Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams

Determine what the best “bug fixing” choice for your team is, but a good goal is to aim to have no bugs by release time.

Add new automated tests to the regression suite and schedule it to run often enough to provide adequate feedback.

Manual exploratory testing helps find missing requirements after all the application has been coded.

Collaborate with other experts to get the resources and infrastructure needed to complete testing.

Consider what metrics you need during the iteration; progress and defect metrics are two examples.

Chapter 19 Wrap Up the Iteration

We’ve completed an iteration. What do testers do as the team wraps up this iteration and prepares for the next? We like to focus on how we and the rest of our team can improve and deliver a better product next time.

Iteration Demo

One of the pleasures of agile development is the chance to show completed stories to customers at the end of each iteration. Customers get to see a real, live, working application. They get to ask questions and give feedback. Everyone involved in the project, from both the business and technical sides, gets to enjoy a sense of accomplishment.

On Lisa’s team, the testers conduct the iteration review. Among all the team members, they’ve usually worked on the most stories. They have a natural role as information providers, and they have a good idea what the customers need to know about the new functionality. Having testers show off the deliverables is a common practice, although there is no hard and fast rule. The business experts on the team are a good choice for conducting the demo too, because they have the best understanding of how the software meets the business needs and they’ll feel greater ownership of the product. The ScrumMaster, a programmer, or a business analyst could demonstrate the new features and often does. Janet encourages rotating this honor.

Listening to the Customers

Pierre Veragen explains how his team uses iteration demonstrations.

“We shut up and listen to our customers. It’s all about the chemistry of the group’s presentation. Somehow, sharing the moment brings brains together—we look at things from a different perspective. The event gives birth to ideas and concepts. Some die as the next person speaks; some live on and become that great idea that differentiates the product.”

The demo is a chance to show off the new stories, but the feedback customers provide is the biggest reason to do them.

Anyone may note the comments made by customers as they participate in the demo, but testers are good candidates. They may notice previously undetected inconsistencies as the demo progresses. As questions come up, customers might decide they want to change something minor, such as help text, or something bigger, such as how a feature behaves. Minor changes can usually be made into tasks and dealt with in the next iteration, but some changes are big enough to turn into stories to plan into future releases.

Iteration demos (called sprint reviews in the Scrum world) are a super opportunity to get everyone talking and thinking about the application. Take advantage of it. Review meetings are usually short and can be under half an hour. If there’s time left over after demonstrating new stories, ask customers if they’ve experienced any problems with the previous release that they haven’t reported. Do they have any general concerns, do they need help understanding how to use a feature, or have any new issues arisen? Of course, you can talk to customers anytime, but having most of the stakeholders in the room with the development team can lead to interesting ideas.

Retrospectives

Agile development means continually improving the way you work, and retrospectives are an excellent place to start identifying what and how you can do better. We recommend taking time at the end of each iteration and release cycle to look back and talk about what went well, what didn’t, and what you might like to try in the next iteration. There are different approaches for conducting retrospective sessions. No matter what approach you use, it’s key that each team member feels safe, everyone is respected, and there’s no finger-pointing or blame.

The whole idea is to make the process better, one baby step at a time.

Start, Stop, Continue