November 8th, 2007Test Test Revolution
This morning I participated in an Agile Software Development panel. It was early but even through my fog of only a couple (as in 2) hours of sleep, I think some interesting thoughts and comments surfaced.
One thing that struck me was the discussion about the role of software testing within Agile practices. ‘Typically’ you’d want your testers living side by side with your developers. Even better, you’d want them working with the Product Owner to verify that the story was implemented satisfactorily. There was some discussion/disagreement about the scope that Test Drive Development can realistically cover and the need for formalized acceptance testing. A few people chimed in that although software development practices have evolved, testing/QA/SV practices have failed to keep up to the pace of change.
Around this point, Paul Carvalho (a former senior tester of mine), theorized that we needed to get testers more comfortable with Agile practices like Exploratory Testing (ET) and even more importantly, developers needed to be comfortable with ET. My experience has been that developers’ initial reaction (mine included) to ET is pretty similar to management’s first reaction to Agile. And while Paul eventually won me over with ET, I would’ve loved the kind comfort of a test plan in the early days.
Paul feels we can overcome the resistance to change through discussion and education but I’m curious - is Exploratory Testing testing the Agile testing method of choice? What resistance have people felt to implementing Exploratory Testing?
November 27th, 2007 at 7:22 am
Really good and really interesting post. I expect (and other readers maybe :)) new useful posts from you!
Good luck and successes in blogging!
February 5th, 2008 at 3:09 am
Nice post. I recently blogged on a similar topic. I have just run across the concept of “context-driven” testing which I really like. While I think ET is a great approach I do feel that some proponents under value automated tests. I think you need a balance of both and good testers. I think we all would agree that we should banish the manual “monkey” test cases. We need testers to help figure out what /might/ fail early in design and development and also to do ET on the finished work.