Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams

We showed how the Agile Manifesto relates to testing, with its emphasis on individuals and interactions, working software, customer collaboration, and responding to change.

We provided some context for this book, including some other terms we use such as “tester,” “programmer,” “customer,” and related terms so that we can speak a common language.

We explained how agile testing, with its focus on business value and delivering the quality customers require, is different from traditional testing, which focuses on conformance to requirements.

We introduced the “whole-team” approach to agile testing, which means that everyone involved with delivering software is responsible for delivering high-quality software.

We advised taking a practical approach by applying agile values and principles to overcome agile testing obstacles that arise in your unique situation.

Chapter 2 Ten Principles for Agile Testers

Everyone on an agile team is a tester. Anyone can pick up testing tasks. If that’s true, then what is special about an agile tester? If I define myself as a tester on an agile team, what does that really mean? Do agile testers need different skill sets than testers on traditional teams? What guides them in their daily activities?

In this chapter, we talk about the agile testing mind-set, show how agile values and principles guide testing, and give an overview of how testers add value on agile teams.

What’s an Agile Tester?

We define an agile tester this way: a professional tester who embraces change, collaborates well with both technical and business people, and understands the concept of using tests to document requirements and drive development. Agile testers tend to have good technical skills, know how to collaborate with others to automate tests, and are also experienced exploratory testers. They’re willing to learn what customers do so that they can better understand the customers’ software requirements.

Who’s an agile tester? She’s a team member who drives agile testing. We know many agile testers who started out in some other specialization. A developer becomes test-infected and branches out beyond unit testing. An exploratory tester, accustomed to working in an agile manner, is attracted to the idea of an agile team. Professionals in other roles, such as business or functional analysts, might share the same traits and do much of the same work.

Skills are important, but attitude counts more. Janet likes to say, “Without the attitude, the skill is nothing.” Having had to hire numerous testers for our agile teams, we’ve put a lot of thought into this and discussed it with others in the agile community. Testers tend to see the big picture. They look at the application more from a user or customer point of view, which means they’re generally customer-focused.

The Agile Testing Mind-Set

What makes a team “agile”? To us, an agile team is one that continually focuses on doing its best work and delivering the best possible product. In our experience, this involves a ton of discipline, learning, time, experimentation, and working together. It’s not for everyone, but it’s ideal for those of us who like the team dynamic and focus on continual improvement.

Successful projects are a result of good people allowed to do good work. The characteristics that make someone succeed as a tester on an agile team are probably the same characteristics that make a highly valued tester on any team.

An agile tester doesn’t see herself as a quality police officer, protecting her customers from inadequate code. She’s ready to gather and share information, to work with the customer or product owner in order to help them express their requirements adequately so that they can get the features they need, and to provide feedback on project progress to everyone.

Agile testers, and maybe any tester with the right skills and mind-set, are continually looking for ways the team can do a better job of producing high-quality software. On a personal level, that might mean attending local user group meetings or roundtables to find out what other teams are doing. It also means trying out new tools to help the team do a better job of specifying, executing, and automating customer requirements as tests.