“The Principles for agile testers”

Points to remember and Quotable Quotes

Definition of Agile Tester-

“A professional tester who embraces change, collaborates well with both technical and businesspeople, and understands the concept of using tests to document requirements and drive development.”

• Skills are important, but attitude counts more
• An agile tester does not see herself as a quality police officer, protecting her customers from inadequate code.
• Agile testers don’t limit themselves to solving only testing issues.
• Creativity, openness to ideas, willingness to take on any task or role, focus on the customer and a constant view of the big picture – are some components of the agile testing mindset.
• A team that guides itself with agile values and principles will have higher team morale and better velocity than a poorly functioning team of talented individuals.
• The principles important for agile testers are –
  • Provide continuous feedback
  • Deliver value to customer
  • Enable face-to-face communication
  • Have courage
  • Keep it Simple
  • Practice continuous improvement
  • Respond to change
  • Self-organize
  • Focus on people
  • Enjoy
• AATD “Agile Attention Deficit Disorder” – Anything not learned quickly might be deemed useless!
• Automating tests is hard, but it is much easier when you have the whole team working together.
• Agile development rewards the agile tester’s passion for her work!

I had written an article about differences between Agile and Traditional testing approaches a few years back. Though I had not read this book at the time, I now feel how many of the points were similar and resonate the same even now. You can read my article here – https://testwithnishi.com/2016/10/20/5-ways-agile-testing-is-different-from-traditional-testing/

***Update **About face-to-face communication** during Covid-19 ***

As I am reading this book during this bizarre time of social-distancing, working remotely and entire nations on lockdown, the part about ‘face-to-face’ communication has a new meaning now. As Janet Gregory also pointed out in response to this article, our definition of face-to-face has changed over the last few weeks over the entire world! We are lucky to have technology that helps us continue effective communication within our teams, have conversations, video calls, screen shares, continue learning over webinars and continue working, feeling useful and being productive.

Hoping things change soon and we can go back to having fun, productive discussions with our team mates over coffee. Until then — Happy social distancing!

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