Simona Hera - A Practical Guide for Testers in Agile Teams

© Copyright 2008 QA Logics© 2008 Actenum Corporation
How can testers team up with developers
in an Agile environment?
A Practical Guide
By Simona Hera
Presented at
Much Ado about Agile III Vancouver
on November 6th
, 2008

Background
 It is no secret that in agile teams, developers and
testers are teamed together
 If for developers the transition to agile meant test-
driven development and working code at all times, for
testers the path to agile is not as easy
 Testers need to improve their technical and people
skills, must embrace change and not resist it

Today’s objectives
 Discuss about what agile testers are going through
on a daily basis throughout an iteration
 Take back to your team the following checklists and
use them as guidelines to ensure you have done just
enough, just on time
 You won’t become a better communicator or a more
technical tester but you’ll have an idea of what kind of
support you need to ask from your team to become
one

Imagine this…
 One tester for three (or more?) developers
 For the first half of the iteration, the tester defines
(implements) tests
 For the second half, the tester waits for code to be
ready for testing. By the time all code is checked in,
the tester is swamped with manual and regression
testing, logging and verifying bugs, investigating why
automated tests still fail… One more day to go…
Can’t possibly finish! The client is waiting for this
upgrade and marketing is posting press releases
already!
 This hasn’t happened to any of you, has it?

What went wrong?
 Defining tests was an independent work task
 Individual development work items were treated as
“waterfall”
 Quality check at the end not upfront
 No accountability for one’s work and the team’s
deliverable
 No options
 Nobody saw the warning signs in the burn-down chart
 How many times you said next time you won’t do the
same mistakes?

A second chance
 With every new iteration you get a second change:
try to tweak and apply at least one of the items in the
checklists presented next
 Ask for technical training
 It is your responsibility to plan, prioritize and assess
risks on all your testing tasks
 You are the key team member that provides early
feedback

Iteration Planning
 Be there
 Be heard: try to be client’s advocate
 Challenge but do not argue
 Why is this user story implemented and not the
other?
 What is the cost of failure?
 What is the priority?
 Pull out all the assumptions
 Request developer time and commitment to
automate configuration management tasks or
produce test fixtures
 At least one improvement: take one testing backlog
item and have it added to this iteration

Iteration Day 1
 The list of work items you must test
 Add your testing estimates
 Based on risk, priority and developers estimates you
can tell what you test first
 Check the critical path
 Leave some slack
 Check for over-allocation
 Define acceptance criteria

Iteration Day 2
 Define, review and publish acceptance tests
(including interaction between new user stories)
 Update the manual smoke test
 Learn from the unit tests
 Generate, review and store test data
 Identify the manual regression suite

Daily Meeting
 Keep an eye on slippage into test time windows
 Remind of assigned and unassigned defects
 Notify of blocking issues
 Be alert of any user story last-minute changes
 Ask for partial work to be checked in
 Notify of failing tests that used to pass the day
before

Iteration Day 3 to Day 6
 Automate acceptance tests
 Pair with developers to review the test code
 Run the coverage tool
 Build from source control
 Run with asserts on
 Execute manual tests: the important tests first
 Manage defects

How To Uncover Defects
 Run a static analysis tool
 Failed automated tests from all iterations
 Database schema changes
 Run manual smoke test
 Two work items that touch the same component
 Run a memory profiler tool
 Code poorly documented
 Look for ‘TODO’ in the code

Iteration Day 7 to Day 9
 Re-prioritize test tasks
 Ask developers to walk you through their work item –
the way a user would
 Verify defects
 Pair up with developers to complete automating the
acceptance tests
 No more than 2 assigned defects per developer
 Run all manual tests

Iteration Day 10
 Verify the last defects
 Review the documentation
 Run manual acceptance tests on the release build
 Revise tests to match the updated and implemented
user story and not the original specification
 Update the release log
 Add to the release backlog all issues that hindered
this iteration
 Demo to marketing and product owner
 Attend the retrospective and planning of the next
iteration

Conclusions
 Change in attitude: help others while you self
manage your tasks
 Continuous learning
 Address mistakes
 Build relationships with clients
 Start fresh and eliminate the noise
 Be wise and learn from others experiences, do not
repeat mistakes
 Remember, your work is important

Q & A
 Yours first:

Q & A
 Yours first:
 Now mine:
 Was this helpful?
 What is the one thing you take back to your team?
 How is your current process or experience
different?
Thank you!

Simona Hera - A Practical Guide for Testers in Agile Teams

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