Refactoring Test Collaboration

@aclairefication #AgileTDUSA
Refactoring Test Collaboration
Connecting Software Testing to Development Through Analogy
Claire Moss

Goal
• Make getting into testing easier for someone with less* experience
• * Maybe not less but just different (i.e. developers)
• More emphasis on testing skills and less on testing role
• Focus our work
• “…a team has ‘won’ when its teams have become self-sufficient, high-
performing, mighty forces fully enabled for participatory,
collaborative decision-making” – Jean Tabaka
Source: Collaboration Explained by Jean Tabaka

Burning Questions?
• Write them down and bring them forward
so I can work them in along the way!
• Rather than going straight back to your
seats, let’s form 3 groups:
• Not quite yet
• On the way
• Ready to roll
Sources: http://bowperson.com/training-from-the-back-of-the-room/; https://www.kisspng.com/png-question-mark-free-content-clip-art-pictures-of-qu-204382/

Learning Outcomes
• Approaches to handle objections to executing the testing work
• Ways to mentor test helpers, including pairing
• Team buy-in to testing investment
• Understand how other team members have been testing the work so
far
• Advising on opportunities to inject test thinking into all of the team
activities, from story writing through to unit testing, to make the
system more testable
See more at https://agiletestingdays.us/session/refactoring-test-collaboration/; Source: https://www.iconsdb.com/purple-icons/opera-glasses-icon.html

Source: https://devops-research.com/assets/transformation_practices.pdf
High Performance Practices

Fast Pass
• Brainstorm what you already know
about this topic
• Be ready to report back some facts
from this list
• You have 5 minutes – go!
Source: http://bowperson.com/training-from-the-back-of-the-room/

Refactoring
changing its observable behavior
• Refactoring (verb): to restructure software by applying a series of
refactorings without changing its observable behavior
Source: https://martinfowler.com/bliki/DefinitionOfRefactoring.html; https://dzone.com/articles/what-is-refactoring
• Development concept
• Refactoring (noun): a
change made to the
internal structure of
software to make it easier
to understand and
cheaper to modify without

Test
• This word is overloaded!
• Different roles have our own ideas of what
we mean when we say this word
• Talking past each other??
• Beware shallow agreement!
• Test not equal to automated script
• Testing includes automation but isn’t the same!
Source: https://watirmelon.blog/testing-pyramids/

Collaboration
• Working together: quality is
everyone’s job!
• Pay attention to what you produce
• Patterns exist & we can leverage
them
• Tag Team (e.g. exchange of team
roles)
• 1on1 communication (e.g. Pairing)
• Small groups (e.g. Mobbing)
• Leaving messages/Handoffs
• Are the devs on your “team” or
somewhere else?
Source: https://memegenerator.net/instance/22605665/disaster-girl-worked-fine-in-dev-ops-problem-now

Who is in this room?
• Quick show of hands…
• Are we all testers?
• A tester is somebody who knows that things can
be different. – Jerry Weinberg
• If not, do you even have testers? On your team?
• Are we all agile?
• Learning?
• Practicing?
• Leading?

Fast Pass Share
• Someone in each role represented here in
the room
• Share something you already know about
test collaboration

Culture
• What seems to be driving the people
around you to do a good job?
Primarily internal or external?
• Motivates decisions

Context
“The practice of testing, when
applied in specific contexts,
changes the purpose of testing,
the relations of people,
what test planning means …
interactively adapting their
practice of testing
to a new sort of project.”
– Brian Marick
Source: Foreword, Testing Extreme Programming (2002)

What is the context you want to adapt?
• Role analysis
• Constraints
• Enablers
• Measurements
• Existing collaboration patterns?
• Decision points!

Test Strategy Retro
• May reduce resistance by calling this a
“project retrospective”?
• Everyone is
• Encouraged to understand
• Supported to perform (testing) activities
• Responds to problems rapidly
Sources: https://leanpub.com/testingindevops; Collaboration Explained by Jean Tabaka

Test Strategy Retro
• Let’s focus on the observable tasks & activities in your path to
production
• Timeline from idea to production, from inception to
completion
• Silently place people, activities/practices/tasks, events,
wait states, milestones, risks, impacts, dependencies, etc
• Highlights, lowlights
• Feelings about the timeline content

Mature Scrum Team Interactions
See more at http://sched.co/XDEkoD

User Value Idea
Discuss
Idea
Sketch
Approach
Code
It
Brainstorm
Tests
Pairing
w/Dev
Try
It
Ship
MVP!
Revise
Discuss
Idea
See more at https://www.slideshare.net/aclairefication/c-moss-bigvisibletesting

Test Strategy Retro
• Let’s focus on the observable tasks & activities in your path to
production
• Dialogue, engaging with all the content
• Contrast current with ideal (h/t Sean Cresswell)
• Observations (e.g. rearranging stickies, critical path)
• Appreciations
• Recommendations, action plan to follow up (e.g. keep these, try these, table these,
ongoing problems)

Example XP User Story Lifecycle
Source: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jmeier/2014/06/06/extreme-programming-xp-at-a-glance-visual/

Example XP User Story Lifecycle
ET!
Source: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jmeier/2014/06/06/extreme-programming-xp-at-a-glance-visual/

Stand, Stretch, & Share
• What is something you see in these
graphical representations that interests you?
surprises you?
• What is something you’ve learned that you
didn’t know before?
• Go write your learning down on your
handout & tell your neighbor

Agile
“Individuals and interactions
over processes and tools
…
Customer collaboration
over contract negotiation”
- Agile Manifesto
Source: http://agilemanifesto.org/

What are you trying to collaborate on?
• Probably testing, right?
• Skill analysis of what “testing” is for you (and others
at your table)
• Take 10 minutes to discuss testing skills needed to do
the work!
• “Often the true value of a thing isn’t the thing itself,
but instead is the activity that created it.” – Dave
Thomas
Sources: http://pragdave.blogspot.com/2003/03/artifacting.html; https://mysoftwarequality.wordpress.com/2014/09/04/cross-dysfunctional-teams/

Testing Activity/Skill Analysis
Workshop On Self-Education (WhOSE) in software testing
• Test Design
• Communication
• Community
• Time Management
• Critical Thinking
• Management
Source: http://whose.associationforsoftwaretesting.org

Each Teach
• Role play with the person next to you for the next 5 minutes
• One of you is the tester
• The other is a developer
• Tester teach the developer about one of these key skills of
testing that you think is most urgent & important
• Then switch roles – for another 5 minutes!
• What differences did you notice?
• How would you change your approach?

Rising’s Change Patterns
• Low-Hanging Fruit / Just Do It
• Trial Run / Just Enough
• Easier Path
• Which barriers are presently standing in the way of this change?
• Which barrier do I need to tackle now?
• Champion Skeptic / Fear Less
• Concrete Action Plan
• Small Successes / Hometown Story
• Evolving Vision
• Involve Everyone?
Source: https://www.fearlesschangepatterns.com/

Connecting the dots…
• Okay now you have buy-in – Congrats!!
• … but everything looks easier from the
outside
• So selling others on learning testing may not
be easy…
• Let’s hook into things our developers
already know and pay attention to!

Microservices
• In breaking down a monolith, we are achieving
microservices
• More self-serve
• Less mystery / selective cluelessness
• Going from testing-as-a-service (i.e. you do it all
for the team)
• To testing as composable activites we can do to
be more responsive to context

Source: https://continuousdelivery.com/implementing/culture/
Westrum Organizational Culture

Shout Out
• I want to hear 8 new things we
now know about this topic

Goals are…
• Guidance
• Focus for testing
• Directions without over-specifying actions
• Sometimes informal
• Don’t be too specific!
• Making implicit expectations explicit

Source: https://continuousdelivery.com/implementing/patterns/#the-deployment-pipeline

Tests are…
• Looking past what you hope or expect to see
• Changing perspectives
• Expecting surprises!
• Curiosity filled by your previous knowledge & expertise
• Asking a question
• When you think of another one, keep track of it
somewhere shared

Test ideas
• Everyone contributes!!
• Directing attention
• Expect to learn as you go
• Be prepared to react to what you learn –
new test ideas come up all the time!
• Not necessarily specified things
• What deliverables/outcomes will support
your purpose?

Generating test ideas
• Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) /
Expert input
• User-oriented framing (UX)
• Picking apart the
requirements/problem statement
• Analyzing the solution
statement/implementation (e.g.
using heuristics)
• Sequential questioning

Automate
• Just because you have a test idea doesn’t mean it’s something worth doing
over and over… but you could
• And you could do it faster using a computer
• But doing the wrong thing faster doesn’t sound like a great idea…
• Strategy!!
• ATDD
• BDD
• TDD
• xDD???
Source: http://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/category/exploratory-testing

Execute
• Facilitating testing – don’t do it
all yourself!
• People learn by doing, but not
only by doing!

Leading the way
See more at http://sched.co/XDEkoD

Communication techniques
• Self-organization
• Modeling
• Reflection/Retrospective
• Brainstorming vs listing
• Participating vs observing
• Writing vs speaking
• Sequential questioning
• Affinity grouping
• Card sorting
• Appreciative inquiry
• Timelining (e.g. Test Strategy Retro)
• Lean Coffee + Multi-voting/Dot voting

Action Plan
• What needs to be done to complete this item?
• Who is prepared to own the completion of this item?
• When does this item need to be completed?
Conflict Resolution
• Help your team seek middle ground?
• Create a new solution whole team can live with & support!

QA = Quality Acceleration
• Ultimately, we want to deliver quality at speed
• Let’s make that more possible through
• Refactoring
• Test
• Collaboration!
• Walk & Talk: Form pairs to walk around the room while you discuss:
• What is a concrete way you will accelerate quality when you head
back to work?
Hear more on https://letstalkabouttests.xyz/

Refactoring Test Collaboration

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