Is a test manager still needed in Agile development?

This is the translation of my article for Polteq in TestnetNieuws 2012-2.

Within Agile the responsibilities shift more to the executing teams. For instance the planning and estimation of the work that used to be done by management, now lies completely within the teams. So is there enough work left to justify the function test manager? To be able to judge this we need to do a couple of things. First determine what a test manager did and which parts of his work will stay within Agile. Next is to determine if new responsibilities and tasks arise fir the test managers.

Who does what?

The first tasks that come in mind when I think of the traditional test manager are:

• Create and update test plans;
• Set the test policy;
• Initiate and execute product risk analysis;
• Estimate the work;
• Create planning;
• Report on risks, progress and quality;
• Manage the test team;
• Manage the test project.

Mostly organizing tasks dealing with testing. When we start working Agile, many of these task will be picked up by the Agile teams. These teams will have the responsibility to estimate and plan the work that is provided to them. A clear indication the the work of the test manager will be less… Whenever the Agile teams execute their planning sessions they need to think about risks, because these risks will influence the amount of work. Therefore the product risk analysis will be split up into smaller parts and will be executed every iteration by the teams.

Next the test plans, test policy and reporting. One of the Agile principles states: “Working software over comprehensive documentation”. So we need to find out how much of the plans and reports is still valid in Agile and how we can minimize this. Test plans cannot become comprehensive documentation! These plans usually leave little room for flexibility and flexibility is just what the Agile teams need. They need to be able to adjust their plans every iteration to fit their needs. The policy will be dealt with later on in this article.

Reporting is also placed in the Agile teams. The teams report on their status every day at the daily stand-up; everyone talks about what they will do and which impediments they have. The burn-down chart – a graph to show how many work is still left in the current sprint – should also be part of the stand-up. It helps to track the progress and well functioning teams will adjust their plannings according to the information of the burn-down chart.

The Agile test manager

The Agile test manager will focus more on people management and therefore has the responsibility to pick the right people for the different teams. The test manager needs to make sure that they hire people fit for Agile, testers have the opportunity to attend essential courses and that sufficient growth possibilities are present within the organization. Beware that not every good (or even excellent) tester is fit for Agile!

Managing the test team has become more complex. At first we had a test team that worked together, but the testers are now divided over different teams. In stead of keeping one plate in the air, a multitude of plates should be kept in the air. It is reasonable to assume that this aspect of test management takes more time than before.

Another important aspect is facilitating knowledge sharing. Of course the knowledge should be shared within the Agile team to enable good and efficient work of the team. But when there are multiple teams, these teams can also learn a lot from each other. The test manager should have a test meeting once every couple of weeks to let the testers of the different teams learn from each other. In this way the teams can benefit from problems and best practices from other teams.

Thinking about risks within the team is very important, but this should also be done at higher levels within the organization. During creation of the product backlog and the release planning (cross-iteration activities), the test manager should make sure that a risk analysis is performed. The impact of different backlog items on each other should become clear. Some items are prerequisite for others and should be planned like that. In projects with multiple teams it often occurs that multiple teams effect the same parts of the system, this risk needs to be addressed during release planning and the sprint planning sessions. In short, we need a helicopter view on the project with a focus on quality and risks.

The business needs a view on product quality. With Agile testing we do not need to reinvent the wheel, a structured testing approach still offers insight into quality. The Agile test manager needs to create a generic test approach that deals with several subjects. Think of how to register defects, dealing with non-functionals and how to do end-to-end testing. The amount of freedom that the teams get to fill in how they deal with these topics depends on a number of factors like risks, the maturity of testing, the maturity of the team, etc. The approach should offer space for the teams to make their own decisions.

Conclusion

Small project with only one or two teams don’t need a full-time test management job, one of the more experienced testers in the teams will be able to fill the role of test manager. Organizations with large and/or a lot of projects have enough room for a full Agile test manager function. So the role of a test manager will not disappear!

The focus of test management is more on people management. Next to that on facilitating and controlling the quality of testing. We need generic guidelines to manage the testing within the organization and the test manager needs to supply these. These guidelines should not limit the freedom of the Agile teams too much.

Thinking about risks still is important. This should not only be done within the Agile teams, but also cross-iteration and even cross-project. The test manager can offer the helicopter view and look at risks on several levels. It’s very important to realize the risks with multiple parallel Agile teams.

So: Yes, in the Agile world we need test management!

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Growing need for technical testers

This is a translation of my article for the “Testkrant Jaargang 2012 Editie 1“. The article is based on my experiences at Polteq.

The world changes and this sets new requirements for testers, especially the technical aspect of testing. Cloud computing enables us to use functionality from the cloud. For cloud computing we need to test if the functionality of the cloud service correctly supports the business processes, but we also need technical tests to check if the service correctly integrates with the existing systems. We also need to monitor the service in production by using test automation, which needs technical skills.

The other big “hype” that requires technical testers is Agile. By using multi disciplinary teams, the tester gets closer to the developer. Direct communication between these two functions will increase since less documentation is used. To enable good communication, the testers will need to know something about development and vice versa. The iterative and incremental character of Agile requires to execute regression tests more often. This demands for more test automation. This article will describe some situations for cloud, Agile and test automation that will clarify the need for technical testers.

Cloud

A growing number of companies uses services from the cloud (e.g. e-mail, CRM or environments). All services are provided via the internet and should be integrated in the current business processes. Testing the communication with the service is a technical task. The focus will be on the messages that are used to communicate with the service which requires looking below the GUI.

Using cloud services has an impact on internal development projects. Whenever we need to test chains of events after internal changes a connection to the (live) service is often unwanted. So we need to use a stub or mock to simulate the cloud service in order to test our processes without touching the production version of the cloud service.

A service comes with agreements and contract with the supplier about performance and other aspects of the service in production. We need to check in production if the supplier will keep up to the agreements. There is the need for frequent (or even continuous) tests that will monitor the service. This implies test automation which will be covered further on in this article.

Agile

Agile uses four simple basic priciples:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

The importance of interaction can be found within the multi disciplinairy teams. Less documentation can only work of the team members communicate well on what they are doing. To understand what the other team members are doing, you will need to know about the other disciplines. We expect from our testers that they have a basic knowledge of programming and have some basic programming skills. This will help to discuss about software architecture and possible solutions, which will be defined by the team.

The short development cycles force us to test incomplete products. The tester will need to apply the use of drivers, stubs and mocks to be able to test. Creating or setting up these facilities to support testing needs to be signaled (and preferably also executed) by the testers.

The working software that gets delivered every iteration will need to work together with the previously delivered items. Each iteration the functionality will increase which also reflects on the size of the regression test set. This set grows, but the time to execute it is only limited. The frequent execution of the regression test set, together with the time pressure, make a good business case for test automation. You should not think to lightly of test automation within Agile.

Another requirement as a result of the frequent deliveries is good version and configuration management. The testers will need to help to make this a succes. When and how to integrate? Which demands do we have for the different environments? Technical knowledge will help to get a better and clearer view of what should happen.

Test automation

No need to explain that test automation has technical aspects. Since test automation is an important part of testing with cloud computing and within Agile, test automation deserves some special attention.

Test automation can occur on different levels. The foundation for test automation is set with the unit test. These unit tests are in general created by the developers, but this does not mean that testers are not involved. We can help the developers apply test design techniques, since we have more knowledge of testing. Pair programming of a tester with a developer can be of value here. The tester can assist the developer in thinking about which test cases need to be created. In addition to this assisting, we can also review the unit tests when we have enough knowledge and skills with respect to the programming language.

Functional test automation is closer to the testers. With Agile development the graphical user interface keeps changing to meet the (changing) requirements, so succesfull automation needs to be at a layer below the GUI. So once again we need to know how to manipulate the code to be able to test the functionality. When automation is used that does use the graphical user interface, this GUI must be manipulated in some manner. When we use Fitnesse or Cucumber to achieve this, it seems like little or no technical work, but we do need some programming. Both Fitnesse and Cucumber need an interpretation layer to talk to the test object. Allthough both come with a lot of standard functions and options, they almost never fit completely for your specific situation. Therefore we need to add some functionality, which needs to be programmed. More and more it is expected from the tester that they can do this.

Multiple contexts require continuous testing. Within Agile for the integration and regression, with cloud for monitoring the supplier, etc. The only way to achieve continuous (or at least very frequent) testing is by automation. Thinking about how to realise this and actualy implementing it requires knowledge of architecture, programming and testing.

Conclusion

The software we create is getting more and more complex. This does not only require more technical knowledge from the developers, but also from the testers. In test jobs we see requests for programming skills (preferably in multiple programming languages) and people expect the testers to be able to discuss about architectural problems found during development. The integration of different systems, as seen with cloud computing, requires the testers to be able to read technical logging, use drivers, stubs and mocks, etc. The closeness that we find in the Agile teams implies more technical discussions and communication.

The tester needs to keep up in the quickly changing world, where Agile and cloud are becoming the standard. The only way to keep up with the speed of development is to use test automation. The tools that will be needed for this should not only be used, but also understood and implemented. So yes, the need for technical testers grows.

Keep learning and broaden your knowledge, so that we – as a test community – can fill this need!

How to become a better tester?

In a lot of professions we see that people want to grow and become better in what they do. It’s a pity to see that within testing a lot of people are just doing what they always do, the way they always do it. Why does it seem that a lot of testers don’t try to get better at testing? Is it because they don’t know how or should the title of Martijn de Vrieze’s post “Is testing the dumping grounds of IT?” be answered with yes too much? Let’s try to put some pointers down on how to become a better tester.

Know your basics

The first step to becoming a better tester, is to know what testing is about. Most testers have at some point in their career participated in a “testing foundation course”. The basic terminology learnt in such a course, together with some basic techniques, should not be forgotten. I’m not saying that you should apply everything all the time, but just don’t forget it. The courses are called foundation for a reason! Every house needs a foundation, not only the first couple of times you build a house.

Be passionate and keep practicing

You’ve got to love what you do and keep on practicing to become better! Have you ever seen an Olympic champion that did not train? Every piece of software (or hardware) you’re testing is different. So you get new challenges continuously, but you’ve got to treat them as new challenges too. Of course you have some basic tests that are valid to execute in this context, but it’s a new challenge so try new methods and think outside the box. Only executing standard tests will not make you a better tester.

Read and write

One way to learn about the test profession is to read. A lot of useful sources on testing exist. When you are reading this, you found one of the sources: blogs. More and more testers start blogging to let the community know what is in their minds and to help others that might run into similar situations. In my opinion, every tester should at least read one book on testing, but preferably more than one. The software testing club has a nice lineup here. Writing a blog is valuable to become a better tester too. It helps you realize what you do and structure it. The comments that you’ll get will also help you to think again on what you wrote.

Attend meetings with other testers

Face-to-face communication will help even more. Attend conferences, specialist group meetings and peer meetings. Every time you discuss about a testing topic (or just listen to others that are discussing), you will get something out of it. Either it strengthens you in your opinion, or it will help you to understand why your opinion should be adjusted. A conference is a great place to learn. People take the time to prepare presentations, so you will get a complete story. Meet-up with other testers to talk about these presentations and share your views. Never stop learning!!

Go to the dark side

Last month I saw a video of @EvilTester (Alan Richardson) in which he explained that we need to go to the dark side of testing. This was a great video and helped me a lot to realize what needs to happen for me to become a better tester. If you have 41 minutes to watch it, please do! He clearly states that a tester needs a sense of humor and take responsibility for what you do.

Soft skills

Testing is a profession! As a profession it requires skills in testing techniques, domain knowledge for the specific case you are working on, etc. A often underappreciated skill is communication. From the test perspective you need to communicate with a lot of different types of people, where each type requires it’s own approach. This seems simple, but is harder than it looks. It’s not only the type you need to be aware of, but also the person itself. In some cases a direct approach is the way to go, where in other cases you need to dress up your comments. Be aware of what you say and to who you say it!