XP Tester Activities

Here are some of a tester's activities on an XP project (we'll provide more details in Part II: Test Drive through an XP Project):

• Help negotiate quality with the customer.

• Help clarify stories.

• Help with estimates during planning.

• Advocate the customer's rights.

• Guard the programmers' rights.

• Work with the customer to write effective and thorough acceptance tests.

• Make sure acceptance tests (functional, load, stress, performance, compatibility, installation, security, anything not covered by unit and integration tests) verify the quality specified by the customer.

• Help the team automate maintainable acceptance tests, using lightweight tools and test designs.

• Make sure test results are reported in a timely manner, forming a continuous feedback loop for the team.

• Make sure acceptance testing keeps pace with development.

• Help the programmers design more testable code.

• Keep the team honest; if they sacrifice quality to speed ahead, they must reveal this to the customer.