The Agile Manifesto 

The agile manifesto states that you should value working software over comprehensive documentation, but as we all know, this does not mean no documentation. If you’re following an Agile approach for your programme of work or project then we would always recommend considering and documenting your Agile Test Strategy. Here are three things to consider when creating yours.

Agile Strategies for Managing a Marketing Team with Scrum

As a multi-award winning software testing consultancy, nFocus live and breathe Agile. So much so that we decided to run our Marketing Team using Scrum. If you're interesting in learning about the benefits of adopting Agile from a testing perspective, check out this white paper instead. 

Agile Test Strategy

In today's post I thought it would be useful to consider Agile Test Strategy and the quality challenges associated with implementing Agile and Scrum. If you have time, we would also recommend taking a read of the white paper - The quality challenges associated with implementing Agile and Scrum. 

Identifying Common Themes in Scrum Testing

So I get to see lots of different organisations all trying to implement Scrum to varying levels, several themes come out:

Firstly, testers are sometimes excluded from certain activities/events or aren’t given an equal voice in the team. Sometimes they don’t understand that they have an equal voice that needs to be heard. The “Development Team” is supposed to be cross-functional which means that it should have testing or testers in it, don’t get me started on why we decided to call it the “Development” team.

Agile Test Strategy Part Three: A Definition and Explanation

Here's the final part in our mini-series on Agile Test Strategy. If you've missed the previous posts, we recommend you read part one and part two. 

So, you have employed a well-defined Agile Test Strategy and looked at the impact and risk of changes to be made for your project and of course you are testing just enough in the most effective way to prove the requirements have been met to a standard fit for purpose…Right?

Test, Test and Test Again

Here's the second in our series of bitesize blog articles on Agile Test Strategy. If you missed the first one, you can read it here. 

Now that you are ‘Ready’ to test, you want to test as often and effectively as you can; not only will this increase the chance that you'll find defects but will improve application quality. In the short-term your costs will increase as you’ll need to set up a defined framework and create re-usable test artefacts…

Questions to Fine-tune Your 'Ready' Definition

Welcome to the first in a series of bitesize articles we're writing on Agile and Testing.

Creating a robust and practical Agile Test Strategy should exist in all organisations that employ an Agile approach to delivering projects and programmes of work. Being ‘Ready’ to test is vital to the success, having just a set of requirements isn’t enough….

Agile Test Strategy Part One

There have been challenges in the adoption of the Agile principles (an Agile Test Strategy) and Scrum Framework particularly with poor quality of the delivered software. This has resulted in delays and a mismatch of the expectations of stakeholders and delivery teams. There is no specific mention of testing or quality assurance in Agile or Scrum; it is implied as an integral part of the principles and framework. This has caused some confusion resulting in inconsistent approaches to quality management and testing. Often formal testing has been reduced to ad hoc ‘try it and see’ during a sprint. This loses the testing rigour that delivers quality by use of industry accepted full lifecycle testing.