A couple of months ago, we invited Janet Gregory to our company for a sharing on Agile Testing. Janet is the co-author of the Agile Testing book. One of the key take away from the sharing was testing is an activity throughout the sprint. It’s not a phase where testing can started after development is done. In addition, she also mentioned 7 key factors for an Agile testing which I found really interesting.
1. A Whole-team Approach
Testing is no longer only the responsibility of QA engineers, we as a team should focus on the quality where team members commit the production of quality works and it’s a task for everyone inside the team. It’s collaboration between developers and testers on a daily basis to support each other.
2. Adopt Agile Testing Mindset
Rather than saying “We’re here to break the software!” we should think about “What can we do to help deliver the software successfully?” we can apply the Agile principle and value where we strive to continually improve ourselves
3. Automate Regression Tests
Repetitive tasks are boring, especially when it comes to testing. Developers should spend more time and effort on exploratory tests and all the –ility testing, for example usability, performance, security, capability tests. So, we should try to automate the entire low level test – unit tests, integration test, and some system tests!
She also mentions about the testing quadrants ( Check out our article on how to use these quadrants), it’s very helpful to categorise what kind of test we should spend more time on.
4. Provide and Obtain Feedback
Agile is all about feedback. It’s a core value where it helps us to plan and react to the problem. We use feedback to improve and testers are very good at providing feedback to the team. It costs much less to get early feedback than waiting months to fix a problem.
5. Build a Foundation of Core Agile
Having the technical practices such as continuous integration, testing environment and managing technical debt are helpful to be successful at agile testing, because without these practices we would not be able to move as quickly as we can to adapt to the changes and also ensure our quality remains unchanged.
6. Collaborating with Customers
Talking to customers regularly, or even better, to have them join the discussion within the team would help the team solve customers’ problem more effectively. Showing options and identify the risks also help customer to make the best decision.
7. Look at the Big Picture
Use business-facing and real world examples to drive the development. It’s not the story of requirement but it’s the entire workflow that is connected together, this will help us to think what could be the impacts on other areas.
In conclusion, to be successful at Agile testing, it’s a team approach with the Agile mindset that will help to improve the teams. Having quick feedback from customers and all the automated tests are values to guide the team to learn and grow.
References:
T.8ytes by Titansoft 