Transitioning sound traditional test practices into an Agile Development Environment. Just enough, just in time, with responsive high level quality.
Learn how to:
- Understand the key differences between traditional and Agile Testing practices
- Develop a transition plan to move from traditional test practices to Agile testing
- Construct a Lean Testing Framework to expedite Agile delivery
- Operate in a time constrained development cycle without losing testable value
- Develop Iteration 0 Test Plans that guide test design development
- Use High Speed test methods to supplement and support story-based testing practices (Exploratory, Pairwise, Pareto techniques)
- Capitalize on Test Development through Use & Reuse Management
- Integrate Team Testing into Agile Projects
- Build Lean Test Artifacts for Regression Testware
- Engage stakeholders in quality trade-off decision-making
- Coach story card contributors in test case construction
- Gain exposure to automation support opportunities
Course Description:
By using a step-by-step approach, this course will document how to transition from traditional test practices to an Agile testing approach. Learning the goals of Agile will help you transition, implement and monitor testing in the High Speed Agile Testing environment.
Agile principles add value to your organization.
Building on traditional risk based test practice we are now being challenged by incremental delivery. To address, and not inhibit, we examine the concept of pair testing. Strengthening relationships, in a team setting,help to build a sense of common purpose. Working in parallel eliminates hand-offs, late stage testing, and an opportunity for incremental confirmed component delivery. This program builds on what we know, and adapts to what we have… Agile delivery. Traditional methods become a barrier under new development methods and place further pressure on the test team to feel a sense of value compromise. The new found, high speed test delivery opens new areas of opportunity to build strength in product quality, process improvement and test confidence.
Learn to transition to Agile testing practices across the entire release cycle.
Despite changes in methods and approaches we continually slide back into old test habits. Often we leave methods behind, rather than transition from them. We throw everything away and do a wholesale replacement without putting to bed the reasons for change. Most testing works, but only within the development context in which it was framed. The program will reflect tradition against Agile testing, what changes we must make and the role that we will play. Testing is not a service but an integrated part of the development team.
Acquire the practical skills and knowledge to successfully test an Agile software project.
The 2-day program will introduce you to high speed methods, and explore their use so that you can immediately step from the classroom into the office with new found confidence. We will discuss transition, roles, methods and technologies that can be relied upon to deliver speed and optimum flexibility. You will start to feel a new sense of flexibility, confidence and enthusiasm (maybe for the first time in your entire development career.)
Immediate Benefits of Participating in this Workshop
- Understand how to transition your traditional testing methods to an Agile High Speed Test approach.
- Understand the level of adaptation of traditional test methods based on a changing development context.
- Address risk as a foundation for project delivery and use to focus resources.
- Understand how much and where to thin your test process for speed without loss of certainty (Lean Testing).
- How Lean principles apply Just-in-Time and Late-as-Possible techniques for creating efficient workflow.
- Develop the skills and the team to effectively conduct Exploratory testing.
- How to utilize defect and delivery knowledge as a means of a rapid Pareto base that can be relied upon by testers, development teams and management.
- Learn how to estimate test effort, not as a separate project component, but as an integrated part of the Agile project estimates.
- Acquire appreciation for the role of automation as an expedient support tool.
- Understand the concept of Pairwise testing and how a subset of our test suite, when pragmatically developed, can return a higher confidence yield.
- Exposure to a proper understanding of the Agile team role and how it places a challenge on traditional, end-stage service delivery.
- Low cost and highly effective tools for the tracking and managing of testing resources across the entire development team.
- Exposure to collaborative development vehicles to facilitate test resource coordination (SharePoint,Wiki, Agile project tools…).
- Embrace UserStories and how these micro requirement documents bear significant contributory value for testers.
- How to utilize skeletal design to form a framework for test suite development, management and use for regression testing.
- Gain insight into the power of testing and Entrance / Release criteria as an effective tool for workflow efficiency.
- Develop an approach that will ensure regression test capabilities arising from the Agile testing enterprise.
- Understand the value of ‘chunks’ as a way of managing work delivery and facilitate result summation.
- Open and commercial tools that should/could be used to support testers.
- Become aware of the shift in roles in the development-test-business owner community and how collaborative delivery makes sense.
- Learn how to improve the requisite skill sets you and your team will need to become truly adaptable and agile.
- How to recover defect costs through knowledge utilization — know where to farm for errors or the absence of errors.
- Build speed and flexibility in a wide array of project development scenarios, not just Agile projects.
Course outline
I. Introduction to Agile Testing
The introduction serves as the starting point for understanding how to improve testing. Artifacts, roles and activities will be examined and compared against agile methods. The focal point for stimulating stakeholder and development team discussions centers around the ‘XP Story Card’ and the many facets that it contains (requirements, test, estimate of effort and value, with a profound understanding for risk.) These facets must be balanced.
- Modern SDLC compression time
- Traditional to Agility Shift - Challenge Facing Testing
- Balancing risk with test intensity
- Effective stakeholder communications
II. The Agile Test Team
In traditional teams people had roles and assigned to these roles were tasks. These duties often relied upon a carefully orchestrated dance with delivery. While a person may have a role, it is one that carries with it responsibilities and not necessarily specific obligations. The dynamics of the team will determine whether we will succeed as a team, or whether we fail as individuals. The role as test specialist carries with it guidance, oversight, coaching, direction and support. The business owner is called upon to provide exposure to the priorities that the project carries in support of the business. The development team is allowed to ploy it’s technical delivery knowledge and to stay focused on the matter at hand and not on arbitration of needs from multiple stakeholders.
- Participants
- Roles & Expertise
- Operational Dynamics
III. Thinning (Lean) Test for Rapid Agility
To accept change requires us to transition our present state to that of our new found surroundings. A critical examination of tasks, documents and interaction with the project team need to be looked at in depth. We will seek out ways to exploit the seven foundation points of lean as our first step towards increasing service delivery speed. Our success hinges on surgical precision and removing only what is excess, without sacrificing value.
- Lean Principals
- Test Candidate Elements
- Trade-Off Considerations
IV. Iteration 0 - Agile Test Planning
While the project is going through a focused and abbreviated planning period so is testing. By utilizing core justification and chartering events we proactively interact with the team in providing a planning component within the overall project vision. Unlike past test plans, it is lean, rapid, and collaboratively developed. Tearing down the walls from testing as a service, to testing as a team event is the order of the day. Time, business value and risk are important aspects that are presented and rely on team participation and not the wisdom of one individual.
- Where to start
- What to use
- What is involved
V. Using Automation Support
Automation is viewed as a means to an end. In order to be able to carry out our duties in a deliberate, coordinated and expedient fashion, we must look to automation as a support solution. Time saved and precision gained will allow all members of the test team to focus on intellectually based tests.
- Early consideration
- Agile Test Automation Support
- Purpose and Goals
- Utilization and Oversight
VI. Designing Agile Tests
The hardest thing about testing is designing tests. Knowing what to test, how much to test (or not test), requires experience, knowledge, and trust. While there are numerous methods, few are particularly adept to Agility (Exploratory, Pairwise, and Pareto (80:20)). The development of tests in concert with requirement stories is also a highly effect means to maintaining a tight connection between these two elements. However, there is also an opportunity to further amplify the conservative nature of our test suite through low cost calibration. Calibration controls bloat and provides a means to effectively assist us with adapting our tests to a wide array of circumstances and conditions.
- Method Selection
- Establish Balance
- Calibration
- Adapting
VII. Measuring Test Results
Reporting came out of a need for communicating status. As projects took longer to deliver, the need for reporting became an essential part of the project management process. With the advent of Agile methods the need to provide low cost, light weight test reporting became important. The focus shifts from a summation of errors discovered to testing as an instrumental part of delivery. The roots of test reporting reside in daily standup meetings, bi-product reports, delivery demonstration and the sprint/iteration retrospective.
- Light Weighting Reporting
- Status Reporting
- Progress Reporting
- Demonstration
- Sprint/Iteration Retrospective
VIII. Managing Agile Test Efforts
Testing isn’t just a job, it’s a specialist role. Everyone has a test role: the developer, business owner, and even other specialists. In order to make this shift the tester has to employ coaching skills that may have never been utilized before. Getting people to do things that are outside of their normally expected role, and who are hardened with years of custom is not easy, but doable. The transition may be counted in terms of sprints and for some it may take several projects to make the change. “Managing” is not something that is often discussed in Agile circles, but the need to provide watchful and compassionate oversight is essential for testing to be meaningful. The pervasive nature of testing does not allow us to use a hands-off role as one might expect from other narrowly focused disciplines.
- Test Specialist Role
- Test Coaching in the Team
- What is Agile “Managing”?
IX. Planning for Repetition and Reuse
Let us not forget that beyond the sprint/iteration is a life of test ware existence. This needs to be thought about from the onset and not as an after thought. After thoughts are expensive and time consuming. Often times they creative a significant degree of test suite unreliability. Repetition and reuse starts within the sprint/iteration and is carried forward through the development project period and into future (post-delivery cycles). We must carry with it essential artifacts and details for that purpose to be realized.
- Testing in the Small
- Build-Up to 24/7
- Regression Testing - Forward Sprints
Who should attend this class:
- Quality Analysts & Engineers
- Software Test Leads & Testers
- Software Quality & Testing Managers
- Software Project Managers
- Software Engineering Managers
- Business Analysts
- Software Development Managers
- IT Managers
- Programmers/Developers
THERE ARE NO PREREQUISITES FOR THIS COURSE.
CPE: 16
hours
Level: All
Type of class:
Project Management, Management
Approved by the Project Management Institute (PMI).This class meets 14 PDUs for full completion. ASPE is an approved Registered
Education Provider (R.E.P.) as outlined by the Project Management
Institute (PMI).
PMI, PMP, PMBOK, and the PMI R.E.P. logo are registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.
TX Board of Public
Accountancy Sponsor Number: 009317
Cancellation Information:
Cancellation Date: June 20, 2010
Substitution & Cancellation Policy:
Student substitutions may be made at any time prior to the start of class. Cancellations received less than 30 days prior to the start date of class will be subject to a $100 administrative fee. You may cancel your reservation by providing ASPE with written notice via email at customerservice@aspetech.com. If a cancellation/transfer request is received in writing, less than 10 business days prior to the class start date, payment will still be due, no refunds will be issued and you will be charged a $200 cancellation fee. You will be allowed to apply your paid course tuition to the same course or one of equal value within 1 year from the original course start date. Only one reenrollment opportunity is allowed per person. Failure to attend the course without written notification via fax or email prior to the start of the course will be considered a "no show" and will result in forfeiture of the full course price. If ASPE is forced to cancel a course for any reason, liability is limited to the registration fee only.
To cancel your registration from this course, please call or email the course
contact listed below. If a cancellation is received after the cancellation
date, the registrant will be charged full payment and no refunds will be issued.
If you are making travel plans to come to the training, please make "refundable" air and hotel reservations or wait until 14 days before the class to actually book your reservations. Courses are occasionally canceled or rescheduled due to low enrollment. We determine whether a course has enough participants 16 days prior to the course date. If we cancel or reschedule, we will email the participant no later than 14 days before the original class date. Solutions Training will not pay for cancellation/change fees associated w/travel and hotel arrangement changes.
Location: ONE HIGHLAND CENTER, 314 E. Highland Mall Blvd., suite 403, Austin, TX
78752
For additional information about this class, please
contact Shannon Bieberdorf at Shannon-solutions@austin.rr.com,
(512) 914-5557.
