More Agile Testing: Learning Journeys for the Whole Team(Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn))

Janet Gregory and Lisa Crispin pioneered the agile testing discipline with their previous work, Agile Testing. Now, in More Agile Testing, they reflect on all they’ve learned since. They address crucial emerging issues, share evolved agile practices, and cover key issues agile testers have asked to learn more about. Packed with new examples from real teams, this insightful guide offers detailed information about adapting agile testing for your environment; learning from experience and continually improving your test processes; scaling agile testing across teams; and overcoming the pitfalls of automated testing. You’ll find brand-new coverage of agile testing for the enterprise, distributed teams, mobile/embedded systems, regulated environments, data warehouse/BI systems, and DevOps practices. You’ll come away understanding • How to clarify testing activities within the team • Ways to collaborate with business experts to identify valuable features and deliver the right capabilities • How to design automated tests for superior reliability and easier maintenance • How agile team members can improve and expand their testing skills • How to plan “just enough,” balancing small increments with larger feature sets and the entire system • How to use testing to identify and mitigate risks associated with your current agile processes and to prevent defects • How to address challenges within your product or organizational context • How to perform exploratory testing using “personas” and “tours” • Exploratory testing approaches that engage the whole team, using test charters with session- and thread-based techniques • How to bring new agile testers up to speed quickly–without overwhelming them The eBook edition of More Agile Testing also is available as part of a two-eBook collection, The Agile Testing Collection (9780134190624).

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