Chapter 34. In Closing: May the Road Rise Up to Meet You

The church is near, but the road is icy; the bar is far away, but I'll walk carefully.

Russian proverb

No amount of travel on the wrong road will bring you to the right destination.

Ben Gaye, III

Are we there yet?

This brings to an end our road hazard survival kit. We hope this section gave you some strategies that will allow you to benefit from XP practices, even if your project doesn't conform to the parameters of an ideal XP project.

This also completes our exploration of the role of testing and testers in Extreme Programming, at least for now. We've seen some interesting sights along the way. (Dinosaur National Monument was a bit out of our way, but just the name reminded us of some projects we've worked on.) We've examined how we think testers add value to Extreme Programming teams. We've considered what's in it for the tester and for the XP project. Our XP test drive took us step by step through the early stages of a typical XP project, and we hope it gave you an idea what to expect, as well as some ways to ensure your success.

Like the faded grins in pictures from family vacations long past, we hope some of our ideas will stick with you as go on to future projects and that you'll take the opportunity to try them out in an XP environment when you get the chance.

Here are some points we hope will guide you as you continue your own journey:

• Although quality is a team responsibility, as a tester you have a special focus on quality. You can add value to your team in many ways, acting as an agent for continual improvement.

• Help the customer specify acceptance tests that produce the minimum level of quality he needs and can afford.

• Tasks related to acceptance tests are part of each story and part of the team's velocity. Include these tasks, and estimate them as accurately as possible, during each release and iteration planning session.

• Extreme Programming practices maximize your value as a tester, even if you work on a project using some other approach to software development.

We stated at the outset that we believe XP and QA have a lot to gain from each other. In fact, they already have. XP teams are the fruit of seeds planted many years ago by the testing and quality assurance community: test automation, peer review, unit testing, code inspections, test-then-code, the buddy system the list goes on. Now is the time to cultivate an alliance that will yield the cash crops of the future. It would be ironic indeed to leave them rotting in the field.

In short, XP needs you, and you need XP. We'll all happily ride (or drive) off into the sunset knowing that if we work together, we can produce software that meets our customers' needs for quality and our needs for quality of life. See you on the road… . Happy trails!