11/15/2010 Agile in a Flash: Ten Principles for Agi…

Share Report Abuse Next Blog» Create Blog Sign In

A g il e in a F l as h
Jeff Langr and Tim Ottinger present the blog behind the popular reference cards,
soon to be published by The Pragmatic Programmers.

Friday, March 20, 2009 Subscribe To

Ten Principles for Agile Testers Posts

Comments
0

Search This Blog

Search
pow er ed by

Everything So Far

► 201 0 (22)
▼ 2009 (7 4)
► September (2)
► A ugust (2)
► July (6)
► June (6)

Source: Crispin, Lisa, and Gregory , Janet. A gile Testing: A Practical ► May (2)
Guide for Testers and Agile Teams, A ddison-Wesley , 2009. ► A pril (1 0)
▼ March (1 1 )
A BCs of Story
Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory wrote the recently -published A ddison- Estimation
Wesley book A gile Testing, a thick tome that fills a much-needed gap in TDD Process Smells
agile literature. Prior, detailed guidance for testing in an agile
Card, Conv ersation,
env ironment was sparse. With A gile Testing and a couple other fairly
Confirmation
recent books (2007 's Test Driv en: TDD and A cceptance TDD for Jav a
Dev elopers by Lasse Koskela and Bridging the Communication Gap: A rrange-A ct-A ssert
Specification by Ex ample and A gile Acceptance Testing by Gojko Stay
A dzic, 2009), we now hav e a good foundation for comprehensiv e agile Ten Principles for
testing knowledge. A gile Testers
Make It Work, Make
It Right, Make It
Fast
The ten principles that the authors published should sound familiar. Legacy Code Change
Four of these principles directly cov er XP's four v alues of feedback,
…blogspot.com/…/ten-principles-for-a… 1/5
11/15/2010 Agile in a Flash: Ten Principles for Agi…
Four of these principles directly cov er XP's four v alues of feedback, A lgorithm
communication, courage, and simplicity ; these and the remainder are
Ex treme Measures
also largely echoed in the agile manifesto and its supporting principles.
So what's relev ant about how these ten principles apply to agile SOLID

testing? UncleBob's Three

Rules of TDD

Prov ide continuous feedback - The agile tester is central to ► February (35)
prov iding the team with feedback: Acceptance criteria is the
most concrete way to measure positiv e progress on an agile
project. Tests also help identify issues and capture decisions on Followers
appropriate future direction.
Follow
w ith Google Friend Connect
Deliv er v alue to the custom er - The insistence on
acceptance tests is a "reality check" on scope creep. A cceptance Followers (100) More »
tests help us all understand what it means to realize a customer's
needs.

Enable face-to-face com m unication - Testers can often be

the ones on a team responsible for bridging the communication
gap between customers (BA s, product owners, etc.) and
Already a member? Sign in
programmers. A tester can be the one who phy sically brings
these people together, as well as the one who driv es deriv ation
of a common language between the two parties.

Hav e courage - One of the larger challenges of agile is in

sustaining a fast-paced iterativ e env ironment, where ev ery two
weeks we need to ship quality software. This challenge demands
significant courage. Y et the irony is that we also need to
understand that iterations afford us opportunities to learn how
to fail and adapt--something that can require an ev en heav ier
dose of courage!

Keep it sim ple - Agile testers can help push back against an
insistence on ov erly -elaborate features. Testers can also help
the customer understand how to incrementally deliv er v alue.
They must learn an appropriate balance of iterativ e testing--
just enough to prov ide the right confidence in deliv ering
software.

Practice continuous im prov em ent - A key element of

using iterations is to allow for learning to take place. Testers
should be part of retrospectiv es (and if y ou're not consistently
adapting based on the results of retrospectiv es, y ou're not agile
enough.) Testers should also treat their career as a profession
by continually learning more about testing practices, tools, and
the sy stem itself.

Respond to change - A gile testing is dramatically different in

…blogspot.com/…/ten-principles-for-a… 2/5
11/15/2010 Agile in a Flash: Ten Principles for Agi…
that there are few true "cutoff points"--things keep changing and
thus must be continually re-tested. This requires automation!
The agile tester learns to cope with the customer changing his or
her mind from iteration to iteration, and correspondingly learns
how to incrementally flesh out necessary testing specifications.

Self-organize - In a true agile team, ev ery one has the

capability to act as a tester. A gile teams know how to shift focus
as needed; from time to time, for ex ample, it may be prudent for
programmers to turn their attention toward helping v erify a
"done" but not "done done" feature.

Focus on people - Testers are often at the bottom of the totem

pole in a non-agile software dev elopment team. Work is thrown
at them, their av ailable slice of time is continually squished, and
programmers often look upon them as lessers. In an agile team,
ev ery shares the responsibility for ensuring that we are building
quality product. A gile testers are key in bringing their testing
ex pertise to the team.

Enjoy - The ability to help driv e the process and be a true,

equal contributor to a team can be ex tremely gratify ing for an
agile tester.

The use of acceptance tests to driv e agile dev elopment is perhaps one
of the most critical needs for a team that wants to sustain success. With
that in mind, it's amazing that it's taken ov er ten y ears since the
ex plosion of XP for us to begin to fully document just what agile testing
is.

P OS T ED B Y J EF F LANGR AT 9 : 0 9 AM
LAB ELS : AGILE, AGILE T ES T ING, EXT R EM E P R OGR AM M ING, T ES T ING, XP

2 C O M M E N T S:

MIke said...

Great post! I will check out the book. HA V E COURA GE and

RESPOND TO CHANGE really resonated with me and my
ex periences. In addition, Prov ide Continuous Feedback is
something we are really pushing to both our SQA team
members and the business users that participate in our demo
sessions at the end of each sprint. We hav e dev eloped some
cool technology to allow feedback to be deliv ered directly from
the running application - it is simple to use and eliminates
much of the ambiguity found with many techniques for
submitting feedback. Check out a demo at
www.outsy stems.com/demos in the A gile Management section
…blogspot.com/…/ten-principles-for-a… 3/5
11/15/2010 Agile in a Flash: Ten Principles for Agi…
- Embedded Change Technology .
MA RCH 2 2 , 2 0 0 9 1 1 :1 9 A M

A nony mous said...

The priciple of "self-organize" is a really point. In our
organization, we ran into a situation that dev elopers
implement/fix bugs in a v ery fast pace, each sprint, there are
more and more feature/bug waiting for QA to v erify . Our
testing backlog started growing. A s a QA member. I am starting
feeling a little nerv ers that we will nev er be able to keep up.
Until one day the team lead realized the situation and
implement the whole-team approach. The dev elopers got
inv olv ed on clearing up the increasing testing backlog items.
Then we see the backlog diminishing. It is such a relief that the
practice we had was in line with the agile testing spirits.
A UGUST 6 , 2 0 0 9 1 :1 7 A M

PO ST A C O M M E N T

Com m ent as: Select profile...

Post Comment Preview

L I N KS T O T H I S P O ST

O melhor da semana: 1 7 /05 a 23/05

Create a Link

Newer Post Home Older Post

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

…blogspot.com/…/ten-principles-for-a… 4/5
11/15/2010 Agile in a Flash: Ten Principles for Agi…

…blogspot.com/…/ten-principles-for-a… 5/5