Software development in agile is based on testing says José Díaz. Agile has brought us real teams of development and testing without borders. Some of the currently relevant topics in agile testing are the transition from waterfall to agile methodologies, tester skills and Certified Agile Tester, DevOps and mobile testing.
On March 19 the Agile Testing Day Netherlands 2015 will be held in Utrecht, the Netherlands. InfoQ will cover this conference with news, Q&As and articles. Earlier InfoQ published artistic parallels between making music and agile testing.
InfoQ did an interview with José Díaz and Uwe Gelfert about the advantages that agile has brought to testing, how testers can remain independent and objective in agile teams, sharing experiences of young Dutch talented testers, what we have learned over the years in testing and new developments that are happening in agile testing.
InfoQ: Can you define agile testing? What makes agile testing different when compared to "traditional" testing?
Diaz: As Andrea Tomasini said. Agile Testing is non-sense. Agile is testing. The development in an agile environment is based on testing. You develop your tests, you develop your app, run the tests, you past, you move forward.
In the traditional world, you develop, you develop, you may test or not, you make a change in the software before releasing and then deliver it. Seriously now: The focus on traditional is on development, where testing is only a milestone that you hit with the nail of your toe and pains. You need to hit the milestone, but you do not set the quality in the foreground.
InfoQ: Can you mention some of the advantages that agile has brought to testing?
Diaz: A real team! Development and Testing. There is no borders anymore.
Quick feedback on the status of the development. Testing is the helper and not the pain
InfoQ: Tester often consider it important that they are independent and objective so that they can judge the quality of products. What if they are expected to join an agile team, can they still do this?
Diaz: Of course. You are a team with your husband or wife too. You tell them when they do not look good, right? I think that when you are in an agile team you understand that the quality of your work as a team it is important.
You have every day a scrum, you get feedback and give feedback. You know that everybody wants the best. The team decided also about the quality to deliver. If the quality is not good enough the products come back and they need to rework.
They are depended independently.
InfoQ: The agile testing day conference has a track devoted to talented Dutch agile youngsters to share their experience. What made you decide to do this?
Gelfert: In Europe, especially in the Netherlands the regular conference attendees are a bit tired from all those "old" or "well-known" faces, who are speaking always at lots of conferences. Please don’t misunderstand, we respect them very well, we also have many of them in our current line-up, they are all awesome people with great presentation skills and lots of experience. They are very important for the agile community, cause such a great community could not exist without them.
With the young Dutch talents track we want to bring in some more diversity through the experience from agile testing young stars. I think this is a great project and we all can learn a lot from the young generation!
InfoQ: Testing has been there for many decades as a discipline. Can you elaborate on things that we have learned? What do we know, and what not, about testing?
Diaz: I think that the most important lesson is that you need skilled people in testing. The idea of the early days that bad programmers should become testers is - god bless - obsolete.
We know quite well the "old" techniques, but the world move ahead and we need new techniques and ideas to test the new technology. Mobile is now the big question mark.
If your company wants to go mobile, you need testing and processes. You need to learn new techniques and how to apply them to the mobile devices.
InfoQ: Can you tell us about new developments that are happening in agile testing?
Diaz: Agile is Agile. The community interacts very much and exchange experience, ideas, pitfalls etc.
DevOps is a topic that causes at the moment a lot of notices. But apart from the advanced topics we see that the whole IT world starts to make the agile path, if they did not started before.
Even companies that were/are quite conservative move slowly but with a firm step in this direction.
So the transition from Waterfall or whatever to Agile Methodologies is still a big topic.
The skills of the people involved in agile is essential for the success. I see CAT – Certified Agile Tester – as a 80% hands-on training a must for the people involved in agile testing.