Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams

I know that my husband, Bob Downing, took a deep breath when I exclaimed, “I have the chance to write another book about agile testing,” but he nevertheless encouraged me constantly and made it possible for me to find the time to write. He kept the “no-kill shelter” running, kept our lives rolling, kept my spirits up, and sustained me with many fabulous meals. He is the light of my life. —Lisa

Janet’s Story

Lisa and I made a great team; each of us had our own strengths. When one of us faltered and took some time to recoup, the other picked up the slack. I learned so much from Lisa (thanks go to her for giving me this opportunity), but I also found I learned a lot from myself. Just the process of articulating my thoughts helped to clarify things that had been rumbling around in my brain for a long time. The mindmaps helped immensely, so thanks to Kenji Hiranabe, who gave a workshop at Agile 2007 and made me realize what a powerful yet simple tool mind maps can be.

This book-writing journey was an amazing experience. Thanks to the people on all the teams I worked with who provided so many of the examples in this book.

It’s been a pretty special year all the way around. During the year (or so) it took to write this book, my family increased in size. My two daughters, Dana and Susan, each gave me a grandson—those were some of the times Lisa picked up the slack. I would like to thank my granddaughter Lauren (currently three) for making me leave my computer and play. It kept me sane. Thanks to my sister Colleen who gave me long-distance encouragement many mornings using instant messenger when I was feeling overwhelmed with the sheer number of hours I was putting in.

And a very special thanks to Jack, my husband, who moved his office downstairs when I took over the existing one. There were times when I am sure he felt neglected and wondered if he even had a wife as he spend many long hours alone. However, he was there with me the whole way, encouraging and supporting me in this endeavor. —Janet

About the Authors

Lisa Crispin is an agile testing practitioner and coach. She specializes in showing testers and agile teams how testers can add value and how to guide development with business-facing tests. Her mission is to bring agile joy to the software testing world and testing joy to the agile development world. Lisa joined her first agile team in 2000, having enjoyed many years working as a programmer, analyst, tester, and QA director. Since 2003, she’s been a tester on a Scrum/XP team at ePlan Services, Inc. She frequently leads tutorials and workshops on agile testing at conferences in North America and Europe. Lisa regularly contributes articles about agile testing to publications such as Better Software magazine, IEEE Software, and Methods and Tools. Lisa also co-authored Testing Extreme Programming (Addison-Wesley, 2002) with Tip House.

For more about Lisa’s work, visit her websites, www.lisacrispin.com and www.agiletester.ca, or email her at lisa@agiletester.ca.

Janet Gregory is the founder of DragonFire Inc., an agile quality process consultancy and training firm. Her passion is helping teams build quality systems. For the past ten years, she has worked as a coach and tester, introducing agile practices into both large and small companies. Her focus is working with business users and testers to understand their role in agile projects. Janet’s programming background is a definite plus when she partners with developers on her agile teams to implement innovative agile test automation solutions. Janet is a frequent speaker at agile and testing software conferences, and she is a major contributor to the North American agile testing community.

For more about Janet’s work, visit her websites at www.janetgregory.ca, www.janetgregory.blogspot.com, and www.agiletester.ca, or you can email her at janet@agiletester.ca.

Part I Introduction

In the first two chapters, we provide an overview of agile testing, highlighting how agile testing differs from testing in a traditional phased or “waterfall” approach. We explore the “whole team” approach to quality and testing.

Chapter 1 What Is Agile Testing, Anyway?