Context-driven Testing in an Agile Context - A Happy Marriage? - Huib Schoots

Testing is an agile environment is different many people say. But what is agile testing? I rather say testing in an agile context instead of agile testing. Agile is different in every project. Excellent testing in an agile context is done by looking at the details of the specific situation first. Remember the 7th principle of context-driven testing: “Only through judgement and skill, exercised cooperatively throughout the entire project, are we able to do the right things at the right times to effectively test our products.”

Agile comes with a bunch of cool new methods like TDD, ATDD and BDD. There is a lot of focus on automating testing. There is nothing wrong with these methods and automating … if done right. This talk zooms in on the difference between testing and checking coined by Michael Bolton. Checking can be automated and I claim that in an agile context this should be taken care of by programmer. It is not a good strategy to assign these tasks to the tester.

Creating a huge amount of automated checks that will be executed every time code is integrated is an appealing and comforting thought. But there is much more to do to cover the whole spectrum of testing. This is where testers can contribute with lots of value. We are set out to find new information about the software by exploration and learning. Join me to learn more about context-driven testing in an agile context.