Agile Testing with Lisa Crispin

Last week I attended SEETEST in Sofia, Bulgaria. The conference was extremely well-organized, and I learned some new things, such as test automation considerations for testing mobile devices, and coordinating agile testing with compliance requirements. There were also some things said that hit one of my hot buttons: whether testers and programmers ought to work together, versus on separate, siloed teams.

This inspired a rant which I posted (OK, Joey McAllister posted it for me) on my StickyMinds blog entitled Independent Testers? or Independent Thinkers?. I would love to have comments on your experiences with testers and programmers working together.

Coincidentally, the latest Methods and Tools magazine has an article I wrote on Coding and Testing: Programmers and Testers Working Together. In this article I work through an example of how testers and programmers collaborate to develop new features, similar to the examples Janet and I use in our book. Please check it out along with the other interesting articles in Methods and Tools.

I’m working with programmers and testers together more than ever on my new team. Right now we are all on a voice chat, with a shared desktop, writing FitNesse/SWAT tests and code together. (OK, I am really just watching, but I’m learning, and asking questions.)

I’ve worked on four agile teams in the past nine years. Three were highly successful, especially the one I was on for the past 5.5 years. One never really made the transition, though we had a successful agile project. One of the successful ones involved a team of about 30 developers, and that’s the largest project I’ve been on up to now.

I could have happily worked with my previous team until I retire, but you know me, I cannot resist new opportunities. So now I’m on a small Scrum team – that is one of 28 Scrum teams at my new company! Yes, this company actually manages to have 28 teams, including some which provide infrastructure such as frameworks and deployment, working together to release a high-quality commercial software product four times a year.

Yeah, back in the day, XP was for little, co-located teams. “You can’t do shrink-wrapped software with XP” was just one of the many axioms I heard.

Now I work in an agile organization with about 140 developers, some (like me) in remote locations, delivering software both for Windows client and for a hosted solution. (I don’t know everything about it yet so sorry to sound vague!) If you had told me this five or ten years ago, I wouldn’t have been sure it could work.

Since my new 5-person team is a self-organizing Scrum team, we picked our own ScrumMaster, which ended up being me. I love being an uncertified ScrumMaster, and plan to delegate a lot, because I’m also committed to remaining a hands-on tester. I attended my first Scrum of Scrums (some attendees called it the “SoS” which I loved) on Friday. Each of the 28 ScrumMasters (some in the room, some on the phone) was called on to say if they had any impediments. This happened to be a release day, so I thought there might be lots of impediments, but most teams didn’t have any. Those that did got help right away. The meeting was over in 10 or 15 minutes.

Granted, not every team is high-performing, and some practices I’m used to are missing altogether. But think about it, a software development organization that large, which only implemented Scrum four years ago, able to coordinate and release critical value frequently, at a sustainable pace. That’s agile in anyone’s book.

Follow this space for my adventures as I enter a whole new world!

Are you a tester wondering what the heck you should be doing now that you’re suddenly on an agile team? Are you a manager of a new agile team puzzled at why the QA group refuses to cooperate with you? Are you an agile developer trying to figure out how to deliver the best possible software? If so, you might be interested in the three-day agile testing course that Janet Gregory and I are developing. We’re offering this course in partnership with LeanDog in Cleveland and with Program Utvikling in Norway, and will be offering it in other locales as well – please contact me if you’re interested.

Here’s a course description:

Over three days, we put theory into action through a variety of exercises. This course teaches testers how to fit into agile projects, contribute to the whole team and overcome common cultural and logistical obstacles in transitioning to an agile development process. It explains the values and principles that help testers adopt an agile testing mindset and how to accomplish traditional testing processes, such as defect tracking, metrics, audits, and conforming to quality models. Students will learn how to complete testing activities in short iterations, and how testers contribute on a daily basis during each iteration and release cycle. Through interactive exercises and group discussions, participants will discover good strategies for driving development with both executable and manual tests. The course is filled with real-life examples of the many ways agile testers add value.