Agile Testing with Lisa Crispin

Today I was lucky to hear part of the Thomas Jefferson Hour as I drove down to the ranch to work the donkeys. Thomas Jefferson, channeled by the actor and scholar Clay Jenkinson, quoted from his first inaugural address: “Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle”. Jefferson believed that our elected officials should respond to moments of tension (and as he says, there was just as much rancor in political debates back in his day as now) with politeness, good humor and respectfulness. He recommended that our current elected officials, if they can’t find common ground, should adopt “artificial good humor” and assume the best about their opponents.

TJ and I might both have our head in the clouds, but I’m a big believer in civility. I’m not recommending that we all walk around on eggshells and worry about offending people. But I do think we need to all work hard to make sure that everyone on our software team feels safe to express opinions, and conversely, is willing to accept the team consensus or majority rule, and work to make whatever approach is taken successful.

This is something I want to take to heart for myself. Here’s an example. I’m trying to explain an issue to the programmer who is on production support this sprint. I’ve analyzed the problem and think I know how it should be fixed. He seems not to understand, gets impatient with me, throws up his hands and tells me I am mistaken. I could feel mad and hurt by this, or I can remember that being the production support monkey is frustrating and stressful. I’ve given him the information I wanted to convey, and I can leave him to process it. He’s smart and motivated to take care of our customers, so I know he will find a good solution. He shouldn’t be rude to me, but if I can avoid escalating the tension, we will have a good outcome.

Indeed, later the programmer comes over and apologizes, says now he understands what I was trying to say, and appreciates the research I did into the issue. We talk about the fix and how to test it.

I’m lucky to work on a team that, though there is lots of joshing and joking, is composed of people with a deep commitment to providing a quality product, and open minds willing to consider anyone’s ideas. I’ve been on teams that didn’t provide this atmosphere of respect and civility, and I must confess, I hightailed it away from those toxic environments.

The “agile” movement was built on principles and values. “Every difference of opinion is not a difference in principle”. Give your team time and space to agree on principles and values. Going forward from there, each team member will feel free to float their ideas and opinions, and have healthy discussions. That’s what makes a project successful.

News!

Janet Gregory and I have an article, and are interviewed in, this month’s Software Test and Performance Magazine, devoted to “Women of Influence in Software Testing”. Please check it out, it’s a great issue with lots of meaty articles.

I have a sidebar in Dawn Cannan’s terrific “Be the Worst” article in the inaugural issue of Agile Record.

Matt Davey wrote a wonderful thumbnail summary of our book in his review of it, we are grateful.

Agile Coaching, in my opinion, isn’t only for people who coach agile teams. If you’re in the software business, you’ll learn something valuable from this book. Start with the last chapter – “Growing You”. The only way to succeed in our industry is to continually learn and improve, and this chapter gives great suggestions how to do that.

This book is a model of concise, clear writing. It’s packed with information in the form of narrative, bullet points, graphics, photos, stories of real teams and projects, exercises, tips and examples. The authors have been walking their talk for a long time, so you can feel confident about following their advice. Their flair for language makes the book fun to read. It could be a quick read, except you’ll find yourself stopping to reflect on your own experiences, and thinking about how you could apply the technique you just read about on your own team. Each chapter includes hurdles you may face, and a checklist summarizing action items for you, the reader.

I particularly enjoyed the little vignettes with dialog from a typical team illustrating topics such as “Not Quite Done Yet” and “Getting Ready to Demo”. The authors have insight into all aspects of coding, testing, and managing software teams. You’ll find advice you might not expect in a software-related book, such as “Be kind to yourself”. The focus on people and teams will make you a better person and team member.

Beautiful Testing, with a wide variety of fascinating chapters contributed by leading software professionals, is available. Not only will it inspire you and your team to improve your testing and your product, but all royalties go to a good cause. I’m honored to have written a chapter. Please see the page on my site for more details and a free copy of my chapter – to whet your appetite for the rest of the book!

It’s so cool to know that Janet and I have communicated clearly enough what we hoped everyone would take away from our book. Paul Grenyer’s review is a thrill for me.

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 just reviewed a book proposal that raised my ire. The skills and techniques that would be taught in the book were fine. The emphasis on context-driven testing was great. But the book appeared to be framed in a setting where testing is all about dealing with crises, trying to figure what testing you can squeeze in to a very short timeframe, making the testers somehow in charge of quality.

Testing skills are important, of course, and we testers add value with our special experience and viewpoint. But we can’t have much impact on quality by ourselves.

On the plus side, I’m seeing more and more teams around the world figure out that the best way to deliver a high-quality product is to move testing to the front, make testing and coding part of one process, have the whole development team take responsibility for quality, and work incrementally, iteratively and at a sustainable pace.

On the minus side, I see things like this book proposal that ignore the evidence of how this new whole-team approach is working, and that keep pushing a way of working that is 20+ years old and hasn’t resulted in consistent, high-quality software.

I don’t care if you’re using a traditional waterfall process, or agile, or something else. There is a pragmatic, practical approach to software development and testing that works. It’s more than specific testing skills and tricks. Discipline, communication and collaboration are the key skills and characteristics we need. Continuous integration and automated build processes that run good regression tests are as just as essential as automated source code control.

Testers do need to learn new skills and techniques. More importantly, they need to get up from their workstations and (physically or virtually) go talk to other development and customer team members. We need to find out how we can all help each other do our best work and delight our customers.

What do you think is the most important thing testers need to do or know? What book is missing that would send newbie testers in the right direction?

The second issue of Quality Matters is available for download, and features my article, “Helping Testers Transition to Agile: What Testers Can Do for Themselves”. In it I offer advice to testers who find themselves on agile teams and aren’t sure how to adapt. Please comment on it!

Quality Matters is aimed at Eastern Europe, but I’ve found the first two issues quite good, helpful information no matter where in the world you work! I particularly enjoy Alessandro Collino’s articles, this month it’s a comparison of Robot Framework and Fit.

Quality Matters is published by Quality House, which is organizing SEETEST, June 16-17, Sofia Bulgaria. I’ll be there, and I look forward to meeting software professionals from southeastern Europe there!

In other news – there are starting to be a lot of “agile testing” training courses offered. Watch this space, because Janet and I are working on our own three day training course in agile testing.

Chapter 21, Key Success Factors, is available on InfoQ.

Please read and comment! I look forward to your feedback.

I’ve been enjoying podcasts and screencasts from various people in the agile and testing world, it’s a nice quick way to pick up new ideas. So it has been especially fun to get to be the person delivering the podcast on a couple of occasions lately.

I did a longish interview with Tom Cagley of SPamCAST - Software Process and Measurement Podcast. You can also get this on iTunes. It came out really well and I make what I think are some pithy and useful observations about agile testing!

As noted a week or two ago, Janet and I did a 5 minute podcast with Željko Filipin at AWTA. This was a lot of fun and all the podcasts from AWTA are worth a listen.