Chapter 33. Extreme Testing without Extreme Programming

"Hmmmph," you say. "It all sounds lovely, but I don't work in an XP shop." If this is the case, are you doomed hemmed in by traditional software development methodologies? Do you just have to wait for that buggy software to thump over the wall? Must you keep burying yourself in giant test plans and other unwieldy artifacts?

No! Fly and be free! Just because the development team doesn't take advantage of XP practices is no reason you can't. Why can't testers use XP to transform the test community the way XP is transforming the development community? We believe that even testing and quality assurance professionals who don't work in XP environments can gain significant benefits by adopting XP practices.

Even when the development team is doing traditional software development, you can still benefit from XP practices in a number of ways. This is a situation Lisa has experienced firsthand. We're not saying it's easy, but the payoff makes this a battle worth fighting.

Let's look at a typical project life cycle using a waterfall development methodology and see where you can apply extreme practices. We'll borrow a term from Bret Pettichord and refer to the "customer" as the business expert. When we refer to "business expert" here, this could be the person or persons managing the project, the person who instigated the project, the stakeholders of the application, or the individual or group responsible for determining whether a release goes into production.