Test Planning
Agile Tester plays a significant role in Test Planning. The activities include − Understanding the Requirements − Understanding the stories, tasks and features and the associated acceptance criteria and use cases. Defining Test Strategy − Defining the test strategy based on the understanding of the requirements. Defining Test Levels − Defining the test levels, such as unit, integration, functional, user acceptance, and performance testing. Defining Test Types − Defining the test types, such as functional, non-functional, regression, end-to-end, exploratory and usability testing. Defining Test Tools − Identifying and evaluating the appropriate test tools for test automation, test case management, and reporting. Defining Test Cases − Writing and managing the test cases for each user story, feature, and task.
Sprint Zero
Sprint zero is an initial sprint to plan for the following sprints. The Agile Tester plays a role in − Ensuring the testability of user stories and features. Defining and refining the acceptance criteria. Defining the test data and test environment setup.
Integration
Integration phase tests the integration between the components of the product. The role of the Agile Tester in this phase is to − Identify the integration test scenarios − Identify the required integration test scenarios. Execute the integration tests − Execute the integration test scenarios. Identify and report integration defects − Identify and report integration defects.
Agile Testing Practices
Agile Tester plays a role in the following testing practices − Test-driven Development (TDD) − Writing test cases before coding. Acceptance Test-driven Development (ATDD) − Writing and executing acceptance tests. Behavior Driven Development (BDD) − Writing and executing scenarios in the form of stories. Experience Based Testing − Testing based on the user/stakeholder/domain experience. Test Automation − Automating the test cases and integrating it with the build system. Continuous Testing − Automating the tests and running them continuously. Continuous Integration − Integrating the test automation with the build system and running the tests on every build. Continuous Delivery − Automating the build, deploy, and test process.
Identifying Scope Sprint Zero
Sprint Zero involves preparing for the first sprint and involves identifying the scope of the project. This involves dividing user stories into sprints, creating system architecture, planning, acquiring, and installing tools (including testing tools), creating the initial test strategy for all test levels, defining test metrics, specifying the acceptance criteria (also known as the definition of “Done”), defining exit criteria, creating a Scrum board, and setting the direction for testing throughout the sprints.
Continuous Integration
In Agile, a quality working product should be ready for release at any point of time in the development lifecycle. This implies continuous integration as a part of development. An Agile tester needs to support continuous integration with continuous testing. This requires understanding the integration strategy and identifying all dependencies between functions and features.
Agile Testing Practices
An Agile tester needs to adapt Agile practices for testing in an agile project. This includes pairing, where two team members work together at the same keyboard with one testing and the other reviewing/analyzing the testing. The two team members can be a tester and a developer, a tester and a business analyst, or two testers. In addition, incremental test design is used where test cases are built from user stories, starting with simple tests and moving to more complex tests. Mind mapping is also used as an effective tool in Agile testing to organize information regarding the necessary test sessions, test strategies, and test data.