On Wednesday 13 April 2016 I had the chance to give a talk at the Austrian Testing Board about Agile Testing – Traps to avoid. A special thanks goes to Janet Gregory who allowed me to use the basic principles of her talk Testing Traps to Avoid in Agile Teams given at Skillsmatter London in 2012.
When it comes to Agile and Agile Testing there is still a lot of misunderstanding and wrong expectations. During my talk the audience confirmed my believes and experiences. Although Janet’s talk was in 2012 I can see that the problems she was talking about back then still apply these days.
If you are interested in the slides (prezi) please go here..
A quick summary
- Agile testing is a phase and not an activity.
- When it comes to quality we should not only look at functionality but also about usability and the target group we develop for. Keep your users in mind!
- Do not only test your finished software but also test ideas (A/B testing, crowd-testing etc.)
- Continuous Integration and Test Automation is key to success. That’s not quite new. However teams and organisations still struggle with the question who is responsible for it etc.
- I raised a very important question during the discussion round: When in time did the separation between development and testing – as in separation of roles – happen?. And I got a honest answer to it. According to one of the participants who is already in pension but still interested in the topic it was in the mid 90s. Maybe it’s because of a book that came to the market – I can’t remember the name of it. Another thought about it was that it is because of the emergence of big Test Automation frameworks (record playback).
- Another valid paint point is team culture and how we allow a team to grow make failures and let it learn. Way too often the system is a blocker here. Teams are randomly chosen without a chance to improve.
A special thanks goes to Alexander Weichselberger who gave me the opportunity to speak and also to everyone who showed up especially those who were part of a lively discussion.
