Testing in the Agile World (Part 1)

In this and subsequent few posts, i shall post content from my paper on Agile testing which was recently published by the Quality Assurance Institute. We start with a look at the concept of Agile development and progress towards testing in the agile context with specific emphasis on the Scrum model.

Agile Software Development refers to a philosophy, a mind-set based on iterative development. Agile methodologies support the agile values based on the agile philosophy. The Agile Manifesto lists the following agile values

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

The manifesto goes on to state that while there is value in the items on the right, agile development values items on the left more.

Greater transparency into how software is produced, better predictability, faster time-to-market, frequent releases, increased productivity, higher levels of quality ... all this and more, lure organizations that have been following “traditional” development models to “try out” agile methodologies.

Traditional methods of development generally follow a set of models that usually define phases of activity involving release planning, requirements definition, sign-off, design, implementation, testing and so on. Work products are passed on from one phase to the next. Experience shows that these models tend to involve release cycles that are fairly long, thereby delaying the time-to-market and being pretty inflexible to changes through the development lifecycle. The general aim tends to be to deliver all functionality captured in the initial requirements specification as a completed finished product. The testers in this case prepare for testing by way of creating test plans based on the requirements & other documentation that are available and then await the finished work product after the implementation is complete to begin formal testing.

Agile methods however, introduce a paradigm shift in how products are produced. Development happens in short cycles of a few weeks duration; at the end of a cycle a working product or artefact is ready and available to be displayed to the customer and even shipped if need be. The product owner / customer sets the quality criteria for each iteration or sprint. This definition of quality signifies what is important from a customer's view point rather than what a formal testing team may choose to define. For example, it may so happen that issues which testers might think are important to be addressed immediately may actually be deferred to a later iteration if the customer does not think it is a priority. Agile development would not usually encourage specialized roles, such as a tester or developer. Members from various groups are drawn together to form an agile team. This team could comprise representatives from development, testing, technical writing, internationalization, etc. as required for producing the product.

POST BY John Morrison. FOR ORIGINAL ARTICLE, PLEASE VISIT: http://www.techmanageronline.com/2009/11/testing-in-agile-world-part-1.html