Useful stepping-stones in growth towards Agile testing
Kees Blokland
Poltec
Agile success stories as seen in articles more and more do not come easily. Debates about how ideal Agile testing looks like confuse people in finding their way towards it. But, if you accept the first steps in Agile testing not being perfect, things start rolling and you experience short-term benefits.
A large organization broke its sequential Design-Build-Test cycle into iterations, which improved the project predictability enormously. Reduction of the number of test levels from five to two contributed a lot too. At the same time, all that glitters was not Agile gold.
For instance: one iteration worth of testing work actually took much longer than one iteration. And this is a classic pitfall: testers could not test customer focused due to the absence of a product owner. Organizations need stepping stones while bridging the gap towards ‘fully Agile testing’. Each stepping stone must bring something valuable, while accepting that some stepping stones are not yet completely aligned with the Agile ideals.
What are valuable stepping stones that organizations use? What value does each step stone bring in practice? Which stepping stone routes are preferred and which ones are better to be avoided?
Join Kees and get answers to these questions based on experiences in various organizations. Some stepping stone examples are: tester-developer communication, tester hard and soft skills, test automation, risk based testing, changing test roles and (less) test documentation.
