Quality is not the responsibility of testers alone, but of the whole agile team. It should be a shared mindset and definition agreed upon by the team. Several techniques can help build quality in, including defining acceptance criteria through conversations between product owners, developers and testers; practicing test-driven development; and ensuring story kick-offs and "shoulder taps" between team members to facilitate collaboration and catch issues early. The document discusses the importance of collaboration, automation, and not trading off quality to deliver features quickly.

1. Quality
is a
Mindset
Neil Killick, Agile Coach and Trainer
neilkillick.com / agilemelbourne.com
Copyright Neil Killick, Iterative, 2013
neil_killick

2. IT’S HARD BEING A TESTER
IN AN AGILE TEAM

3. INCREMENTAL TESTING IS A
DIFFERENT BALLGAME
● Seems like there’s “nothing to test” at the start
● Stories can end up being queued for testing at end of
Sprint
● How do I test “unfinished” features?
● Automated testing tools mean I’m not needed!

4. BUT… TESTING SKILLS ARE
VERY IMPORTANT

5. WE NEED SOMEONE TO
DEFINE AND DRIVE QUALITY
● Drive conversations around Quality such as clear,
valuable Requirements and Acceptance Tests
● Be a nuisance to the developers! How will we test
this? Where should these tests go?

6. QUALITY, LIKE VALUE, IS
AMBIGUOUS
● What is Quality? We need a shared definition
● Quality is about requirements,
expectations and behaviour,
not just code
● Quality is “What the customer wants”,
building the right thing, so is variable

7. QUALITY IS NOT AN
ACTIVITY OR ROLE
● Quality is a shared responsibility of the team, not just
the QA’s, the Tester’s or the QA Manager’s
● You cannot “test” Quality into a poor Quality product
- it’s too late!
● Quality emerges from the way we work together, our
interactions

8. YOU EITHER CARE ABOUT
QUALITY OR YOU DON’T
● Improving Quality by “process”
alone has limited efficacy
● Hire craftspeople who insist
on building Quality into
everything they do
● Never trade-off build Quality

9. AS AN AGILE TESTER, HOW
CAN I MAXIMISE MY VALUE?
● Work with developers to automate execution of
acceptance criteria
● Manual testing should be non-repetitive and utilise
your skills as a tester
○ Exploratory Testing
○ Boundary Testing, etc.

10. HOW CAN I AUTOMATE
ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA?
● There are dozens of automated
testing tools - Google it!
● Selenium / WebDriver is a
popular browser testing tool
● Cucumber / JBehave for BDD testing

11. HOW CAN WE BUILD IN
QUALITY AS A TEAM?

12. THREE AMIGOS
● BA or Product Owner, Developer and Tester
● Requirements and tests are discussed for a new
feature
● Create shared understanding and common
vocabulary for new feature
● Identify missing requirements and edge cases

13. BE TEST DRIVEN
● Work collaboratively with the team to ensure the
right tests are written from the start
● Avoid a testing “phase” after “dev” by working
closely with the developers daily
● Help the team with a “test first” approach, where
failing tests are written before the code

14. HOW CAN WE ENSURE THESE
CONVERSATIONS HAPPEN?

15. STORY KICK-OFF
● Formalise story kick-off as 1st
step in workflow before story
can be “in progress”
● Three Amigos (or whole team if practical) get
together when team is ready to pull in a new story, or
at Backlog Refinement Meeting
● Whole team at Sprint Planning Meeting

16. SHOULDER TAPS
● Don’t hand off work,
or let it be handed
off to you
● Spend 10 mins with
developers checking
that all acceptance criteria pass
● Spend 10 mins with Product Owner to make sure
he/she is happy with functionality

17. SUMMARY
●
●
●
●
●
●
Quality is not an activity/role, it’s a mindset
Create a shared definition of Quality
Hire people who care
Whole team owns Quality
Don’t trade off Build Quality
Drive the right conversations to ensure
Quality is built in

18. Neil Killick, Agile Coach and Trainer
neilkillick.com / agilemelbourne.com
Copyright Neil Killick, Iterative, 2013
neil_killick