Atd agile automation

Making Test
Automation Work in
Agile Projects

Agile Testing Days 2012
Lisa Crispin
With Material from Janet Gregory

1

Introductions: Experience, Goals
§  Form groups:
§  New to automation
§  One to two years experience w/ automation
§  More than two years experience
§  Talk with at least two other people
§  Tell each other your learning goals for today
§  Note the most interesting one you hear

2

About me…
Programmer, tester, agile team member
Ever-evolving views on automation

3
Copyright 2012: Lisa Crispin

Introduction - You

4

Takeaways
Successful test automation is an innovation!
•  Let go of traditional roles, reach across them
•  Visualize how tests should look
•  Be smart about when to automate
•  Experiment to overcome obstacles
•  Find/build the right tools
We won’t do any hands-on automation, but will demo
some examples

5

Exercise: Your Learning Goals
§  Write one interesting learning goal you heard
from another participant at the start of the
class on a sticky note.
§  Write your number one learning goal for
today on a sticky note.
§  Put the sticky notes on your table group
“learning goals” sheet
§  Group similar ones together

6

Let’s start by defining “agile”

Agile teams:
q  Deliver business value
frequently
q  at a sustainable pace
q  while adapting to the changing
needs of the business

Source: Elisabeth Hendrickson

7

The key is “sustainable pace”

Technical debt slows us down

8

High technical debt +
insufficient automation =
even less time

Barriers to Test Automation
What’s holding you back?

11

Exercise: Your barriers
Individually and silently – write one barrier
hindering your team per sticky note
Put these on the “impediments” wall chart
for your table group
Work with your group to identify patterns,
group similar items

12

Questions?

13

The Whole-Team Approach
§  Automated tests are code
§  Respecting the tests
§  Collaborating
§  Commitment to quality
§  Return on investment

14

Automated tests are code
public class CalculatorFixture extends
ColumnFixture {
public String startDate;
public String endDate;
public double startBalance;
public double endBalance;
public String irrTarget;
private Calculator calculator = new
Calculator();
private Double irr;
15

Source: Gojko Adzic, StarEast 2011 keynote

Testers are especially good at…
§ Eliciting examples
§ Turning them into tests
§ Ensuring the right testing gets done
§ Exploratory testing

18

Give testers time to do what we do best

How?
19

Experiment: Iteration 1
§  Pair up: one will be tester, one programmer
§  Sit back to back so you face away from each other
§  Tester: You have a drawing which you need to
instruct your developer to draw
§  Programmer: Remain silent while working, only do
what you’re instructed.
§  No talking!
§  No peeking!
When “done”:
§  Programmer – pass your drawing to the tester
§  Tester – note problems on separate card/paperWill
the customer be happy?
21

Experiment: Iteration 2
§  Now, turn to face each other.
§  Tester:
§  Still don’t show your picture!
§  Tell the programmer what to draw, but -
§  Watch what the programmer draws, and point
out any mistakes immediately
§  Programmer:
§  Still no peeking!
§  Ask questions, ask for feedback, make
corrections immediately
Thanks to the members of the agile-games group and
Kane Mar for ideas & pictures for this game
22

Ways to collaborate

Pair:
Tester-Coder
Tester-Tester
Any role – any role

23

Team responsibility
Automate all regression tests

24

25

Commitment to quality
What’s your team’s commitment?
The best possible software product?

26

Meaningful
Commitment

Experiment

Learn
27

Under-commit

Plan less work than you think you can do
Including all test automation


Learn to write maintainable tests
§  Get over the “hump of pain”
From Gerard Meszaros’
XUnit Test Patterns

29

Whole-team software development
Create a Expand
user tests –
story Story
Tests
Automate
Write Q2 Tests Pair,
Customer Start “Show
(Q2) thinking Me”
Tests how to
code
TDD

Exploratory
testing
Product owner
Product owner/ Tester
Tester
Tester/Programmer
Programmer Customer
User
Acceptance

30

Exercise

• Think of an experiment to get your
whole team engaged in automating
tests
• Share with your table group
• Pick two to share with the class


Getting Over the Hump
§  The test automation pyramid
§  The agile testing quadrants
§  What should be automated
§  What shouldn't
§  Difficult areas

32

Test Automation Pyramid

33

Test Automation Volcano

From Matt
Barcomb


Agile Testing Quadrants

35

Shared Understanding
§  Start with tests
§  Collaborate

36

What Should We Automate?
§  Quadrant 1 tests
§  Unit, component, TDD
§  API, service-level
§  Load, performance, stress
§  Quadrant 3 tests?
§  Leverage automation where useful

37

What Shouldn’t We Automate?
§  Wizard of Oz, prototyping
§  Usability, UAT, ET
§  Tests that will never fail?
§  Assess risk
§  ROI not enough
§  One-off tests

38

Where Should We Be Careful?
§  GUI tests
§  Watch ROI
§  End-to-End tests
§  Push testing down to lowest level
§  Remember the Pyramid

39

Hard to Automate?
§  Legacy code
§  Hard to automate, or just lack of skill?
§  “Working Effectively with Legacy Code” –
Feathers
§  “Strangling” – Fowler, Thomas

40

Exercise: Low-Hanging Fruit

Any “easy wins”?

41

Agile Automation Strategy
§  What hurts the most
§  Layered approach
§  Applying agile principles
§  Small chunks/thin slices
§  Smart test design
§  Choosing the right tools

42

What Hurts the Most
§  Use retrospectives
§  Keep an impediment backlog

43

Multi-Layered Approach
Example:
§  Learn TDD at unit level
§  Automate GUI smoke tests

44

Simplicity
§  Address one or two needs at a time
§  Understand the problem first
§  Try simplest approach first
§  Work in small chunks, thin slices
§  Incremental & iterative

45

Automate a Slice at a Time
Example: 4-step UI to validate, upload profit
sharing contribution data
•  Thread 1: All four pages with navigation
•  Thread 2: Select year, enter description on page
1, display on page 2, browse and upload file on
page 2
•  Thread 3: Validate data in file, display on page 3
•  Thread 4: Persist data, display ‘success’
message on page 4

46

Thin Slice Example

47

Exercise: Thin Slices
Here’s our user story (or theme):
As an internet shopper, I want to create an
account so that I do not have to enter my address
and billing information each time I make a
purchase
Draw a mind map for this feature on a big sheet of
paper
Identify a basic end-to-end slice of functionality
that can be coded, tested, and automated.
If you have time, identify additional slices.

48

Test Design Patterns/Principles
§  Code design patterns
§  One clear purpose
§  Don’t Repeat Yourself

49

Page Object Pattern

A “page object” is a test object that holds
the details of all the elements on a web
page that might be involved in an
automated test.

50

More on the Page Object Pattern
http://www.beer30.org/?p=54

51

Demo: semi-automating exploratory tests

52

Iterative Feedback
§  Spike two different approaches
§  Pick one to try for N # of iterations
§  Use retrospectives to evaluate

53

Learn by Doing
§  Courage – don’t be afraid to fail
§  Production code practices for test code
§  Incremental, thin slices
§  Experiment

54

Questions About Automation Strategy?

55

Choosing Tools, Frameworks, Drivers
§  Team effort
§  Time
§  Requirements
§  Focus on goals, problems, not tools.
§  Experiment

56

Understand the Purpose
§  Who’s using the tests? What for?
§  What’s being automated?
§  Existing tools, environment
§  Who’s doing what for automating?

57

What Fits Your Situation
•  Existing skills
•  Language of application under test
•  Collaboration needs
•  What’s being automated
•  Life span, future use of tests

58

Test Drivers/Frameworks
§  Divide into sub-teams and prototype
solutions
§  Have a “bake-off” showing each prototype

59

Where To Find Tools
§  www.softwareqatest.com/qattls1.html
§  http://bit.ly/AgileTestTools
§  www.testingfaqs.org
§  www.opensourcetesting.org
§  groups.yahoo.com/group/agile-testing
§  Grow your own!

60

Example: One Team’s Tool Choices
•  IntelliJ Idea
•  Jenkins, ant, Maven
•  JUnit
•  FitNesse
•  Canoo WebTest
•  Watir
•  Robot Framework
•  JMeter
•  Selenium 2.0 / WebDriver with Geb framework

61

Exercise: Test Frameworks

What format would work for your team? EG,
BDD style? Tables? Assertions? Scenarios?
Think of the test format that might work for
your team. Write examples on sticky notes.
Write down any particular types of test
patterns, frameworks and driverss you want
to learn more about.
and place these sticky notes next to an
impediment it might help overcome..
Discuss with group how that tool might help
solve the problem. Copyright 2012: Lisa Crispin
62

Making Test Automation Work

§  Time to do it right
§  Experiments, bake-offs
§  Testable architecture
§  Test data
§  Managing tests

63

Time To Do It Right
§  Limit scope, don’t over-commit
§  Write automation task cards
§  Plan test code maintenance/ refactoring time
§  Quality must be team goal
§  Long-term, will let you go faster

64

Bake-offs
§  Have sub-teams/pairs experiment with
prototypes
§  Budget lots of time for learning,
experimenting
§  Look at pros & cons

65

Testable Architecture
•  Layered architecture
•  eg. UI, business logic, data access
•  Ports and Adapters pattern
•  App can work without UI or database
•  Ports accept outside events
•  Adapters convert for human or automated
users

66

Test Data

§  Avoid database access when possible
§  Setup/Teardown
§  Independent, rerunnable tests
§  Canonical data
§  Refresh before each test run
§  Customizable data for ET
§  Production-like data
§  Get customers to provide example data

67

Managing Automated Tests

§  Tests as Living Documentation
§  Continuous Integration
§  Reporting results
§  Metrics

68

Tests as Living Documentation
§  Understandable
§  Who will really use them?
§  Once passing, must always pass

69

Any Example Can Become a Test

70

Given/Then/When Example
Scenario: Valid name search returns results

GIVEN that Kant is a supervisor with employees
AND Kant has an employee named Smith
WHEN Kant navigates to the employee name
search page
AND enters the value “S”
THEN Kant will see a search result that includes
Smith

71

Continuous integration/testing…
…short feedback loop

72

Keep tests passing
Stop the line to fix problems

73

Test Management Tools
§  Manage tests, code together
§  Some tools have own management
§  What problem are you trying to solve?

74

Exercise: Tests as Documentation

75

Key Success Factors

Thin Slices

Speciﬁcation
by Example
Whole Team
Approach
Short
Feedback
Loops

Experiments
76

Exercise: Breaking Barriers

77

Remember
§  It’s a team problem!
§  Tackle automation problems with diversity
§  Try small experiments
§  Baby steps – start simple

78

Questions? “Aha” Moments?

79

Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile
Teams

By Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory

www.agiletester.ca

80

Experiences of Test Automation
Dorothy Graham and Mark Fewster

81

Beautiful Testing: Leading Professionals Reveal How
They Improve Software
Edited by Tim Riley, Adam Goucher

Includes chapter by yours truly

82

Test Patterns

Xunit Test Patterns: Refactoring Test Code
By Gerard Meszaros

83

Specification by Example
How successful teams deliver the right
software

Gojko Adzic

Case studies from > 50 teams

84
Copyright 2008 Janet Gregory, DragonFire

Agile Test Automation Resources
§ dhemery.com/pdf/
writing_maintainable_automated_acceptance_tests.pdf
§ http://bit.ly/AgileTestTools
§ lisacrispin.com
§ janetgregory.ca
§ gokjo.net
§ exampler.com
§ agile-testing@yahoogroups.com
§ testobsessed.com
§ testingreflections.com
§ pairwith.us

85

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