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Agile Testing Days Berlin – Improved Agile Testing using TPI by Cecile Davis

13.10.2009 | 5 minutes of reading time

So, this session is apparently about TPI, and the acronym was now already mentioned a few times, and maybe I should now it, but I don’t. So in contrast to yesterday, where I was expecting everybody to know what BDD is, now I am the one who does not know what most of the others (a quick show of hands confirmed that) do know. So let’s find out.

Cecile starts with asking about what characteristics programmers have, and claims these are the ones (not sure where this is leading, yet)

  • Intelligence
  • Creativity
  • Responsibility
  • Collaboration
  • Flexibility

Some well known keywords now follow: Agile Manifesto; Triangle of Cost (fixed), Time (fixed) and Scope (can vary); More about the People; Self-Organizing; Skills & Expertise.

Interesting point now, comparing trust in agile and traditional environments. Traditional: team has to trust the management for making the right decisions. Agile: Management has to trust the team. Ok, so it’s basically the known Command & Control vs. Self-Organizing argument.

Pitfalls for agile testing are … so far an unfinished mindmap and Cecile is looking for more input from the audience. So far the map contains keywords like: Team (involvement, skills, knowledge, competencies), Tester (skills, knowledge, competencies, attitude), Stakeholders (involvement, lack of knowledge, integration, commitment), General (little waterfalls, test environment), Environment (maturity, investment, culture). So there’s a lot missing. The separation of Testers from the Team is only to highlight some special pitfalls and not for saying they are not part of the team.

A Test Maturity Matrix, a long list of criteria, for which you can score on various level (controlled, mature, optimizing) (download from Sogeti). From these sixteen key areas, these six were selected from the facilitating and encouraging mindset, which support agile development environment:

  • Test Strategy: What, how, risk analysis, priorities.
    Suggestion for improvement: Set up and maintain a regression test.
  • Tester Professionalism: Team responsibility, open mind, knowledge, skill, competency, motivation, culture
    Suggestion for improvement: Discuss the role of testing within the team and define the specific skills needed.
  • Degree of Involvement: Moment, Degree
    Suggestion for improvement: Let testers be involved in unit testing (should give good benefits to programmer and tester).
  • Test Environment: Delivering working software, greater impact, short iterations.
    Suggestion for improvement: Try to be as much self-sufficient as possible: a lot of environmental issues can be solved more easily.
  • Testware Management: Responding to Change, maintainability, transferability, reusability
    Suggestion for improvement: Make maintainability, transferability and reusability of testware part of the test strategy.
  • Stakeholder Commitment: Continuous involvement, feedback, availability
    Suggestion for improvement: Gather metrics to show the costs and benefits of testing efforts

After Davis made her points on how to improve the testing process, she kicks off a discussion and asks for feedback how we should improve the testing. Ideas generated were:

  • Start with the mindset of the people
  • Make it part of the regular retrospective, so be sure that optimizing the testing process is what would currently bring most benefit

And the real answer is: “It depends, buy our consultacy services or at least buy the book 🙂 ” There is a new revision soon to be published … but it has not been revised to take Agile into account 🙁Cecile starts with asking about what characteristics programmers have, and claims these are the ones (not sure where this is leading, yet)

  • Intelligence
  • Creativity
  • Responsibility
  • Collaboration
  • Flexibility

Some well known keywords now follow: Agile Manifesto; Triangle of Cost (fixed), Time (fixed) and Scope (can vary); More about the People; Self-Organizing; Skills & Expertise.

Interesting point now, comparing trust in agile and traditional environments. Traditional: team has to trust the management for making the right decisions. Agile: Management has to trust the team. Ok, so it’s basically the known Command & Control vs. Self-Organizing argument.

Pitfalls for agile testing are … so far an unfinished mindmap and Cecile is looking for more input from the audience. So far the map contains keywords like: Team (involvement, skills, knowledge, competencies), Tester (skills, knowledge, competencies, attitude), Stakeholders (involvement, lack of knowledge, integration, commitment), General (little waterfalls, test environment), Environment (maturity, investment, culture). So there’s a lot missing. The separation of Testers from the Team is only to highlight some special pitfalls and not for saying they are not part of the team.

A Test Maturity Matrix, a long list of criteria, for which you can score on various level (controlled, mature, optimizing) (download from Sogeti). From these sixteen key areas, these six were selected from the facilitating and encouraging mindset, which support agile development environment:

  • Test Strategy: What, how, risk analysis, priorities.
    Suggestion for improvement: Set up and maintain a regression test.
  • Tester Professionalism: Team responsibility, open mind, knowledge, skill, competency, motivation, culture
    Suggestion for improvement: Discuss the role of testing within the team and define the specific skills needed.
  • Degree of Involvement: Moment, Degree
    Suggestion for improvement: Let testers be involved in unit testing (should give good benefits to programmer and tester).
  • Test Environment: Delivering working software, greater impact, short iterations.
    Suggestion for improvement: Try to be as much self-sufficient as possible: a lot of environmental issues can be solved more easily.
  • Testware Management: Responding to Change, maintainability, transferability, reusability
    Suggestion for improvement: Make maintainability, transferability and reusability of testware part of the test strategy.
  • Stakeholder Commitment: Continuous involvement, feedback, availability
    Suggestion for improvement: Gather metrics to show the costs and benefits of testing efforts

After Davis made her points on how to improve the testing process, she kicks off a discussion and asks for feedback how we should improve the testing. Ideas generated were:

  • Start with the mindset of the people
  • Make it part of the regular retrospective, so be sure that optimizing the testing process is what would currently bring most benefit

And the real answer is: “It depends, buy our consultacy services or at least buy the book 🙂 “

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