The Divide

Don't get mislead by the title, today I am going to talk about my testing experience in a agile team.Although , I had worked in an Agile team before , this particular experience of working with my current team has given me lot of learnings and unlearnings.

1. For many in my role , shift to agile has been namesake.Whilst the overall work proceeds in a iterative cycle each of the iteration when looked closely appears to be a small waterfall in itself.In the last days of the sprint, the testers burn their energy to close of the User stories in that sprint.This is where the exact difference for me was felt. Me and my Development team ( including Modeler and Developer) sit close to each other , when a user story comes in we discuss amongst ourselves onto how to construct this.The three amigos concept really helps here, i will talk about that in another article for now lets chat about how we overcame the divide.Building and testing has to marry up their works and be intertwined into each other to forge a strong and faster build.

2.It is easy to act Agile by following ceremonies of Daily scrums, sprint reviews and planning etc , but what becomes challenging is the fact that , how we master the smaller day to day behaviors that can create a big differnce.So one such activity is agreeing with the development team on what i will test and then building a product to suit that, rather than overengineering and wasting a lot of time doing things that nobody might ever use.What happens with this is that , I can give near real time feedback to my team,, by monitoring there development through my tests that I build over a period of the sprint cycle.

3. The next thing , I do is I talk to the development guys , to understand what they have unit tested.At the same time, he/she also tells me what he wants me to test , and what can break. So this simple conversation has done miracles to me. My testing quality has improved, my understanding about the jobs have improved.

4. this might be a very usual scenario, if you developer is worried that he had to change the codes due to an issue, but was not given enough time to unit test and if he appears to be worried, you need to pitch in and execute your regression scripts in development area to boost his confidence levels.Also don't wait for issues to be dragged into next environment.

5. Respect each other for the work they do.This respect actually makes the environment more productive. 

Don't fall for the dubious picture the agile ceremonies show you, work more closely collaborate and focus on small things and you will see that it makes a difference.