Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams

We interviewed several teams to learn what advice they would give new agile teams and testers, and solicited success stories and “lessons learned” from colleagues in the agile testing community. Heartfelt thanks to our many contributors of sidebars and quotes, as well as providers of helpful feedback, including (in no particular order) Robin Dymond, Bret Pettichord, Tae Chang, Bob Galen, Erika Boyer, Grig Gheorghiu, Erik Bos, Mark Benander, Jonathan Rasmusson, Andy Pols, Dierk König, Rafael Santos, Jason Holzer, Christophe Louvion, David Reed, John Voris, Chris McMahon, Declan Whelan, Michael Bolton, Elisabeth Hendrickson, Joe Yakich, Andrew Glover, Alessandro Collino, Coni Tartaglia, Markus Gärtner, Megan Sumrell, Nathan Silberman, Mike Thomas, Mike Busse, Steve Perkins, Joseph King, Jakub Oleszkiewicz, Pierre Veragen (again), Paul Rogers (again), Jon Hagar, Antony Marcano, Patrick Wilson-Welsh, Patrick Fleisch, Apurva Chandra, Ken De Souza, and Carol Vaage.

Many thanks also to the rest of our community of unofficial reviewers who read chapters, gave feedback and ideas, and let us bounce ideas off of them, including Tom Poppendieck, Jun Bueno, Kevin Lawrence, Hannu Kokko, Titus Brown, Wim van de Goor, Lucas Campos, Kay Johansen, Adrian Howard, Henrik Kniberg, Shelly Park, Robert Small, Senaka Suriyaachchi, and Erik Petersen. And if we’ve neglected to list you here, it’s not that we value your contribution any less, it’s just that we didn’t keep good enough notes! We hope you will see how your time and effort paid off in the finished book.

We appreciate the groundwork laid by the agile pioneers who have helped us and our teams succeed with agile. You’ll find some of their works in the bibliography. We are grateful for the agile teams that have given us so many open source test tools that help all of our teams deliver so much value. Some of those tools are also listed in the bibliography.

Thanks to Mike Thomas for taking many of the action photos of an agile team that appear in this book. We hope these photos show those of you new to agile testing and development that there’s no big mystery—it’s just good people getting together to discuss, demo, and draw pictures.

Thanks so much to our Addison-Wesley editorial and production team who patiently answered many questions and turned this into the professional-looking book you see here, including Raina Chrobak, Chris Zahn, John Fuller, Sally Gregg, Bonnie Granat, Diane Freed, Jack Lewis, and Kim Arney.

Lisa’s Story

I’m eternally grateful to Janet for agreeing to write this book with me. She kept us organized and on track so we could juggle book writing with our full-time jobs and personal lives. I’m fortunate to have a writing partner whose experience is complementary to mine. Like any successful agile project, this is a true team effort. This has been hard work, but thanks to Janet it has been a lot of fun, too.

I’d like to thank the members of my current team at ePlan Services Inc. (formerly known as Fast401k), which I joined (thanks to Mike Cohn, our first leader) in 2003. All of us learned so much working for Mike that first year, and it’s a testament to his leadership that we continue to improve and help the business grow. Thanks to my awesome teammates who have each helped me become a better tester and agile team member, and who were all good sports while Mike Thomas took action photos of us: Nanda Lankapalli, Tony Sweets, Jeff Thuss, Lisa Owens, Mike Thomas, Vince Palumbo, Mike Busse, Nehru Kaja, Trevor Sterritt, Steve Kives, and former but still beloved team members Joe Yakich, Jason Kay, Jennifer Riefenberg, Matt Tierney, and Charles LeRose. I also have been lucky enough to work with the best customer team anywhere. They are too numerous to mention here, but many thanks to them, and in particular to Steve Perkins, Anne Olguin, and Zachary Shannon, who help us focus on delivering value. Thanks also to Mark and Dan Gutrich, founders and leaders of ePlan Services, for giving us all the opportunity to succeed with agile development.

Thanks to Kay and Zhon Johansen for teaching me about mind maps at Agile 2006. I hope we have put this skill to good use in creating this book.

Much gratitude to all my friends and family, whom I neglected terribly during the many months spent writing this book, and who nevertheless supported me constantly. There are too many to mention, but I must specially thank Anna Blake for her constant understanding and provision of donkey therapy. Chester and Ernest, the donkeys of my heart, have kept pulling me along. Dodger didn’t make the whole book-writing journey in this world, but his memory continues to lift me up. My little poodle and muse Tango was by my side every minute that I worked on this book at home, joined occasionally by Bruno, Bubba, Olive, Squiggy, Starsky, Bobcat, and Patty. Thanks to my parents for being proud of me and not complaining about my neglect of them during this book-writing time.