Agile Testing with Lisa Crispin

I am honored that Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams by me and Janet Gregory is on Jonas Bandi’s list of his favorite software development books of 2010, especially because the other books in the list are also some of my favorites for the year. The start of a new year is a good time to set learning goals, and this list of books would make a great place to start.

I have a new blog post on my Stickyminds blog with my thoughts as I am in the middle of a big, complex, high-risk project. This has been a highly unusual project for our team, which just goes to show, even after 7 years as an agile team, new challenges constantly present themselves. Please share your own project experiences in the comments.

I always have a big stack of new agile books to read, and my most recent ‘read’ is a standout: The Agile Samurai: How Agile Masters Deliver Great Software by Jonathan Rasmussen. Here’s my review.

Reading The Agile Samurai, I felt like I was sitting with the author over a cup of coffee or a mug of beer, learning good ways to plan and develop good software products. The book has a fun and conversational style at the same time as it delivers serious lessons about software projects. The illustrations aren’t there just for fun (though they are amusing), they help to quickly explain the concepts.

Though I’ve been working on agile teams for 10 years and read countless books on the subject, I was surprised to find some tools and ideas in here that are new to me.  For example, I’d never heard of the “Inception Deck”, ten questions and exercises to get your software project off to the right start. It looks like an excellent approach. I also like the idea of creating a  “product box” to focus on what’s compelling for your customers and on the benefits of your product.

One thing I appreciate about The Agile Samurai is how the author incorporates ideas from many disciplines, such as Lean. Even more valuable are the many anecdotes from the author’s experience. One theme I found in the book is the need to deal with reality, and it’s helpful to have real-world examples.

I particularly enjoy the little conversations between the “Master Sensei and the aspiring warrior” that wrap up each chapter. You had the same questions the aspiring warrior asks! This is a fun way to explore the confusing aspects of agile development.

If you’re new to agile, you might as well know the truth right from the start, and this book is grounded in reality. Yes, high-level estimates ARE guesses, as the author says, “usually really bad, overly-optimistic ones”. Meet the Cone of Uncertainty! But the author gives us a way to estimate to acknowledge all this but still help us plan.

Here’s one of my favorite paragraphs in the book:

Just don’t be strong-armed or bullied into committing something you and the team can’t deliver. That’s not doing anyone any favors. And this collaboration thing has to be two-way. Just be honest, and tell them what it’s going to take. [The Agile Samurai, p. 148]

This book really will help you deliver something of value every week. It covers many critical techniques in a surprisingly comprehensive way, giving the reader suggestions for additional reading. Agile newbies will learn accurate and useful information about everything from XP practices to Kanban, as well as where to learn more about all that. The author puts agile concepts together to come up with practical advice, such as how to create a visual workspace.

In my view, the book ends with the best possible advice: “Don’t worry about being agile”. The author gives you many tools and techniques, and prepares the reader (or “aspiring warrior”) to figure out what is best for that individual and that project. We shouldn’t worry about being “agile”, we should indeed aim to build great products and deliver great service to our customers. To paraphrase the author, get out there and start reading this book, then get out there and start doing it!

On Tuesday, November 9 at 1:00 PM EST, I’ll be on a SmartBear Software -sponsored panel discussion Webinar with Steve Berczuk, Jason Cohen and Esther Schindler (who will serve as our moderator) talking about how to improve software quality. Steve, Jason and I approach quality from slightly different angles so this should be interesting and fun! You have to register, but it’s free, and you can ask questions via the Webinar UI. Please join the discussion!

The new issue of Agile Record has an article of mine, one I’ve been wanting to write for a long time. It’s not the best-crafted article I ever wrote – I was in a rush to make the deadline (actually I missed the deadline, but the editors were nice and included my article anyway). However, it’s an article that’s close to my heart.

Lisa and Chester

If you’ve ever heard me speak, you’ve probably heard me refer to my donkeys as an example of the importance of trust, or enjoyment of work. I wanted to explain all the insights I’ve gained from my donkeys and applied to agile software development, and I finally sat down and wrote this article. Please enjoy it, and let me know what you think.

My teammate Tony Sweets (sys admin, programmer and genius) just posted a terrific writeup on StickyMinds/Techwell of how our continuous integration and build process has evolved over the years. This includes a history of the hardware we’ve used and how the builds have been set up, both in CruiseControl and Hudson, and all the different things the build process does.

One of my favorite excerpts:

This method worked too well. The testers started splitting up their test suites and were creating new build jobs left and right mainly because it was so simple. They didn’t have to deal with hostname issues and whatnot. They simply had to create the new job from an existing Hudson job and change whatever they needed in order to run a different set of tests. When the job ran it did not care what else was running because it was running in its own separate environment.

I love the easy-to-use Hudson UI, and this freedom to configure our own test jobs the way we want. It’s also easy to stop jobs or kick them off when we want.

Whenever I speak to a conference session or user group meeting, I always tell people, “If you aren’t doing continuous integration now, go back to your office and drop everything and get your CI going. It isn’t hard to do, there are a bunch of good tools available to help, even Testify Wizard to help you set it up. A programmer can do it in a matter of days or less. There’s no excuse to not do CI.”

I’m convinced that in 5 years at the most, any team not doing CI will be looked upon the same way we look upon teams that don’t do source code control. It would just be crazy to not do it! Automated tests don’t have much value if they aren’t giving you quick feedback several times a day. Without CI, your technical debt is bound to bury you quickly.

If I had to pick one reason our team has been so successful the past 7 years, our CI process is it. It’s the pulse of our team, and if it stops (as it did a few weeks back – see Tony’s blog post!), we all just about have a heart attack! When it’s ticking along, we feel healthy and happy.

The Testing Planet from  the Software Testing Club has indeed landed! It is chock full of excellent articles about testing, both technical and cultural. Just a sample of the titles: “Yes, It’s Personal”, “Context-driven Jumping”, “Testing & Creativity”, “Weekend Testing Fun”. I am extremely proud that my article, an introduction to test automation design, is on the front page!

Though The Testing Planet is available digitally, I urge you to subscribe to the print version. 1) it is way more fun and convenient (at least for us folks who prefer an actual newspaper with our morning tea), 2) it supports the magazine, and we need to support it and keep it going! The Software Testing Club rocks, it’s a great way to meet and exchange ideas with testers all over the planet. Give a little back to your testing community by supporting The Testing Planet.

Methods and Tools

I wrote a tool review of FitNesse for the Summer issue of Methods and Tools magazine. Please let me know if you have any questions about it.

Podcasts are a nice way to learn about new topics, pick up new ideas and hear the experiences of other testers and agile practitioners. I highly recommend the Testing Podcast site for informative interviews with a wide range of testing practitioners.

This interview with Michael Kircher of Software Engineering Radio was posted in June 2010 and can be found on testingpodcast.com as well, along with some other podcasts I’ve done in the past. Michael and I cover several topics ranging from the role of the tester in agile teams, over test automation strategy and regression testing, to continuous integration. I really enjoyed it because we got to talk for over an hour (though the podcast is not that long.)

InfoQ just published an article I wrote to try to inspire more testers to grow their skills. It begins:

The software industry is changing fast. More and more teams put testing up front and center; they use tests to drive development. New and improved automated test frameworks and drivers burst onto the scene every month. Teams with more automated regression suites need testers with sharp exploratory testing skills. But most people do not learn the needed skills in university: where will these testers come from? Read more…

If you’re at Better Software/ Agile Development Practices West this week, make sure you read the issue of Better Software that came in your conference bag. I’m especially pleased to have an article in this awesome issue with extraordinary fellow testers such as Jennitta Andrea, Markus Gaertner, Pradeep Soundararajan and Parimala Shankaraiah.