Test Team Changes Needed to Support Agile ... Part 1

This is my first post on Agile Testing topics but will be an ongoing project as I start recording my thoughts on one of my favorite topics which is software testing. I will be cross-linking with Fusion Testing Blog as I pull together the threads of my thoughts on Test Team changes and Test Technique changes.

In this blog I will be working on the Test Team and Management direction changes that need to occur.

The first thing to focus on when implementing Agile into an engineering organization is helping the test team understand that they still have a major role to play in Agile teams. This is not an easy task as most published works support the developer testing principle and do not mention software test engineers roles in Agile.

As if testers do not have enough of an identify crisis and inferiority complex, Agile books and implementation is once again devaluing the contributions that test engineers can have on engineering teams. One thing for sure is that if your company has any legacy products there will have to be a long transition period for the Agile teams to catch up on technical debt and unit and integration testing before any team can truly do away with testing positions.

I agree that the best principle in Agile teams is having a group of individuals who are strong in coding, testing, documenting but the reality of the situation is that you have a group of experts coming together on the Agile teams that do not have the cross functional expertise to sign up for any task whether it be documentation, coding or testing.

So how do you convince your test engineers that there is still a role for them in Agile teams. Here are some options:

1. Support their role as testing experts and encourage them to bring up testing challenges for each story.
2. Help them to learn how to identify testable or non-testable UAC, this will provide immediate value to the product owner and the team.
3. Train the team in different methods of automation testing tools such as Fitnesse, Selinum or automation testing techniques like Unit, Integration or Performance Testing.
4. Get your test engineers to learn about Test Driven Development and how to move the testing upstream, and then get them involved in promoting the values to their Agile teams.
5. Implement a Lightweight Test Approach like Fusion Testing to reduce the documentation but to increase the testing quality and visibility.

More to come ....