Agile has flipped the traditional software development lifecycle on its head. For the QA specialist, the waterfall-driven "testing stage"—where testers execute a pre-defined set of tests within a pre-defined timeline—has been redistributed and re-framed within Agile. I would even say it's been reborn. Topics: Is Agile changing the quality game? How are QA thought leaders attempting to redefine our space? What are some tips/tricks/mindmaps I can use to do QA right on an agile team?

1. Agile QA
Redefining Quality in the Wild West

2. ABOUT ME
CONTACT
• Multi-disciplinary background
• QA practitioner for 5 years
• Corporate, start-up, mid-size
• Agile & waterfall
• Stoked about:
• Agile
• CI/CD
• AWS
• Open-source
• Wife/kid/jiu-jitsu/eating
Email (fordprior@gmail.com)
GitHub (fordprior)
LinkedIn (Ford Prior)

3. Agenda
1. QA (15 min)
2. Agile (15 min)
3. Agile QA (15 min)
4. Success factors (15 min)
5. Antipatterns (15 min)
6. Testing quadrants (15 min)
7. Other gnarly tools (15 min)
8. General discussion (30 min)

4. Agile QA
(wild west)

5. what is Agile

6. derived from Toyota

7. Andon lights at Kamigo Plant, 1966

8. Kanban storage area at Motomachi Plant, 1963

9. …and still stand-up’ing today!

10. based on Lean

12. an actual methodology

14. what Agile is NOT

15. 15
hippy dancing

16. taking your time

17. Hi, i‘m totalitarian
but I mean well >

19. what is QA

21. to engineering, to business

22. a discipline

23. done by humans
w/ help from clumsy robots

24. challenging assumptions

25. • Toyota
• A service
• A discipline
• Something humans do
• About (challenging a product)

26. So…Agile QA?

27. • the same as regular QA
• except there’s no time

28. Testing must be shared.

29. Test at every phase.

30. Leave the gate.

31. Recruit robots.

32. concepts:
• quality is shared
• test at every phase
• PO is gatekeeper
• automate when possible

33. Agile QA success factors!

34. no guarantees

35.  Co-location
 Collaboration
 Concentration

36. Test first approach. Push all types of testing as early as you can

38. Cost of a defect

39. everyone tests

40. dev po/ba qa
groom
plan
develop
test
release

41.  BDD
 TDD
 ATDD
 WTF

42. 42

43. tdd
based on unit tests written/maintained by developers.
only write code necessary to pass tests.
bdd
based on acceptance tests usually written/maintained by developers.
make sure business requirements met
atdd
based on acceptance tests usually written/maintained by PO’s/testers.
make sure business requirements met
Test-driven software development methodologies

45. 45
ATDD
BDD
TDD
teeny tiny suite of
acceptance tests
robust chunk of
behavior-based
integration tests
vast sea of
unit tests

47. Have a common test specification
language, like Gherkin
Given Nancy is an active customer
When She visits the Login page
And She enters her login info and clicks “Submit”
Then She views the landing page

48. Teams:
• Everyone tests
• Test soon, fail fast
• Build stuff w/ testing in mind

49. Testers:
• Groom w/ team,
• Estimate w/ team,
• Plan sprints w/ team
• Retrospect w/ team

50. …and don’t be this guy:

51. …actually, be more like this guy:

52. Agile QA success factors

53. No joke. Strong, robust, agreed-upon.

54. Agree on
words like:
1. Dev Ready
2. Ready for QA
3. Done

55. 55
Favor face to face conversations

56. 56
Perform Root Cause Analysis, 5 whys

57. 57
 Face-to-face interaction
 Definition of “Done”
 Robust defect management
 Root cause analysis

58. Agile QA anti-patterns
Antipattern Symptom Remedy
Us vs. Them Colocation, defect
management process,
face-to-face
converstaion
“Over the Wall”
Insane metrics

59. Tips & tricks, too.

60. Stay close to your product owners.

61. Stay close to your developers, too.

62. 62
Don’t be a process improvement champion

63. 63
You don’t assure quality. You’re just the headlights.

64. Prod bugs aren’t failure. Retrospect and iterate.

65. 65
 Stay close to PO’s & Devs
 Don’t champion process
 You don’t assure quality
 Prod bugs not failure

68. http://lisacrispin.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Agile-Testing-
Quadrants.png

71. 71

72. 72
Automating QA is hard. Ask for help.

73. Don’t forget to have fun.

74. 74
 Use heuristics & psychology
 Use mental models
 Plunge ‘n’ quiet (pomodoro)
 Bug bashes
 Session-based, chartered testing
 Have fun

75. Resources
http://agiletester.ca/agile-testing/
Agile Testing: A Practical Guide
for Testers and Agile Team
Lessons Learned in Software Testing
Book by James Bach
testersio.slack.com
rvaqa.slack.com (woot!)