Agile Testing
Filed under: Agile, Quality, Teams, Test-Driven Development — @ 10:12 am
During the transition phase from a tradition process to an Agile process, the word “Test” and it related activities, in my experience, always seemed to draw a heated debated between the developers and the testers in a company. Using an Agile framework, the test activities are drawn forward in time to the point where testing starts right from the beginning of software production. There is also the concept of “One Team”, where testers and developers are all “team members” with specialist roles, thus reducing the unpleasant “us and them” culture that was cultivated over the past years.
Test activities are drawn forward by bringing people with test and quality assurance knowledge into the scoping and estimation meetings and participate in the team all throughout the project. The main reason is that we are not only testing what is being produced, but the entire process (some of which we always do without noticing). We test the nature of the functionality, explore the customer and manager’s pre-conceptions, verify domain knowledge, check the validity of the design concepts, what is being produced and what has been produced in the past.
This topic has been discussed quite extensively online and here are some links to blogs, articles and discussions on the subject: