Return On Investment (ROI)

Return on investment, or ROI, is a term borrowed from the world of financial investments and is a measure of the efficiency of an investment. ROI can be calculated in different ways, but it’s basically the difference between the gain from an investment and the cost of that investment, divided by the cost of that investment. In testing, ROI is the benefit gained from a testing activity such as automating a test, weighed against the cost of producing and maintaining that test or activity.

SOAP

SOAP is a protocol for exchanging XML-based messages over networks, normally using HTTP/HTTPS. It forms the foundation layer of the web services protocol stack, providing a basic messaging framework upon which abstract layers can be built. A common SOAP messaging pattern is the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) pattern, in which the client network node sends a request message to the server node, and the server immediately sends a response to the client.

Story

A user story is a short description of functionality told from the perspective of the user that is valuable to either the user or the customer team. Stories are traditionally written on index cards. The card typically contains a one-line description of the feature. For example, “As a shopper, I can put items in my shopping cart so that I can check out with them later” is a story. Cards are only useable in combination with subsequent conversations between the customer team and the development team and some verification that the story has been implemented through writing and running tests.

Story Test

A story test defines expected behavior for the code to be delivered by the story. Story tests may be business-facing, specifying the functional requirements, or technology-facing, such as security or performance tests. These tests are used to guide development as well as to verify the delivered code. Most agile practitioners use the term “story test” synonymously with “acceptance test,” although the term “acceptance test” might be used for tests that verify behavior at a higher level than one story.