AGILE IN ACTION

Something common I’ve seen in effective agile teams is that testing has found a new home at the heart of development. I’m not referring to developers doing test-driven development to create code that is simpler in design and has testability engineered into it. I’m referring to testers working among developers doing continuous exploratory testing on vertical slices of stories still in progress.

I had an idea for a splash screen for a future Energized Work session about acceptance test-driven development but then a friend suggested a t-shirt.

Over the past few months I've been reading Integration Tests Are A Scam by J.B. Rainsberger and following some of the responses to it, such as this one a few days ago which I've reproduced here.

Pirate Rob talks about testing Grails applications with the Selenium RC plugin at London Groovy & Grails User Group.

Last night at GGUG, Jerome Pimmel and Gus Power talked about Effective testing on Grails.

Here's a nice TDD taster from Steve Freeman. And something on the use of mock objects.

In our team, developers create the vast majority of the automated tests, whether they are acceptance tests, integration tests, or unit tests. They do this because they are story test-driven. They develop stories from the outside in, starting with the user interface and are guided by the acceptance criteria. The developers profile their code and create automated performance and load tests as they go because code has to be production-ready at the end of every 1-week iteration. Testers in our team do exploratory testing and they're free to pair-up with anyone, another tester or more likely a developer, to create any automated tests they feel are missing. The testers, however, add value to the team that goes way beyond testing. Working closely with the Product Owner they facilitate connection and collaboration with the customer, helping the team to empathize with users, understand their needs and appreciate value from their perspective. Working with the facilitator they help the team develop a conscience that is focused on the delivery of value and quality, while their continuous interactions within the team keep collaboration high.

Kent Beck replied:

In a video presentation (via InfoQ ), Scott Ambler talks to a testing user group (TASSQ in Toronto, Jan 2006). He explains agile methods, in particular Extreme Programming, and talks about the the role of testing and QA in agile projects . He recommends that testers and QA people become generalising specialists because, in an agile team, they're not going to spend all their time testing. They need to collaborate intensely with everyone in the team and need to be flexible and communicative. They can specialise in testing but they also need to be able to do some programming, some data modelling, get involved with build and deployment activities, understand the domain and work closely with the Product Owner to identify and evolve user stories (capturing their details in acceptance tests), and pick up other skills as they're needed. Elisabeth Hendrickson is a tester who has become a generalising specialist through her experiences working in agile teams. Watch her video about agile testing delivered at Google.