A Software Manager’s Guide to Defining Testing in an Agile Age

© 2011 Seapine Software, Inc. All rights reserved.
A Software Manager’s Guide to Defining Testing in an Agile Age
A Seapine Software Webinar
Peter VarholSolutions Evangelist, Seapine Software

Agenda
What Does it Mean to Be Agile?
Principles of Agile Development
Integrating Testing into Agile Development
Testing and Automation
Making Testing Count with Agile
Summary and Questions

What Does It Mean to Be Agile?
Satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software
Working software is the primary measure of progress
Deliver working software frequently
Build projects around motivated individuals
At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective

Early and continuous delivery of software
Requirements less formal – user stories
Iterative development cycle
One week to one month
Working software at the end of each

Working software is the primary measure of progress
User stories translated to features
Features delivered after each iteration

Deliver working software frequently
One week to one month
Timeframe continues to shorten

Build projects around motivated individuals
Developers, testers, users

Reflect on how to become more effective
Don’t keep making the same mistakes

There’s not one single prescription
Agile methodologies promote short release cycles
Every project is unique

Assignment: Reinvention
Quality is a high priority
But testing can’t plan like it used to
Needed: a new approach to testing
Testers have to reinvent themselves and their craft
A path to value

Reinventing testing for Agile
Testers remain essential to quality
A long lead time before active testing is infeasible
How to reconcile test planning with up-front execution
Can planning be saved?

Iterate on planning
Keep pace with development
Iterate on testing
Manage risk so that the most important features and actions are well-tested
Iterate on quality
Measure your quality
Improve it in the next iteration

Early involvement by testers
Testers need to work directly with product owners
Must understand the user needs
Get underneath the user story

Focus testing on features that make a difference to users
No requirements to analyze
No time for comprehensive test plans
Learn what the users need
Make sure those features work
Users sign off, testers validate

Ensure that testers take the lead
Take responsibility for application quality
Become an interface to the user community
Work with developers as equal partners

Enable testers to work side-by-side with developers
Testers need to know about tactical development decisions
This is especially important in Agile projects without formal requirements

Make automation an integral part of testing
Agility and automation work hand in hand
Accelerate testing to show agility
Data collection and analysis essential

Automate both process and testing
Agile methodologies are lightweight
But tools are essential for speed and flexibility
Tools accelerate repetitive manual processes
But tool overhead can’t outweigh benefits
Easy to learn and use
Provide easily digestibleinformation

Process Automation
User story tracking - Hint: 3 x 5 cards don’t cut it
Feature backlog
Defect tracking

Testing automation
Test management
Automated functional and regression tests
Automated load testing – valuable for assessing design and coding practices

5-minute Demo

Making Testing Count With Agile
Ensure that testers take the lead on the building and execution of functional, regression, and acceptance test cases
Independence from development helps ensure objective evaluation

Making Testing Count With Agile
Enable testers and developers to make coding decisions together
Helps prioritize testing
Guide development in decision-making

Automate to achieve speed and efficiency
Use tools when there is a clear advantage
Don’t get bogged down with configuring and maintenance
Focus on the goal

Summary
Agile methodologies and testing work well together
Quality is the common factor
Testers need earlier involvement, more interaction with users and developers
An independent voice of quality
Automation makes testing feasible
Repetitive activities are accelerated

For More Information
Seapine Software – www.seapine.com
“Testing in an Agile Age” Whitepaper http://bit.ly/hiGtkk
Agile Expedition – www.seapine.com/exploreagile
The Seapine View - http://blogs.seapine.com/

A Software Manager’s Guide to Defining Testing in an Agile Age

by Seapine Software

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A Software Manager’s Guide to Defining Testing in an Agile Age Webinar Transcript