rethinking the role of testers
DESCRIPTION
These are the introductory slides for a discussion session I ran for the Test Management Forum http://uktmf.com on October 26 in London.TRANSCRIPT
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Rethinking the Role of Testers in Agile and Structured Projects
Paul [email protected]: @paul_gerrardWeb: gerrardconsulting.com
Slide 1Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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Theme:Changes in our
business demand a re-think of where
testing fits in systems projects
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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Health Warning!I’m going to generalise quite a lot
because I’m talking about the market in general.
YOU may be an exception; these trends are happening outside testing
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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(Why) is a re-think required?
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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gerrardconsulting.com - some stats
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
Slide 7
• Even after 15 years, the IEEE 829 ‘sample test plan’ is the most popular download on our site (1434 per month)
• Was it such a good paper or are people stuck in the 70s/80s?
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Old style formality hasn’t advanced• Countless books available• 150,000+ certified testers• Conferences, gatherings, forums, SIGs all
over the world• But certification seems to have more critics
than supporters these days– Beginners are put on courses to get the tick-in-
box– Experienced folk don’t usually have a good thing
to say about certification– Its an easy target.
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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The new testing squeeze
• Developers are beginning to take test-first, unit-testing, continuous integration very seriously (at last)
• Better testing up-front (what we’ve always wanted)–More stable software sooner– Functional/structural coverage ‘upstream’
• But do better developer practices reduce the demand for system testers?
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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The new testing squeeze 2
• Larger/structured projects treat testing as a factory process (to be offshored mostly)
• Promoting standards and the certified way is consistent with factory processes
• But the same old, bad old attitudes prevail:– Anyone can test, so do it on the cheap
• Offshoring leaves certified, unskilled testers without a role – maybe its for the best?
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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The new testing squeeze 3
• Some Agile projects squeeze testers out completely – the developers and product owners can test, can’t they?
• More often, testers are coerced into being eyes/ears of the stakeholder
• This is a good thing but…– Is it testing? Can our testers, test managers
cope?– Agile testing = Test Assurance in the small?– A different set of skills are required.
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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Agile is here to stay
• Many people are still waiting for Agile to just ‘go away’ – it won’t
• A certified generation of testers rely on:– Having time to do ‘a good job’ whatever that is– Specifications, requirements (available and stable)– Tabulated test cases, test procedures– Test design techniques that rely on perfect specs.– Test management tools that support practices
dating back to the 60s
• But Agile is getting all the attention and it simply doesn’t work this way.
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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A methodological shift…
• There seems to be a methodological shift from staged to iterative and now ‘continuous’
• Just as companies seem to be coming to terms with Agile…
• They are now being invited to consider continuous ‘Specification by Example’ approaches
• Specification by example promotes a continual process of specification, exampling, test-first, and continuous integration
• Where does the tester fit here?Intelligent Testing,
Improvement and AssuranceSlide 13
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Specification by example
• SBE promises much:– Consistent requirements, stories/examples tests
and code for the lifetime of a product– Extremely rapid end-to-end turnaround – 24hours– CI is the heartbeat, life-support and early warning
system
• Of course, workflow, user experience and end-to-end testing are required
• But these can be managed by business analysts, UX experts and the stakeholder community.
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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The testing ‘crunch’
• Testing is being squeezed:– From the ‘low-value’ norm of unskilled teams…– To upstream, business-savvy, workflow-
oriented, UX-aware testing experts, with new tools
• BAs who can test… or testers who can BA• How many of the current generation of
testers and test managers will cope with this change?
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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‘The purpose of testing is to locate defects’ ?• This stood us in good stead in the 80sand 90s• But stakeholders (all of them) know that avoiding
defects is better than finding them– Standard test approaches are good at providing the
documentation (sort of) but are an inefficient way of detecting defects
– Exploration is effective but happens at the end
• “Let’s take requirements more seriously, let’s get the devs to test, let’s offshore the paperwork”
• Testers need to understand they are in the information business.
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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Predictions
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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#1Half of the current
onshore testing community will see their job disappear
in the next five years.
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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#2Business test planning will
become part of up-front analysis and design (where it
should be)Intelligent Testing, Improvement and
AssuranceSlide 19
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#3Functional unit
testing driven by stories (mostly)
Structural testing defined by developers
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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#4Requirements and business models
will become ‘executable’
through stories and examples
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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#5Some system tests
and most acceptance tests
will be model-driven
(models created by analysts)Intelligent Testing, Improvement and
AssuranceSlide 22
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#6Business models plus stories and examples will
increasingly be ‘contractual’
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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#7System Test
detailing – the creation of
executable manual tests will be outsourced
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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#8Manual system test
execution will be outsourced (and in
the cloud)
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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#9Maybe half of all acceptance tests will be automated
in CI……foreverIntelligent Testing, Improvement and
AssuranceSlide 26
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#10New tools will emerge that
manage requirements,
stories, scenarios, workflows,
prototyping and testing
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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Recommendation
Take a long, hard look at where your future lies
Which of the following suits you?
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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#1Upstream with
stakeholders and analysis – providing
testing and assurance skills to
businessIntelligent Testing, Improvement and
AssuranceSlide 29
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#2Managing the
Business Requirements
knowledge base; analysing business impact of change
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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#3Providing an
assurance function to teams, projects,
and business stakeholders
(“testmaster”)Intelligent Testing, Improvement and
AssuranceSlide 31
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#4Managing the
information flows to/from
development teams and the CI
processIntelligent Testing, Improvement and
AssuranceSlide 32
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#5Managing/
monitoring offshore resources who
detail and execute tests
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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Shameless Plug
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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Business Story Method™
The Method, to be published in booklet form in early
December, supports this vision
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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Our Story Platform implements the Business Story
MethodMaelscrum for Agile
Business Story Manager for Structured
Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
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Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance
Slide 37
Want to evaluateBusiness Story Manager or
Maelscrum?
Visit…maelscrum.com
businessstorymanager.com
Thanks once again
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Rethinking the Role of Testers in Agile and Structured Projects
Paul [email protected]: @paul_gerrardWeb: gerrardconsulting.com
Slide 38Intelligent Testing, Improvement and Assurance