Part, because I’m planning several posts around this topic.
00, because this is the ‘setting the stage’ post…
While in the Agile manifesto is written: “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools” I will cover in the coming posts information how individuals and there interactions are supported by tools and processes.
Several characteristics of agile testing [in random order].
- Lightweight implementation of tools and processes.
- Find bugs as early as possible.
- Don’t do things twice, just enough testing.
- Short feedback loops to the team.
- Customer involvement in writing tests.
- An iteration is ready when the tests succeed.
- There needs to be space for exploratory testing.
- Focus on automation.
- Repeatability is a key success factor, frequent testing.
- Pair testing.
Tool and processes support should focus on these characteristics. At this moment the tool support with VSTS 2010 for the tester is getting really mature [see this post]. So, beside the agile support for the developer like TDD, refactoring, continuous builds, guidance and many other things [see this post and image below].
Also the tester wants / needs this kind of support, beside an easy connection with all the capabilities developers have he needs the capabilities to execute his work in an agile team…
So, what practices needs to be in place for the tester within a VSTS 2010 agile project? just randomly start using the offered tools isn’t the right direction. In the coming posts I will capture some thoughts, practices and lessons learned from around the world…
As a start some useful agile testing links: