COURSE 3350 | 2-DAY PUBLIC SESSION | 3-DAY VIRTUAL SESSION
Agile & High-Speed Software Testing Techniques

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Course Outline

Section I. Introduction to Agile Testing
The introduction serves as the starting point for understanding how to improve testing. Artifacts, roles and activities will be examined and compared against agile methods. The focal point for stimulating stakeholder and development team discussions centers around the ‘XP Story Card’ and the many facets that it contains (requirements, test, estimate of effort and value, with a profound understanding for risk) and how these must be balanced.

• Modern SDLC Compression Time
  
• Traditional to Agility Shift – Challenges Facing Testing
  
• Balancing Risk with Test Intensity
  
• Effective Stakeholder Communications

 

Section II. The Agile Test Team
In traditional teams people had roles and assigned to these roles were tasks. These duties often relied upon a carefully orchestrated dance with delivery. While a person may have a role, it is one that carries with it responsibilities and not necessarily specific obligations. The dynamics of the team will determine whether we will succeed as a team, or whether we fail as individuals. The role as test specialist carries with it guidance, oversight, coaching, direction and support. The business owner is called upon to provide exposure to the priorities that the project carries in support of the business. The development team is allowed to ploy it’s technical delivery knowledge and to stay focused on the matter at hand and not on arbitration of needs from multiple stakeholders.

• Participants
  
• Roles & Expertise
  
• Operational Dynamics
  

Section III. Thinning (Lean) Test for Rapid Agility
To accept change requires us to transition our present state to that of our new found surroundings. A critical examination of tasks, documents and interaction with the project team need to be looked at in depth. We will seek out ways to exploit the seven foundation points of lean as our first step towards increasing service delivery speed. Our success hinges on surgical precision and removing only what is excess, without sacrificing value.

• Lean Principals
  
• Test Candidate Elements
  
• Trade-Off Considerations
  
  

Section IV. Iteration 0 – Agile Test Planning
While the project is going through a focused and abbreviated planning period so is testing. By utilizing core justification and chartering events we proactively interact with the team in providing a planning component within the overall project vision. Unlike past test plans, it is lean, rapid, and collaboratively developed. Tearing down the walls from testing as a service to testing as a team event is the order of the day. Time, business value and risk are important aspects that are presented and rely on team participation and not the wisdom of one individual.

• Where to Start
  
• What to Use
  
• What is Involved

 

Section V. Using Automation Support
Automation is viewed as a means to an end. In order to be able to carry out our duties in a deliberate, coordinated and expedient fashion, we must look to automation as a support solution. Time saved and precision gained will allow all members of the test team to focus on intellectually based tests.

• Early consideration
  
• Agile Test Automation Support
  
• Purpose and Goals
  
• Utilization and Oversight

 

Section VI. Designing Agile Tests
The hardest thing about testing is designing tests. Knowing what to test, how much to test (or not test), requires experience, knowledge, and trust. While there are numerous methods, few are particularly adept to Agility (Exploratory, Pairwise, and Pareto (80:20)). The development of tests in concert with requirement stories is also a highly effect means to maintaining a tight connection between these two elements. However, there is also an opportunity to further amplify the conservative nature of our test suite through low cost calibration. Calibration controls bloat and provides a means to effectively assist us with adapting our tests to a wide array of circumstances and conditions.

• Method Selection
  
• Establish Balance
  
• Calibration
  
• Adapting

 

Section VII. Measuring Test Results
Reporting came out of a need for communicating status. As projects took longer to deliver, the need for reporting became an essential part of the project management process. With the advent of Agile methods the need to provide low cost, light weight test reporting became important. The focus shifts from a summation of errors discovered to testing as an instrumental part of delivery. The roots of test reporting resides in daily standup meetings, bi-product reports, delivery demonstration and the sprint/iteration retrospective.

• Light Weighting Reporting
  
• Status Reporting
  
• Progress Reporting
  
• Demonstration
  
• Sprint/Iteration Retrospective

 

Section VIII. Managing Agile Test Efforts
Testing isn’t just a job, it’s a specialist role. Everyone has a test role: the developer, business owner, and even other specialists. In order to make this shift the tester has to employ coaching skills that may have never been utilized before. Getting people to do things that are outside of their normally expected role, and who are hardened with years of custom is not easy, but doable. The transition may be counted in terms of sprints and for some it may take several projects to make the change. “Managing” is not something that is often discussed in Agile circles, but the need to provide watchful and compassionate oversight is essential for testing to be meaningful. The pervasive nature of testing does not allow us to use a hands-off role as one might expect from other narrowly focused disciplines.

• Test Specialist Role
  
• Test Coaching in the Team
  
• What is Agile “Managing”?

Section IX. Planning for Repetition and Reuse
Let us not forget that beyond the sprint/iteration is a life of testware existence. This needs to be thought about from the onset and not as an after thought. After thoughts are expensive, time consuming and often creative a significant degree of test suite unreliability. Repetition and reuse starts within the sprint/iteration and is carried forward through the development project period and into future (post-delivery cycles). We must carry with it essential artifacts and details for that purpose to be realized.

• Testing in the Small
  
• Build-Up to 24/7
  
• Regression Testing – Forward Sprints