Integrate Test Activities in Agile Projects

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Integrate Test Activities in Agile Projects

Rik Marselis 23 July 2014 Live webinar

2 Based on the EuroSTAR eBook by Leo van der Aalst & Rik Marselis

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Agile is always QD !!

Agile = Quality Development

Agile = Quick Development

Agile = Quick & Dirty

Agile = Quite a Disaster

What is your QD ???

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Does the Agile Manifesto have good footholds for testing?

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Does the Agile Manifesto have good footholds for testing?

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This is what the Scrum Guide states about quality and testing

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Benefits of a structured approach to testing in Agile projects

• Insight into and advice about risks related to the quality of the system under test

• Defects found and tracked at an early stage • Insight into root cause of defects • Defects prevented • Test products, such as test cases, can be reused • The test process is transparent and controllable • The automation of testing tasks (e.g. test specification

or test execution) can be pulled earlier into the project.

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What are the roles of the Product Owner and the Scrum Master in testing?

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An Agile team consists of “developers”

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So specialized testers are no longer needed?

Development team

Scrum master

Product Owner

Deve-loper

Scrum guide: •  Development teams are cross-functional,

with all of the skills necessary

•  No sub-teams regardless of domains like business analysis or testing

Testing one of the skills

Scrum team

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What is the role of the Product Owner? (related to the quality risks)

Set the criteria for the level of quality that is needed to reach a fit for purpose business solution at an acceptable level of risk

10 Focus on Quality and Risk

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What is the role of the Product Owner?

Accept the result (or not)

This may need acceptance testing

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What is the role of the Scrum Master in quality control and testing?

Scrum guide: •  The Scrum Master helps the development team to create

high-value products assists the team in achieving the right quality level

•  A Scrum Master can detect incomplete transparency by inspecting the artifacts, sensing patterns, listening closely to what is being said, and detecting differences between expected and real results this sounds like quality control, doesn’t it? By applying early quality measures the Scrum team makes sure to minimize rework.

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Which team member(s) perform(s) the testing activities and when?

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Which team member(s) perform(s) the testing activities and when?

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Development team

Scrum master

Product Owner

Deve-loper

Every team member takes her/his share of testing tasks

(and the Product Owner and Scrum Master also take part to a certain extent)

It is advisable to have a professional tester in the team to support the other members with quality & testing tasks, e.g. risk analysis, reviewing, create test cases, etc.

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Collaboration…

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Model Based Testing

In Agile projects time pressure is felt even more than in tradional IT So creating test cases must be done as easy as possible

Let the analysis/design-specialist of the team create “models” (e.g. flowcharts, UML, etc.)

Use a Model Based Testing tool to derive test cases.

(and sometimes the tester first has to translate a “white-board-model” to a useable format)

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Exploratory Testing

Creating test cases in an automated way is great

BUT…

In order to deal with the challenges of real life Testing also must be a creative activity

SO …

Exploring is essential.

Various ways of Exploratory testing are known, As a minimum: Use charters and logs. And remember Exploratory Testing is NOT Ad Hoc Testing !

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Collaboration across the application lifecycle: DevOps

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Everybody works

together on all activities

of the Application Lifecycle:

No more silo’s!!

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Support for Agile testing needed?

  When every Agile team has no more than one tester how can you guarantee all necessary skills are available?

  Organize support, for example on subjects like: Test Automation (execution, test case creation, …) Non-functional testing (security, performance, …) Test Management (reporting, defect management,…)

  In larger organizations a central support team can be created, with e.g. the “test manager new style” and the test tooling expert

  In smaller organizations ad hoc support can be obtained from external entities

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How to deal with the test strategy?

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The activities of testing

21 Traditionally these were phases, but they don’t need to be fully sequential

Pr S E C

I

Ctrl

Pl

Planning Setting up and maintaining Infrastructure

Preparation Specification Execution Completion Control

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Testing activities in Scrum

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Source: TMap NEXT in Scrum

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How to deal with the test strategy?

Traditional approach: Based on the Test Strategy, allocate Test Units and Test Techniques

In Agile/Scrum: Define the “project test strategy” in the project planning (sprint 0) Define the “sprint test strategy” in the sprint planning. Be aware that the strategy must be adapted to changed circumstances whenever necessary.

And, very important: - Regression testing strategy and - Test automation strategy

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A test unit is a collection of processes,

transactions and/or

functions that are tested

collectively.

So this may be anything from a tiny function to

a complete business process

depending on your goal.

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Focus on Quality and Risk

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Overview testing

activities of TMap NEXT

in Scrum

Evaluate backlog items and communicate obscurities with product owner

Determine product risk of each backlog item and record it on the (story) card (input for planning poker, assigning story points)

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Test Strategy: Early quality measures

“This requirement was not totally correct” is quite disturbing in tradional IT, because unplanned rework has to be done.

In Agile IT having the right quality of artifacts is even more important, since the difference between achieving your sprint goals or not is in having adequate quality.

So you need early quality measures: •  A clear and good Definition of Done •  Reviews of intermediate- and end-products •  Checklists to help not to forget important things •  Standards to help work in an efficient manner

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Regression testing

In every sprint the number of products increases. You must make sure products of previous sprints are still OK. Thus regression testing

In sprint “n”: •  Define test cases for new and changed products •  Manually execute these test cases •  Keep track of test cases that must be in regression test

In sprint “n+1” •  Automate the regression test cases •  Execute the complete regression test set

26 Programmers usually are very good in programming test tools.

At the start of sprint “n+1” they can very wel do a regression test task

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Do we still distinguish test levels? & How to go about with end-to-end-testing?

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Separate test-sprints?

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Development

Testing

Scrum guide: No sub-teams

No separate testing !!!

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Test levels are no longer “levels”

In the dutch language test levels are called “testsoort” which translates to “test variety”

And this exactly says what we still need in Agile: Various scopes of testing

The pitfall of Agile teams is to focus on unit testing only. Or to focus on functional testing only.

Keep in mind the objectives of all test levels when defining and executing the tests in an Agile team.

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But how to deal with End-to-end testing?

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System 1

Business process (complete cycle from customer to customer)

System 2 System 3 System 4 System 5

Existing unchanged

Existing unchanged

Scope E2Etest

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Combine lifecycle models pragmatically

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Demand

Supply

e.g. E2E-test

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About sustainability…

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Conclusion: You can’t sprint all the time Agile principle: Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely. (prevent having a team-burnout; implement the Agile principles in a proper way!)

How long does the 100 meter sprint take? 100 meter sprint +10 seconds

How long does it take to sprint a marathon? 42 kilometer sprinting +70 minutes

What is the world record for a marathon? Marathon record +120 minutes

Prevent team-burnout !!

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For effective and sustainable testing:

  Integrate all activities including testing (for as far as possible)

  Testing is primarily a task for all team members (not necessarily a separate function)

  Remember to still have your different views on testing (test levels / test varieties)

  Early quality is more important than ever (do reviews to get it right first time!)

33 Rik Marselis, 23 July 2014

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Questions ? TestHuddle.com

34 For questions & answers: join us at www.testhuddle.com

www.eurostarconferences.com www.ict-books.com

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Rik Marselis

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Management Consultant Quality & Testing at Over 30 years IT experience, of which 15 years quality & testing

Advisor, process-improver & coach at many organizations Prince2 Practitioner, CMMI and CISA

Trainer for various courses, e.g. Agile testing TMap, TPI en ISTQB accredited

Research Author of various books & articles Fellow of SogetiLabs, Speaker at various conferences

Chairman (association of testers, 1600 members)

@rikmarselis