Agile: The Death of the

Tester?Andrew Palmer - 02/Oct/14

@MRAJPalmerhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/mrajpalmer

The Challenges• Am I hiring the right people?• Is the new world going to cost me

money?• What does QA mean now?

Remembering Prince2• The introduction of PRINCE2 and the

standard of gated methodology• Waterfall or V Model - given a spec to test• The Testers had a defined role:

• Test Plans, Scripts and Results• Test Environments• Sign Off

Service Manual - The New Prince 2?

• The introduction of the Service Manual and the Digital Service Standard Assessment

• User based requirements and acceptance• The Testers part of a delivery team:

• Conduct user testing• TDD• Tests are an asset of the product

What a Tester is now?

‘Waterfall’ ‘Agile’

Test ManagementTest Plans

Test ResultsGherkin

Kanban Board

Manual TestingTest Cases

Test ExecutionVerification of Stories

Acceptance Tests

Automated Testing Repeatable Tests TDD

Non-functional Testing Performance verificationContinuous Performance

Testing

What’s the problem?• Do we need to re-train Testers? • Can we trust developers?• Should we change our recruitment policy?• Can we estimate effort?• Can we evaluate team performance?

Cost• Test Analyst: £35,000• Agile Test Analyst: £42,000

• ISEB Foundation Course: £1,150• Certified Agile Tester Course: £1,780