Agile TestingBuilding Quality In

Agile Guild Meeting 23/06/16Richard Cowling, Principal SEiT,

EMIS Health Primary Care

What is an Agile Tester?

“Embrace change” “Key to feedback”

“Collaborate well with technical and business people”

“Documents requirements with tests”

“Willing to learn - to understand customers / users”

“is user/customer focus …”

“Helps drives development / delivery …”

“Without attitude skill is nothing…”

“They see the big picture”

The Agile Testing Mind-set Creative Open Proactive Team-oriented Inquisitive/Explorer/Pioneering Tenacious/Dogged Authoritative

Collaborative Methodical Scientist Results orientedDelivery and value focused

Engineer An enthusiast

Applying Agile Principles and Values

• Focus on people, interaction and communication. – especially face-to-face communication.

• Self organising and autonomous. • “Lean” thinking … and context-driven• Feedback loops – and taking small steps• It’s about delivering value. • Getting stuff done - AND done right. Fail fast.• Keep it simple

Delivering Value• The focus is on adding value, which means …• Keeping the project focused and on track … keeping the

development teams and the customer teams aligned with each other

• Questioning customers and developers early and often - - increasing understanding and reducing risk. Flushing out assumptions …

• … integrated team oriented approach – distinct from being waterfall quality inspectors – where testing is a delivery overhead.

• BUILDING QUALITY IN - FROM THE GET GO.

Summary on a page, so far …• An “agile testing mind-set” is customer-focused, results-

oriented, collaborative, creative, eager to learn, and passionate about delivering business value in a timely manner.

• Attitude is important, and it blurs the lines between testers, programmers, and other roles on an agile team.

• Agile testers apply agile values and principles such as frequent feedback, communication, simplicity, and delivering value in order to help the team identify and deliver the customer requirements for each story.

• Agile testers add value to their teams and their organizations with their unique viewpoint and team-oriented approach.

Agile Testing Principles1. Testing moves the project forward2. Testing is not a phase – test continuously!3. Everybody tests – avoid bottlenecks = “lean flow”4. Reduce feedback latency – shorten feedback loops5. Tests represent expectations6. Keep the kitchen clean – don’t cook in a dirty

kitchen7. Nothing is “Done, Done” until tested and tests

automated too. Definition of done is key!8. Don’t test last – test first. Be test driven. Be test

infected!!!!

Testing moves the project forward

“From being the last line of defence … to providing information, visibility and feedback”

Testing is not a phase – test continuously for genuinely continuous progress

Everybody tests

“If the developers ride off into the sunset, leaving the testers behind you’re doing it wrong.”

Reduce Feedback latency

“No surprises please!! No invisible bow-waves of issues and defects should develop in front of our ship! – Keep progress or lack of progress visible … FAIL FAST and ACT!Keep us aimed at the stakeholders targets”

Tests represent expectationsObserving actual expectations vs. Interpreting written requirements

Keep the kitchen clean – you shouldn’t cook in a dirty kitchen!

Tested, and test automated as part of “Definition of Done”

Don’t test last – test first. Be test driven. Be test infected!!!!

Key Practices

1. Automation – only way to cover regression risk with such frequent change.

2. Acceptance test drive development3. Exploratory Testing

Further Study …

• Elisabeth Hedrickson’s blog “Test Obsessed”• The books “Agile Testing” and “More Agile

Testing” by Janet Gregory and Lisa Crispin• … also check-out on YouTube talks on testing

by Michael Bolton, and Kent Beck, and James Bach … follow them and others on twitter …

• The hashtags #Agile and #Testing when combined in a tweet can be useful …