More Agile Testing: Learning Journeys for the Whole Team, 1st edition

Published by Addison-Wesley Professional (October 6, 2014) © 2015

  • Lisa Crispin
  • Janet Gregory

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The authors are renowned experts on the topic of testing in agile environments. They have remained very active and accessible in both the agile and testing communities since the publication of their first book. This shorter book supplements the lessons of its predecessor, and provides even more practical advice on how to successfully implement and manage a testing program in an agile setting. The book further defines agile testing and illustrates the tester’s role with contemporary examples from real agile teams. This book is another must for agile testers, agile teams, their managers, and their customers.
  • Codifies the latest thinking on testing for agile projects and builds upon the feedback received from the authors' previous book
  • Readers will come away from this book understanding how to get testers engaged in the agile development process
  • Shows where testers and QA managers fit into the equation, and how the development and testing teams can work hand-in-hand on an agile project
  • Another addition to the highly successful Mike Cohn Signature Series
This new book follows up the authors' exceptionally successful first book, Agile Testing. It contains even more expert advice on agile testing, based on what they have learned in nearly five years since their first book was published.

Foreword by Elisabeth Hendrickson xvii

Foreword by Johanna Rothman xix

Preface xxi

Acknowledgments xxix

About the Authors xxxiii

About the Contributors xxxv

 

Part I: Introduction 1

 

Chapter 1: How Agile Testing Has Evolved 3

Summary 6

 

Chapter 2: The Importance of Organizational Culture 7

Investing Time 8

The Importance of a Learning Culture 12

Fostering a Learning Culture 13

Transparency and Feedback Loops 15

Educating the Organization 17

Managing Testers 19

Summary 20

 

Part II: Learning for Better Testing 21

 

Chapter 3: Roles and Competencies 23

Competencies versus Roles 24

T-Shaped Skill Set 28

Generalizing Specialists 33

Hiring the Right People 36

Onboarding Testers 37

Summary 39

 

Chapter 4: Thinking Skills for Testing 41

Facilitating 42

Solving Problems 43

Giving and Receiving Feedback 45

Learning the Business Domain 46

Coaching and Listening Skills 48

Thinking Differently 49

Organizing 51

Collaborating 52

Summary 53

 

Chapter 5: Technical Awareness 55

Guiding Development with Examples 55

Automation and Coding Skills 56

General Technical Skills 59

Development Environments 59

Test Environments 60

Continuous Integration and Source Code Control Systems 62

Testing Quality Attributes 65

Test Design Techniques 67

Summary 67

 

Chapter 6: How to Learn 69

Learning Styles 69

Learning Resources 72

Time for Learning 77

Helping Others Learn 79

Summary 83

 

Part III: Planning–So You Don’t Forget the Big Picture 85

 

Chapter 7: Levels of Precision for Planning 87

Different Points of View 87

Planning for Regression Testing 97

Visualize What You Are Testing 98

Summary 100

 

Chapter 8: Using Models to Help Plan 101

Agile Testing Quadrants 101

Challenging the Quadrants 108

Using Other Influences for Planning 113

Planning for Test Automation 115

Summary 116

 

Part IV: Testing Business Value 119

 

Chapter 9: Are We Building the Right Thing? 121

Start with “Why” 121

Tools for Customer Engagement 123

More Tools or Techniques for Exploring Early 134

Invest to Build the Right Thing 134

Summary 135

 

Chapter 10: The Expanding Tester’s Mindset: Is This My Job? 137

Whose Job Is This Anyway? 137

Take the Initiative 142

Summary 144

 

Chapter 11: Getting Examples 145

The Power of Using Examples 145

Guiding Development with Examples 148

Where to Get Examples 155

Benefits of Using Examples 157

Potential Pitfalls of Using Examples 159

The Mechanics of Using Examples to Guide Coding 162

Summary 162

 

Part V: Investigative Testing 163

 

Chapter 12: Exploratory Testing 165

Creating Test Charters 168

Generating Test Charter Ideas 171

Managing Test Charters 176

Exploring in Groups 183

Recording Results for Exploratory Test Sessions 185

Where Exploratory Testing Fits into Agile Testing 188

Summary 190

 

Chapter 13: Other Types of Testing 191

So Many Testing Needs 192

Concurrency Testing 194

Internationalization and Localization 195

Regression Testing Challenges 200

User Acceptance Testing 201

A/B Testing 203

User Experience Testing 205

Summary 207

 

Part VI: Test Automation 209

 

Chapter 14: Technical Debt in Testing 211

Make It Visible 212

Work on the Biggest Problem–and Get the Whole Team Involved 217

Summary 220

 

Chapter 15: Pyramids of Automation 223

The Original Pyramid 223

Alternate Forms of the Pyramid 224

The Dangers of Putting Off Test Automation 227

Using the Pyramid to Show Different Dimensions 231

Summary 235

 

Chapter 16: Test Automation Design Patterns and Approaches 237

Involve the Whole Team 238

Starting Off Right 239

Design Principles and Patterns 240

Test Maintenance 248

Summary 251

 

Chapter 17: Selecting Test Automation Solutions 253

Solutions for Teams in Transition 253

Meeting New Automation Challenges with the Whole Team 258

Achieving Team Consensus for Automation Solutions 260

How Much Automation Is Enough? 262

Collaborative Solutions for Choosing Tools 264

Scaling Automation to Large Organizations 264

Other Automation Considerations 268

Summary 269

 

Part VII: What Is Your Context? 271

 

Chapter 18: Agile Testing in the Enterprise 275

What Do We Mean by “Enterprise”? 275

“Scaling” Agile Testing 276

Coordinating Multiple Teams 283

Consistent Tooling 289

Managing Dependencies 292

Advantages of Reaching Out beyond the Delivery Team 296

Summary 297

 

Chapter 19: Agile Testing on Distributed Teams 299

Why Not Colocate? 301

Common Challenges 302

Strategies for Coping 308

Offshore Testing 312

Tool Ideas for Distributed Teams 319

Summary 322

 

Chapter 20: Agile Testing for Mobile and Embedded Systems 325

Similar, Yet Different 326

Testing Is Critical 328

Agile Approaches 329

Summary 337

 

Chapter 21: Agile Testing in Regulated Environments 339

The “Lack of Documentation” Myth 339

Agile and Compliance 340

Summary 346

 

Chapter 22: Agile Testing for Data Warehouses and Business Intelligence Systems 347

What Is Unique about Testing BI/DW? 348

Using Agile Principles 351

Data–the Critical Asset 352

Big Data 357

Summary 360

 

Chapter 23: Testing and DevOps 361

A Short Introduction to DevOps 361

DevOps and Quality 363

How Testers Add DevOps Value 371

Summary 376

 

Part VIII: Agile Testing in Practice 379

 

Chapter 24: Visualize Your Testing 381

Communicating the Importance of Testing 381

Visualize for Continuous Improvement 386

Visibility into Tests and Test Results 390

Summary 392

 

Chapter 25: Putting It All Together 393

Confidence-Building Practices 394

Create a Shared Vision 402

Summary 405

 

Appendix A: Page Objects in Practice: Examples 407

An Example with Selenium 2–WebDriver 407

Using the PageFactory Class 410

 

Appendix B: Provocation Starters 413

 

Glossary 415

References 423

Bibliography 435

Index 459

Janet Gregory is an agile testing coach and process consultant with DragonFire Inc. She is coauthor with Lisa Crispin of Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams (Addison-Wesley, 2009) and More Agile Testing: Learning Journeys for the Whole Team (Addison-Wesley, 2015). She is also a contributor to 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know. Janet specializes in showing agile teams how testers can add value in areas beyond critiquing the product, for example, guiding development with business-facing tests. Janet works with teams to transition to agile development and teaches agile testing courses and tutorials worldwide. She contributes articles to publications such as Better Software, Software Test & Performance Magazine, and Agile Journal and enjoys sharing her experiences at conferences and user group meetings around the world. For more about Janet’s work and her blog, visit www.janetgregory.ca. You can also follow her on Twitter: @janetgregoryca.

Lisa Crispin is the coauthor with Janet Gregory of Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams (Addison-Wesley, 2009) and More Agile Testing: Learning Journeys for the Whole Team (Addison-Wesley,2015); she is also coauthor with Tip House of Extreme Testing (Addison-Wesley, 2002), and a contributor to Experiences of Test Automation by Dorothy Graham and Mark Fewster (Addison-Wesley, 2011) and Beautiful Testing (O’Reilly, 2009). Lisa was honored by her peers who voted her the Most Influential Agile Testing Professional Person at Agile Testing Days 2012. Lisa enjoys working as a tester with an awesome agile team. She shares her experiences via writing, presenting, teaching, and participating in agile testing communities around the world. For more about Lisa’s work, visit www.lisacrispin.com, and follow @lisacrispin onTwitter.

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