Agile Testingin the

Enterprise

Janet Gregory

@janetgregoryca

Janet Gregory, DragonFire Inc. Copyright 2016

Agile Testing Days, Potsdam 2016

Agile Testing; 2009

More Agile Testing: Oct 2014Co-authored with Lisa Crispin

Website:

www.agiletester.com www.agiletester.ca

DragonFire Inc.www.janetgregory.ca

@janetgregoryca

janet@agiletester.ca

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Let’s learn a bit about your experiences

- Less than 100 people- Larger than 1,000 employees- Larger than 5,000- Different cities, same time zone (or 1 hr. apart)- Time zones more than 7 hrs difference- More than 3 remote teams- Others?

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to share my experiences on how

agile testing activities can span large teams…

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Some of the challenges

Plan for testing

Key testing practices that work across teams

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Sharing is caring

Large organizations

that have enterprise applications and solutions

@janetgregoryca

Small co-located teams: Agile’s sweet spot

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Defined by its:◦ Values, norms,

assumptions

◦ Social system

◦ Visible artifacts Icons

Rituals

Vocabulary

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@janetgregoryca

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How do we interact? Do you play the

blame game?

@janetgregoryca

• Bureaucracy

• Reporting needs (real or imagined)

• Orders handed down ….

• Too many concurrent projects

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• Organizational controls – regulatory, internal

• Working with third parties

• Involving customers in other locations

• ERP system integration

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Other Testing Specific Issues

Too many dependencies

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Tester on more than one team

Some of the challenges

Plan for testing

Key testing practices that work across teams

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Sharing is caring

@janetgregoryca

Consider the feature

Create testable stories

Who tests what?

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@janetgregoryca

Rel

eas

e P

lan

nin

gTeam A

Planning

Test Mind Map

Team BPlanning

Team CPlanning

Team DPlanning

ReleaseTest Matrix

Release Test Planning/ Approach

Lots of Stuff Shopping

Release 1.5 Data

In

teg

rity

Look

& F

eel

Calc

ula

tion

s

Cu

rren

cy

Loca

liza

tion

Dev

ices

iP

ad

Dev

ices

iP

hon

e

Bou

nd

ary

Con

dit

ion

s

Load

/ P

erfo

rman

ce

Sec

uri

ty

Store customer information

Add to shopping cart

Calculate shipping costs

Mobile iOs - view only

Next feature

Legend

Good to Go

Some testing; could use more

Major issue

No testing done

Not applicable `

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Think in Levels of Detail

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Dependencies between teams

Remove them before the iteration, but remember to test them

@janetgregoryca

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@janetgregoryca

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Each team responsible for delivering their

feature -- completely

Specialist teams report to the “owner” feature

team.

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Over-riding test strategy on how …. but

• Understand who is testing what

• What are the overlaps?

• Where are the gaps?

• Co-ordination between teams?

• ASK: Who, when, how???

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@janetgregoryca

Coordinate

Tools & Practices

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• Classes of tools

• Involve teams in choosing tools

• One size does not fit all◦ But … be aware of too many tools for support or

cross-training

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• Same version control◦ Understand the branching and merging approach

• Same CI environment◦ Use to visualize test results

• Accessible & stable test environments◦ Know what versions of applications are in each

environment

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Some of the challenges

Plan for testing

Key testing practices that work across teams

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Sharing is caring

@janetgregoryca

• What is the state of testability of your architecture?◦ Can you simplify it for automation?

• Regulatory◦ simplest thing you can possibly do

◦ Consider NECESSARY artifacts – can you automate

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• Power of 3

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• Repeat verbal conversations in writing

• Question

• Draw pictures

• Test ideas

• Aim for short feedback cycles

• Remove dependencies early

• Start with a test to remove assumptions

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@janetgregoryca

We can use tests and examples for shared understanding and common language

For example, create a function to add 2 numbers

-2 + 1 = -1

2.0 + 1.050 = 3.050

2.0 + 1 = 3.0

2 + 1 = 3

@janetgregoryca

@janetgregoryca

Some of the challenges

Plan for testing

Key testing practices that work across teams

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Sharing is caring

@janetgregoryca

Sharing information, that is

Transparency means less blame

• No hiding

• No secrets

• No gaming the system

The hard part is making it visible

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@janetgregoryca

• Share dependencies

• Same vision

• Same goal

• Accessible to all

• Keep everyone “in the loop”

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Final note:

I’m not advocating distributed teams or

out-sourcing but if you are faced with those

problems, I hope you can use some of these

ideas to help manage your agile testing.

and

Agile ≠ NO DOCUMENTATION

Know your own context!

Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams

More Agile Testing: Learning Journeys for the Whole Team

By Janet Gregory and Lisa Crispin

www.agiletester.ca

www.agiletester.com

Contact info

www.janetgregory.caEmail: janet@agiletester.caTwitter: janetgregoryca

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