Recently, Kay Johansen asked the question “Why you love Agile testing?” The responses varied from serious to the light hearted.
- No more manual test scripts! – Instead the scripts are run automatically leaving the tester more time to exploratory testing.
- Developers actually like me! – Finding problems before the iteration finishes and while the code is still fresh in the developer’s mind make it easier for them to find problems.
- Now I can break features before they're written! (both Kay and Philip) – With testing starting before the feature is written, the tester can prevent problems.
- Automated test results appear many times a day – providing rapid feedback after any changes.
- The atmosphere is very team oriented - (John Overbaugh) - Every team member cares about getting the testing finished not just the code (Lisa Crispin)
- Tester can fix the occasionally bug (Lisa Crispin) - Everyone is comfortable since the automated tests
- Provides the opportunity to constantly review Test Practices (Adam Knight) – Instead of just repeating what has been done in the past, practices are frequently reviewed. In Adams case tests that used to take 5 days to run manually are down to 30 minutes now.
- I spend much, much less time debugging (Adrian Howard) - I get feedback almost as soon as I've made a mistake - so it's usually trivial to find and fix.
- The chance to actually impact quality instead of just documenting it! (John Overbaugh) – when the bugs are fixed immediately and not just put in a bug pile.
- There's always time for testing, because testing happens first - Josue Barbosa dos Santos tells the story of working in a government office in Brazil where the practice was to test at the end of the project. With development always behind schedule projects would reach the deadline and be released untested to users. By introducing TDD and ATDD at least some of the testing happens as the software is developed.
Kay’s number one reason to love Agile Testing: I get to hear people say "this is the best project I've ever worked on in my life!"
