More Agile Testing

Janet Gregory is an agile testing coach and process consultant with DragonFire Inc. She is coauthor with Lisa Crispin of Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams (Addison-Wesley, 2009) and More Agile Testing: Learning Journeys for the Whole Team (Addison-Wesley, 2015). She is also a contributor to 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know . Janet specializes in showing agile teams how testers can add value in areas beyond critiquing the product, for example, guiding development with business-facing tests. Janet works with teams to transition to agile development and teaches agile testing courses and tutorials worldwide. She contributes articles to publications such as Better Software, Software Test & Performance Magazine, and Agile Journal and enjoys sharing her experiences at conferences and user group meetings around the world. For more about Janet’s work and her blog, visit www.janetgregory.ca. You can also follow her on Twitter: @janetgregoryca.Lisa Crispin is the coauthor with Janet Gregory of Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams (Addison-Wesley, 2009) and More Agile Testing: Learning Journeys for the Whole Team (Addison-Wesley,2015); she is also coauthor with Tip House of Extreme Testing (Addison-Wesley, 2002), and a contributor to Experiences of Test Automation by Dorothy Graham and Mark Fewster (Addison-Wesley, 2011) and Beautiful Testing (O’Reilly, 2009). Lisa was honored by her peers who voted her the Most Influential Agile Testing Professional Person at Agile Testing Days 2012. Lisa enjoys working as a tester with an awesome agile team. She shares her experiences via writing, presenting, teaching, and participating in agile testing communities around the world. For more about Lisa’s work, visit www.lisacrispin.com, and follow @lisacrispin onTwitter.

Praise for More Agile Testing "I love this book. It will help to create really great testers. That's a good thing, since anyone who reads this will want to have one on their team." -Liz Keogh, agile coach, Lunivore Limited "This book will change your thinking and move your focus from tests to testing. Yes, it is not about the result, but about the activity!" -Kenji Hiranabe, cofounder of Astah and CEO, Change Vision, Inc. "To my mind, agile development is about learning-that one word captures the true spirit of what agile is all about. When I had the chance to read through their new book, I could only say, 'Wow! Janet and Lisa have done themselves proud.' This is not a book about testing; this is a book about learning. Their clear explanations are accompanied by great true stories and an impressive list of books, articles, and other resources. Those of us who like learning, who love to dig for more information, can rejoice! I know you're always looking for something interesting and useful; I can guarantee that you will find it here!" -Linda Rising, coauthor of Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas "Janet and Lisa's first book, Agile Testing, drew some general principles that are still important today but left me wondering, 'how?' In this second book, they adapt those principles to today's development landscape-with mobile, DevOps, and cloud-based applications delivered in increasingly compressed release cycles. Readers get specific testing tools for the mind along with new practices and commentary to accelerate learning. Read it today." -Matt Heusser, Managing Principal, Excelon Development "An excellent guide for your team's agile journey, full of resources to help you with every kind of testing challenge you might meet along the way. Janet and Lisa share a wealth of experience with personal stories about how they helped agile teams figure out how to get value from testing. I really like how the book is filled with techniques explained by leading industry practitioners who've pioneered them in their own organizations." -Rachel Davies, agile coach, unruly and coauthor of Agile Coaching "Let me net this out for you: agile quality and testing is hard to get right. It's nuanced, context-based, and not for the faint of heart. In order to effectively balance it, you need hard-earned, pragmatic, real-world advice. This book has it-not only from Janet and Lisa, but also from forty additional expert agile practitioners. Get it and learn how to effectively drive quality into your agile products and across your entire organization." -Bob Galen, Principal Consultant, R Galen Consulting Group, and Author of Agile Reflections and Scrum Product Ownership "Janet and Lisa have done it again. They've combined pragmatic life experience with ample storytelling to help people take their agile testing to the next level." -Jonathan Rasmusson, author of Agile Samurai: How Masters Deliver Great Software "In this sequel to their excellent first book, Janet and Lisa have embraced the maturity of agile adoption and the variety of domains in which agile approaches are now being applied. In More Agile Testing they have distilled the experiences of experts working in different agile organizations and combined them with their own insights into a set of invaluable lessons for agile practitioners. Structured around a range of essential areas for software professionals to consider, the book examines what we have learned about applying agile, as its popularity has grown, and about software testing in the process. There is something for everyone here, not only software testers, but individuals in any business role or domain with an interest in delivering quality in an agile context." -Adam Knight, Director of QA, RainStor "This book has it all: practical advice and stories from the trenches. Whether you've never heard of agile or you think you're an expert, there is something here that will help you out. Jump around in the book and try a few things; I promise you will be a better tester and developer for it." -Samantha Laing, agile coach and trainer, Growing Agile "More Agile Testing is a great collection of stories and ideas that can help you improve not just how you test, but the products you build and the way you work. What I love most about the book is how easy many of the ideas are to try. If one message is clear, it is that regardless of your context and challenges, there are things you can try to improve. Get started today with something small, and nothing will be impossible." -Karen Greaves, agile coach and trainer, Growing Agile "More Agile Testing is an extensive compilation of experiences, stories, and examples from practitioners who work with testing in agile environments around the world. It covers a broad spectrum, from organizational and hiring challenges, test techniques and practices, to automation guidance. The diversity of the content makes it a great cookbook for anyone in software development who is passionate about improving their work and wants to produce quality software." -Sigurdur Birgisson, quality assistance engineer, Atlassian

• Foreword by Elisabeth Hendrickson xviiForeword by Johanna Rothman xixPreface xxiAcknowledgments xxixAbout the Authors xxxiiiAbout the Contributors xxxvPart I: Introduction 1Chapter 1: How Agile Testing Has Evolved 3Summary 6Chapter 2: The Importance of Organizational Culture 7Investing Time 8The Importance of a Learning Culture 12Fostering a Learning Culture 13Transparency and Feedback Loops 15Educating the Organization 17Managing Testers 19Summary 20Part II: Learning for Better Testing 21Chapter 3: Roles and Competencies 23Competencies versus Roles 24T-Shaped Skill Set 28Generalizing Specialists 33Hiring the Right People 36Onboarding Testers 37Summary 39Chapter 4: Thinking Skills for Testing 41Facilitating 42Solving Problems 43Giving and Receiving Feedback 45Learning the Business Domain 46Coaching and Listening Skills 48Thinking Differently 49Organizing 51Collaborating 52Summary 53Chapter 5: Technical Awareness 55Guiding Development with Examples 55Automation and Coding Skills 56General Technical Skills 59Development Environments 59Test Environments 60Continuous Integration and Source Code Control Systems 62Testing Quality Attributes 65Test Design Techniques 67Summary 67Chapter 6: How to Learn 69Learning Styles 69Learning Resources 72Time for Learning 77Helping Others Learn 79Summary 83Part III: Planning–So You Don’t Forget the Big Picture 85Chapter 7: Levels of Precision for Planning 87Different Points of View 87Planning for Regression Testing 97Visualize What You Are Testing 98Summary 100Chapter 8: Using Models to Help Plan 101Agile Testing Quadrants 101Challenging the Quadrants 108Using Other Influences for Planning 113Planning for Test Automation 115Summary 116Part IV: Testing Business Value 119Chapter 9: Are We Building the Right Thing? 121Start with “Why” 121Tools for Customer Engagement 123More Tools or Techniques for Exploring Early 134Invest to Build the Right Thing 134Summary 135Chapter 10: The Expanding Tester’s Mindset: Is This My Job? 137Whose Job Is This Anyway? 137Take the Initiative 142Summary 144Chapter 11: Getting Examples 145The Power of Using Examples 145Guiding Development with Examples 148Where to Get Examples 155Benefits of Using Examples 157Potential Pitfalls of Using Examples 159The Mechanics of Using Examples to Guide Coding 162Summary 162Part V: Investigative Testing 163Chapter 12: Exploratory Testing 165Creating Test Charters 168Generating Test Charter Ideas 171Managing Test Charters 176Exploring in Groups 183Recording Results for Exploratory Test Sessions 185Where Exploratory Testing Fits into Agile Testing 188Summary 190Chapter 13: Other Types of Testing 191So Many Testing Needs 192Concurrency Testing 194Internationalization and Localization 195Regression Testing Challenges 200User Acceptance Testing 201A/B Testing 203User Experience Testing 205Summary 207Part VI: Test Automation 209Chapter 14: Technical Debt in Testing 211Make It Visible 212Work on the Biggest Problem–and Get the Whole Team Involved 217Summary 220Chapter 15: Pyramids of Automation 223The Original Pyramid 223Alternate Forms of the Pyramid 224The Dangers of Putting Off Test Automation 227Using the Pyramid to Show Different Dimensions 231Summary 235Chapter 16: Test Automation Design Patterns and Approaches 237Involve the Whole Team 238Starting Off Right 239Design Principles and Patterns 240Test Maintenance 248Summary 251Chapter 17: Selecting Test Automation Solutions 253Solutions for Teams in Transition 253Meeting New Automation Challenges with the Whole Team 258Achieving Team Consensus for Automation Solutions 260How Much Automation Is Enough? 262Collaborative Solutions for Choosing Tools 264Scaling Automation to Large Organizations 264Other Automation Considerations 268Summary 269Part VII: What Is Your Context? 271Chapter 18: Agile Testing in the Enterprise 275What Do We Mean by “Enterprise”? 275“Scaling” Agile Testing 276Coordinating Multiple Teams 283Consistent Tooling 289Managing Dependencies 292Advantages of Reaching Out beyond the Delivery Team 296Summary 297Chapter 19: Agile Testing on Distributed Teams 299Why Not Colocate? 301Common Challenges 302Strategies for Coping 308Offshore Testing 312Tool Ideas for Distributed Teams 319Summary 322Chapter 20: Agile Testing for Mobile and Embedded Systems 325Similar, Yet Different 326Testing Is Critical 328Agile Approaches 329Summary 337Chapter 21: Agile Testing in Regulated Environments 339The “Lack of Documentation” Myth 339Agile and Compliance 340Summary 346Chapter 22: Agile Testing for Data Warehouses and Business Intelligence Systems 347What Is Unique about Testing BI/DW? 348Using Agile Principles 351Data–the Critical Asset 352Big Data 357Summary 360Chapter 23: Testing and DevOps 361A Short Introduction to DevOps 361DevOps and Quality 363How Testers Add DevOps Value 371Summary 376Part VIII: Agile Testing in Practice 379Chapter 24: Visualize Your Testing 381Communicating the Importance of Testing 381Visualize for Continuous Improvement 386Visibility into Tests and Test Results 390Summary 392Chapter 25: Putting It All Together 393Confidence-Building Practices 394Create a Shared Vision 402Summary 405Appendix A: Page Objects in Practice: Examples 407An Example with Selenium 2–WebDriver 407Using the PageFactory Class 410Appendix B: Provocation Starters 413Glossary 415References 423Bibliography 435Index 459