Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams

These requirements brought candidates more suited to an agile testing job. I proceeded carefully with screening, ruling out people with a “quality police” mentality. Testers who pursued professional development and showed interest in agile development were more likely to have the right mind-set. The team needed someone who would be strong in the area of test tools and automation, so a passion for learning was paramount.

This more creative approach to recruiting a tester paid off. At that time, it wasn’t easy to find good “agile tester” candidates, but subsequent searches went more smoothly. We found that posting the tester position in less obvious places, such as a Ruby mailing list or the local agile user group, helped reach a wider range of suitable candidates.

Hiring an agile tester taught me a lot about the agile testing mind-set. There are testers with very good skill sets who would be valuable to any traditional test team but would not be a good fit on an agile team because of their attitude toward testing.

—Lisa

We need to consider more than just the roles that testers and programmers perform on the team. No matter what role you’re trying to fill, the most important consideration is how that person will fit on your team. With the agile whole-team approach, specialists on the team might be asked to step outside their areas of expertise and pitch in on other activities. Each team member needs to have a strong focus on quality and delivering business value. Consider more than just technical skills when you’re expanding your team.

Building a Team

We’ve talked a lot about the whole-team approach. But changes like that don’t just happen. We get asked questions like, “How do we get the team to jell?” or “How do we promote the whole-team approach?” One of the big ones is: “How do we keep everyone motivated and focused on the goal of delivering business value?”

Self-Organizing Team

In our experience, teams make the best progress when they’re empowered to identify and solve their own problems. If you’re a manager, resist the temptation to impose all your good ideas on the team. There are problems, such as personnel issues, that are best solved by managers, and there are times a coach needs to provide strong encouragement and lead the team when it needs leadership. It takes time for a new agile team to learn how to prioritize and solve its problems, but it’s okay for the team to make mistakes and stumble a few times. We think a high-functioning team has to grow itself. If you’re a tester, you’re in a good position to help the team figure out ways to get fast feedback, use practices such as retrospectives to prioritize and address issues, and find the techniques that help your team produce better software.

Involving Other Teams

You might need to get other teams on board to help your team succeed. Set up meetings; find ways to communicate as much as possible. Use a Scrum of Scrums to keep multiple teams coordinated, or just get involved with the other teams. If you have to bring in an expert to help with security testing, pair with that expert and learn as much as you can, and help them learn about your project.

If teams are scattered in different locations and time zones, figure out how to get as much direct communication as possible. Maybe representatives from each team can adjust their hours once or twice a week so that they can teleconference once a week. Make a phone call instead of sending an email whenever possible. Lisa’s team adjusted its planning meeting times to include a remote team member who works late at night. They schedule meetings for a time where his day overlaps with the rest of the team’s day.

Chapter 9, “Toolkit for Business-Facing Tests that Support the Team,” gives examples of tools that help remote teams collaborate.

Every Team Member Has Equal Value

Every team member has equal value to the team. If testers or any other team members feel left out or less valued, the whole-team approach is doomed. Make sure testers are invited to all meetings. If you’re a tester and someone forgets to invite you to a meeting, invite yourself. Nontechnical testers might think they’ll be out of place or overwhelmed at a design meeting, but sometimes they ask good questions that the techies didn’t think of.

Testers have a right to ask for and get help. If you’re a tester stuck on an automation problem, have the courage to ask a team member for help. That person might be busy right now, but he or she must commit to helping you in a reasonable amount of time. If you’re a manager or leader on your team, make sure this is happening, and raise the issue to the team if it’s not.

Performance and Rewards