Helping XP Testers Succeed


Strong team leadership will allow even the timid or less enthusiastic tester to be productive on an XP team. The XP coach, project manager, tech lead, or whoever is in a position of authority has to make sure the team follows best XP practices and supports the tester. Some essentials:

  • Programmers code comprehensive unit tests. Unit tests are hard to write and automate if you've never tried it before, and programmers who don't know how won't try. As a result, code will be too buggy, and acceptance tests can't be completed during the iteration. Lisa had this experience on her first XP team. Until the team mastered test-first coding, she was so buried in defects that it hampered her ability to automate and run acceptance tests. Her manager worked with the team to help them brainstorm ways to practice test-first coding (while insisting that this be the practice), and the problem disappeared.

  • Programmers (and other members of the team, as appropriate, such as analysts) willingly take on acceptance testing tasks. Most programmers, given a choice, would rather not have to do acceptance tests. So don't give them a choice. The leader should make sure the team understands the concept that acceptance-test tasks are part of the story, and the story isn't finished until the acceptance tests pass.

  • Programmers and other members of the team support testers. Programmers are willing to pair with the tester, answer the tester's questions, review acceptance tests, explain how the code works or how the unit tests work, provide information about tests, and comply with any reasonable request from the tester in a timely manner. The tester may be required by circumstances to do something un-XPish, such as write a test plan. Everything related to the project is the team's responsibility, so the whole team should help.

  • Testers feel free to ask questions, lots of questions, of customers, programmers, anyone involved with the project. Naturally, testers should use good sense and ask questions at an appropriate time, of the appropriate person. Testers must feel free to say, "I don't know this" or "I think we might be making an assumption here" and ask questions to get the necessary information. Sometimes team members are critical of coworkers who ask a lot of questions. No doubt there's a fine line between acquiring needed information and coming off as stupid or lacking in self-esteem, but the culture should promote conversation between all project participants.



Testing Extreme Programming
Testing Extreme Programming
ISBN: 0321113551
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 238

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