Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams

How to Use This Book

If you aren’t sure where to start in this book, or you just want a quick overview, we suggest you read the last chapter, Chapter 21, “Key Success Factors,” and follow wherever it leads you.

Part I: Introduction

If you want quick answers to questions such as “Is agile testing different than testing on waterfall projects?” or “What’s the difference between a tester on a traditional team and an agile tester?,” start with Part I, which includes the following chapters:

Chapter 1: What Is Agile Testing, Anyway?

Chapter 2: Ten Principles for Agile Testers

These chapters are the “tip of the iceberg” that Robin requested in his user story. They include an overview of how agile differs from a traditional phased approach and explore the “whole team” approach to quality and testing.

In this part of the book we define the “agile testing mind-set” and what makes testers successful on agile teams. We explain how testers apply agile values and principles to contribute their particular expertise.

Part II: Organizational Challenges

If you’re a tester or manager on a traditional QA team, or you’re coaching a team that’s moving to agile, Part II will help you with the organizational challenges faced by teams in transition. The “whole team” attitude represents a lot of cultural changes to team members, but it helps overcome the fear testers have when they wonder how much control they’ll have or whether they’ll be expected to write code.

Some of the questions answered in Part II are:

How can we engage the QA team?

What about management’s expectations?

How should we structure our agile team, and where do the testers fit?

What do we look for when hiring an agile tester?

How do we cope with a team distributed across the globe?

Part II also introduces some topics we don’t always enjoy talking about. We explore ideas about how to transition processes and models, such as audits or SOX compliance, that are common in traditional environments.

Metrics and how they’re applied can be a controversial issue, but there are positive ways to use them to benefit the team. Defect tracking easily becomes a point of contention for teams, with questions such as “Do we use a defect-tracking system?” or “When do we log bugs?”

Two common questions about agile testing from people with traditional test team experience are “What about test plans?” and “Is it true there’s no documentation on agile projects?” Part II clears up these mysteries.

The chapters in Part II are as follows:

Chapter 3: Cultural Challenges

Chapter 4: Team Logistics

Chapter 5: Transitioning Typical Processes

Part III: The Agile Testing Quadrants

Do you want more details on what types of testing are done on agile projects? Are you wondering who does what testing? How do you know whether you’ve done all the testing that’s needed? How do you decide what practices, techniques, and tools fit your particular situation? If these are your concerns, check out Part III.

We use Brian Marick’s Agile Testing Quadrants to explain the purpose of testing. The quadrants help you define all the different areas your testing should address, from unit level tests to reliability and other “ilities,” and everything in between. This is where we get down into the nitty-gritty of how to deliver a high-quality product. We explain techniques that can help you to communicate well with your customers and better understand their requirements. This part of the book shows how tests drive development at multiple levels. It also provides tools for your toolkit that can help you to effectively define, design, and execute tests that support the team and critique the product. The chapters include the following:

Chapter 6: The Purpose of Testing

Chapter 7: Technology-Facing Tests that Support the Team

Chapter 8: Business-Facing Tests that Support the Team

Chapter 9: Toolkit for Business-Facing Tests that Support the Team

Chapter 10: Business-Facing Tests that Critique the Product

Chapter 11: Critiquing the Product Using Technology-Facing Tests

Chapter 12: Summary of Testing Quadrants

Part IV: Automation

Test automation is a central focus of successful agile teams, and it’s a scary topic for lots of people (we know, because it’s had us running scared before!). How do you squeeze test automation into short iterations and still get all the stories completed?

Part IV gets into the details of when and why to automate, how to overcome barriers to test automation, and how to develop and implement a test automation strategy that works for your team. Because test automation tools change and evolve so rapidly, our aim is not to explain how to use specific tools, but to help you select and use the right tools for your situation. Our agile test automation tips will help you with difficult challenges such as testing legacy code.

The chapters are as follows:

Chapter 13: Why We Want to Automate Tests and What Holds Us Back

Chapter 14: An Agile Test Automation Strategy

Part V: An Iteration in the Life of a Tester

If you just want to get a feel for what testers do throughout the agile development cycle, or you need help putting together all the information in this book, go to Part V. Here we chronicle an iteration, and more, in the life of an agile tester. Testers contribute enormous value throughout the agile software development cycles. In Part V, we explain the activities that testers do on a daily basis. We start with planning releases and iterations to get each iteration off to a good start, and move through the iteration—collaborating with the customer and development teams, testing, and writing code. We end the iteration by delivering new features and finding ways for the team to improve the process.

The chapters break down this way:

Chapter 15: Tester Activities in Release or Theme Planning

Chapter 16: Hit the Ground Running

Chapter 17: Iteration Kickoff

Chapter 18: Coding and Testing

Chapter 19: Wrap Up the Iteration

Chapter 20: Successful Delivery

Part VI: Summary

In Chapter 21, “Key Success Factors,” we present seven key factors agile teams can use for successful testing. If you’re having trouble deciding where to start with agile testing, or how to work on improving what you’re doing now, these success factors will give you some direction.

Other Elements

We’ve also included a glossary we hope you will find useful, as well as references to books, articles, websites, and blogs in the bibliography.