1. Evolution of Agile Testing
(A tester's view)
By Erik Petersen
Frank Lee’s Learning Summary

2. Methodologists meet in the snow
 Mid February 2001, 17 people met in the
Utah mountains over a weekend
 They represented styles of lightweight
software development

3. Manifesto
for Agile Software Development

4. Methodologists meet in the snow
 Only one, Brian Marick, had major
interest in testing (a quiet person)
 Another tester invitee, James Bach, could
not attend (a loud person)

5. Where's testing?
 Neither the agile manifesto or supporting
principles mention testing, focussing on
”sponsor, developer, user”
 Principles do mention ”architecture,
requirements & designs” but no testing or
validation activity mentioned explicitly

6. Agile testing V1.0
 Strong Extreme Programming slant
 Developers do all tests, using TDD for design
& automated unit tests, Junit mostly
 No need for system tester role, ”all tests
automated”
 Developers to learn extra testing skills from
testers then replace them
 Kent Beck tells conference of testers they
will all be out of jobs in a few years

7. XP

8. A week of Ruby dev, test & talk
 Mid June 2003, a group of agile devs and
exploratory testers spend a week together
talking and creating software at ”Agile
Fusion” (Erik watches via webcam!)
 Early version of Ruby seen as immature by
devs (but great language for testing)
 Some agile devs understand importance of
exploratory testing, e.g Ward Cunningham

9. Agile Testing manifesto?
”It’s very important to understand that we in
this Agile Fusion conference did not come to
agreement on *any* specifically phrased idea
about what agile testing is or isn’t. We tried to
discuss it, but it quickly became apparent that
there are important philosophical &
terminological differences among us.”
James Bach

10. Agile testing V2.0
 Strong XP Programming slant weakening
 Regression testing done by developers, using
automated unit tests, now Xunit
 Some appreciation for system tester role, e,g
Thoughtworks, Mary Poppendieck
 Some developers learn more about testing
and importance of exploratory testing
 Agile testing champions, e.g Elisabeth
Hendrickson

11. Enter the test toolsmith
 Developer explicitly supporting less technical
testers, or more busy devs
 Creating tools to support testability
 Automating data creation, configuration
table setup, security profiles, UI information
fields only visible in test mode or hidden in
html, etc
 Focussed on manual & automated tests
 Testability champion, Brett Pettichord

12. Test tools rule
 Rapid expansion of free functional tools
 Framework for Integrated Test (FIT)
2002, java based implementation of
customer examples as tests, lead dev
Ward Cunningham
 Selenium 2004, web application driver
using javascript, lead dev Jason Huggins
 Many other less popular tools

13. Dependency Injection
• This simplifies the design, and makes it more
flexible allowing different types of materials to
be provided in different cases.
• Another advantage is the ability to provide
fake materials, when we are only interested in
testing the function to check it still works
properly.

14. Agile testing V3.0 Flavors
 Regression testing by developers, using TDD
& automated unit tests, with dependency
injection & testability
 Testsmiths create custom tools for their
teams
 Functional automation by developers or
technical testers using tools like Selenium
 Customer examples linked by dev tester to
fixtures create simple tests, like FIT

15. ET in Agile Development
 Jim Shore & Chromatic write ”Art of Agile
Development”, 2007 with community review
of each chapter
 Lone voice of tester reviewer in dev cloud
(Erik), pushing tester role & viewpoint
 Book expanded to include ET
Viewpoint: ET needed to find bugs missed by devs (to
improve process to find next time!)
Included Exploratory testing chapter written by Elisabeth
Hendrickson

16. Agile testing for testers & team
 Agile Testing stage at Agile 2009 conference
 Exploratory testing sessions at Agile
conference, Erik Petersen 2008, 2009, Jon
Bach 2010
 ”Agile Testing” 2009, by Crispin & Gregory
gets great reviews across all agile tribes
 Strong agile tester community
 Bughunts becoming popular in industry

17. Agile Testing Quadrants

18. The 2nd wave of test tools
 Cucumber 2009, english-like fixture based
tool dominating functional test automation,
lead developer Aslak Hellesoy
 Selenium and Selenium Grid almost industry
standard
 Domain Specific Languages (e.g in Groovy),
Robot framework, etc
 AA functional test tools group discussing and
leveraging tools, also GTAC (Google)

19. Key (system) testing skills
 Test techniques: e.g. boundary analysis,
equivalence partitioning, test intuition
 Test modelling: domain, application,
navigation, authorisation, etc.
 Test case design and coverage
 Defect management
 Failure modelling (often innate skill)
 Shadow architect & designer/ devils
advocate

20. Key skill: Exploratory testing
 ET Framework: Three main parts
 Investigation
 Wide across app, or deep to feature
 Exploration
 Confirming app & other models, or trying
failure models
 Reflection
 Maintain focus or change to next priority
 Investigate bug clusters
 Attempt to make implicit skill visible

21. Agile testing today
 Still no agile testing manifesto, just many
flavors (like with agile)
 New tools can be adopted quickly
worldwide, e.g Cucumber
 Many great developer testers but still
specialist tester role needed
 Risk based exploratory testing preferred
technique for rapid testing
 TDD ”checks” versus human ET ”tests”

22. Agile Tester
敏捷测试人员首先是专业化的测试者，适应变
化，与开发人员和业务人员开展良好的合作，贯彻
利用测试记录需求和驱动开发的精神，具有优秀的
技术能力，懂得合作以实现测试自动化，更擅长探
索性测试。了解客户在做什么，透彻的理解客户对
软件的需求。
– by Lisa Crispin

23. 价值观

24. 个体和交互 VS 工具和过程
Individuals and interactions

25. 可以运行的软件 VS 面面俱到的文档
Working software

26. 客户合作 VS 合同谈判
Customer collaboration

27. 响应变化 VS 遵循计划
Responding to change

29. Key Point

30. Agile Tester
敏捷测试人员首先是专业化的测试者，适应
变化，与开发人员和业务人员开展良好的合作，贯
彻利用测试记录需求和驱动开发的精神，具有优
秀的技术能力，懂得合作以实现测试自动化，更
擅长探索性测试。
了解客户在做什么，透彻的理解客户对
软件的需求。
– by Lisa Crispin

31. The End