In accordance to my past and present experience I could say, the most challenging role to adapt to agile development is the role of tester, as agile development contradicts so many things that testers have been taught is “best practice”.

Many testers might have gained training or experience with water fall model and would have spent lot of time practicing V-Model where in the system testing correlates directly with the system specification and testing commences with the completion of software development (in general). In this case tester’s life is straight forward meaning ensure the product works as per specifications.

With agile life becomes a little more complicated, no comprehensive documentation (which were there earlier with traditional models), the feature details are with lest documentation and more of verbal collaboration. Testing starts at a very early stage of software life cycle and continues till product is being developed, in other words target is always in motion.

It’s a real challenge, this is what I feel. Substantiating it I can say upfront writing of test cases before the software is actually developed such that the acceptance test forms a significant part of requirements analysis, test will be automated at low (code) level and will be implemented by DEV’s. The most significant or the important part is the greater emphasis is on the automation of regression testing.

All of it demands changes in the role of a tester (Agile tester)

With my little experience I could say :

  • With test case upfront demarcation of requirement analysis and test analysis diminishes.
  • User stories dilute the difference between the test analysis and requirement scenario.
  • Automation has a significant role.
  • With unit test being automated the testers need to ensure the completion of tests and their appropriateness ( all important scenarios have been jotted down)
  • Avoid duplication as it increases overhead.
  • A proactive and collaborative approach of the team can unanimously make them say “All is well” at the end.

I would appreciate if any one can add more points this article.

Sachin Srivastava