Testers in an agile world

Role Of A Tester

Skills

Testing Tools

Team Structure

Supporting The Team

High Quality

CI

Feedback Loops

ATDD/TDD

Exploratory Testing

Automation

Company structure

Product Owner workshop by Practical Agile is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

A-HA wall

Parking lot

Product Owner workshop by Practical Agile is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 4

Product Owner workshop by Practical Agile is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 5


Photos


In each Group:

What are the 3 biggest issues your facing today, with you development process?

Lets Discuss

Eliminate waste.

Faster release cycles.

Deliver maximum business value.

Measure and improve.

Respond to change.

Increase quality.

Have Fun.

SCRUM is very simple A complex process draws focus from real issues.

SCRUM maximize feedback Using SCRUM everything is known.

All the information to enable good decision making

SCRUM is flexible Gives the ability to respond to change

Inspect and adapt

First Step – Prepare the Product Backlog

Stories Priority Estimate

As a user I want to be able to input disability % data using a GUI, so it will be faster.

1 5

As a user I want to get the calculation result for a complex case 2 3

As a developer I want to be able to input disability % data using a text file, so it can be easier to test.

3 1

As a user I want to be able to store result to a file 4 1

As a user I want to be able to easily install the application. 5 3

As a user I want to be able to learn how to use the application 6 2

A story represents a requirement

3C’s – Ron Jeffries

Card – Placeholder for conversation

Conversation – discussion between implementer and customer

Confirmation – Definition Of Done (DOD)

Possible format:

As a ____ I want ______ so that _____.

Stories Pri. Est.

As a user I want … 1 5




Stories Pri. Est.

As a user I want … 1 5 As a user I want … 2 3 As a user I want … 3 1 As a user I want … 4 1 As a user I want … 5 3 As a user I want … 6 1 As a user I want … 7 1 As a user I want … 8 3 As a user I want … 9 1 As a user I want … 10 1

Sprint 2

Rest


As a user I want … 1 5 As a user I want … 2 3 As a user I want … 3 1 As a user I want … 4 1 As a user I want … 5 3 As a user I want … 6 5 As a user I want … 7 3 As a user I want … 8 1 As a user I want … 9 1 As a user I want … 10 3 As a user I want … 11 5 As a user I want … 12 3 As a user I want … 13 1 As a user I want … 14 1 As a user I want … 15 3 As a user I want … 16 5 As a user I want … 17 3 As a user I want … 18 1

… … …

Product Backlog

Stories Pri. Est.







Sprint 1

Sprint is a short cycle in which work get done.

Typically between 1-4 weeks

Once started, content does not change

Goal

Allow the team to work, without interference, in order to produce a potentially shippable product that will increase business value.

A sprint results in a Product Increment.

Product Backlog

Sprint Planning

Story To Do In Progress Done

As a user…

As a user…

As a user…

As a user…


As a user I want … 1 5 As a user I want … 2 3 As a user I want … 3 1 As a user I want … 4 1 As a user I want … 5 3 As a user I want … 6 5 As a user I want … 7 3 As a user I want … 8 1 As a user I want … 9 1 As a user I want … 10 3 As a user I want … 11 5 As a user I want … 12 3 As a user I want … 13 1 As a user I want … 14 1 As a user I want … 15 3 As a user I want … 16 5 As a user I want … 17 3 As a user I want … 18 1 As a user I want … 19 1 As a user I want … 20 3 As a user I want … 21 5 As a user I want … 22 3

… … …

Stand up meeting held every day (15 minutes).

Each team member answer 3 questions (only) What has he done the previous day,

What is he going to do today

Is there anything holding him back (that the team can help with).

Goals Daily planning

Communication with other team members

Get feedback

General feedback – are we headed in the right direction

Specific feedback – to the stories completed

feedback should reflect in product backlog.

Scrum is an adaptive process Review what went well and we want to keep,

and what needs to be changed.

Team forming Let the team be heard

Let the team handle issues

Reflect on overall plan Changes to release plans.

Changes to goals.

Agile = no process Scrum is a rigorous process.

Agile = No Documentation Agile stresses only needed documentation.

Agile = No Design Design is an ongoing activity.

Agile = No Planning Just in Time & just enough Information.

Agile = Small Teams Has been scaled to very large groups (hundreds).

Goal Setting (on many levels) Responsible for the ROI. Responsible for the product backlog

Writing Stories Prioritization Updating backlog

Helps the developers understand what needs to be done

DOD – Definition Of Done Conflicts resolution

Approval of work.

Part of the Team

No Authority on the team

Roles

Obstacle remover

Facilitator

External communication

Responsible for the process

Shield the Team

Estimate story size

Split stories into tasks (sprint planning)

Estimate tasks

Build the product

In charge of quality

Communicate progress and impediments

Improve!

In each Group:

Go over the list of issues we have and see if you can find things in the process that might address them.

Lets Discuss

Team size should be 5-9 members.

Focus on team results:

• Team must share a common goal.

Team should be heterogeneous:

• Include coders, testers, DBA, GUI,…

Self Contained teams:

• All required skills are present at the team level.

• Allow the team to progress at full speed.

1. Forming polite but untrusting.

2. Storming I know best.

3. Norming Maybe they can help me.

4. Performing They are really good.

Tuckman added a 5th stage 10 years later: 5. Adjourning

Time to move on.

Versatile

Should be able to do several things.

Responsible

Take ownership of the process

Collaborative

“Lone wolves” generally does not fit an agile team.

Development and QA are often operational silos.

Tests are derived from detailed requirements and specifications.

Usually don’t actively participate in planning

Almost never help in the product design

Testers are often viewed as second class citizens

They are not active partners at building the product

Developers considers testing as an obstacle in the delivery process.

Testers do not get the necessary knowledge (from R&D) to test effectively.

Represents the customer.

Approve new work.

Improve the testing process.

May help in defects handling.

Help define and elicit the acceptance criteria (or requirements)

Preferably in the form of automated acceptance tests.

Work with the customer (PO) to identify risks

If its hard to test it might be very hard to use.

Provide information to customer about Quality.

Performing regression tests When major changes are about to be committed.

Validate acceptance criteria's

Exploratory testing Put more testing effort into the areas where the developers tests (unit and integration) are weakest.

Quality must have an owner.

Train developers in effective testing.

Build specialized internal testing tools

Identify trends and areas of deteriorating quality.

Two main strategies Handle as they come

Postpone until next cycle and schedule as any other feature.

Pragmatic approach Allocate resources for treating critical defects as they come.

Postpone the rest (or when allocated resources are not enough)

Reproduce Defect

Work with customer to understand the issue.

Initial investigation

Is it a defect or a misunderstanding.

Root Cause Analysis

Defects are not acceptable.

Verify fix

To make sure this wont happen again.

In each Group:

Find a volunteer.

Have him map out his team/company testing process.

Write down the different kinds/Levels of testing they perform.

Try to find how much effort is allocated to each kind

Lets Discuss

The testing quadrants:

Q1: UTs, component tests

Q2: Functional tests, examples, story tests, prototyping, simulators

Q3: Exploratory tests, Scenarios, Usability testing, UAT, Alpha/Beta

Q4: Performance & load tests, Security tests, “illities” tests

The foundation that supports all of the rest. Make up the majority of the automation test scripts

Written usually in the same language of the production code is, to increase communication within the team members, using xUnit family of tools

After mastering TDD, these tests are with the most ROI, which means the least expensive ones

Very effective at catching regression bug

Usually done by the programmer who writes the code

Most of the automated business-facing tests Functional tests that verify we are “building the right thing” Operate at the API level, “below the GUI” Because these tests bypass the presentation layer, they are less expensive to write and maintain, and they are less brittle Should be written in domain specific language, that customers understand They run more slowly, to cover complex scenarios

Focus on GUI operated tests:

Provides the lowest ROI in the pyramid

Manipulate the system via the presentation layer

Written after code is completed, to critique the product

Likely to change often – as often as GUI changes

Run slow & breaks often– so we try to lower the number of tests there.

Never use a recorder to generate them

Have a lot of value

Should be intelligent (not scripted)

Utilize human advantages over the computer (exploratory testing)

If I Could have 3 magic boxes, I would like to know:

1. Am I doing things right?

2. Am I doing the right things?

3. Am I Adding Business Value?

This is what unit test are used for.

Unit tests: Are fast

Test each unit in isolation

Enable me to test all paths of my code

Will improve my technical design

E2E tests are a good tool for: Help me understand the requirements

E2E tests: Goes through all the system

Help me understand how the system behaves

Help me refine Acceptance Criteria

Automated Unit 60% - 70%

Automated E2E 20% - 30%

Exploratory 20% - 30%

Unit Testing

An integral part of the coding phase. (TDD)

All code should be tested before it moves to next stage

E2E Testing

Most of the effort is done as part of the requirement.

Actual automation in parallel to coding

Exploratory Testing

Final activity before Done.

Unit Testing Programmers (Each on his own code)

E2E Testing Product + Testers (Programmers) – define the test scenarios

Test Engineers/Programmers - Automation

Exploratory Testing Expert testers

Developed by Elisabeth Hendriksom

The system need to work

We need to be able to deploy it

Satisfy minimum functionality

Enough is enough

Minimum viable product (Lean Startup)

The system needs to work well

Scalability

Security

Availability…

Enough is enough

Quantify your goals.

Can the system be used?

User Interaction design

Graphical design

Creating a community

The system needs to help the users

Are the feature in use?

The 80-20 rule

Take out the feature which are not used

they have negative ROI

The system solves a business problem

Does it saves money?

Does it save time?

What are the business goals?

Was it right for the business in the first place?

Testers in an agile world

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