"challenges faced by testers working on agile teams" by aldo rall

Challenges Faced by

Testers starting work

in Agile Teams

IC Agile Attendance Code: Indigo611

Copyright 2014

From a question on LinkedIn

“Share a few challenges ….in agile environments”

To Old Paradigms being Old

A “newer” Old Paradigm

• Dev team decided to “Go agile”

• Water-Scrum-Fall types

• AGINO

– Agile in name only

• SINO

– Scrum in name only

• Testing is still done after development

Talking the Talk, Without Walking

Let us look at how testers spend their time (1)

Source: The Future of Software Testing: Where do Testers Spend Their Time?, Published by IBM, October 2014

Let us look at how testers spend their time (2)

Source: The Future of Software Testing: Where do Testers Spend Their Time?, Published by IBM, October 2014

Let us look at how testers spend their time (3)

Source: The Future of Software Testing: Where do Testers Spend Their Time?, Published by IBM, October 2014

Signs of ‘AGINO’

Tools

Techniques

SDLC Approach

Structuring of Work

Why these shortcomings?

• Scrum not addressing Quality• Testing is not Continuous

– How do you do testing as an ongoing activity in a sprint, and not fall into a mini waterfall implementation inside a sprint?

• Outsourcing of testing is still prevalent– If software development is a core competence in Orgs – why outsource

testing?

• Automation not addressed properly– Build up technical debt– Skills?

• Transitioning Testers– “If you fail to transition testers to the correct mindset before trying to tackle

the process changes, then you’re setting your team up for failure” See “4 Steps Towards Developing the Agile Testing Mindset for Successful Transition to Agile Process” - www.SoftwareTestingHelp.com

And… some answers from LinkedIn

• “old testing approaches are shoehorned in agile environments with bad results”

• “testing is not a phase but a continuous activity that happens at all levels”

• “need for a culture change where testing is responsibility of the agile team and not of the tester”

• “testers to have T-shaped skills and work in close collaboration with developers and product owners and not in isolated test teams”

• “unlearning that traditional testers need to go through before they are ready to work in an agile environment where they are no longer the quality police”

• “increased need for test automation due to the frequent releases... test automation … is a development activity”

• “some teams think it is enough writing test automation at the UI level and not at the unit or integration level”

• “in agile context, distributed teams are often a false economy”

What the Research is Saying

Source: The Future of Software Testing: Where do Testers Spend Their Time?, Published by IBM, October 2014

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Signposts to a Shifting Paradigm

Tools

Techniques

SDLC Approach

Structuring of Work

In Closing

IC Agile Attendance Code: Indigo611