What is Agile Testing?
A software testing practice that follows the principles of agile software development is called Agile Testing. Agile is an iterative development methodology, where requirements evolve through collaboration between the customer and self-organizing teams and agile aligns development with customer needs.
SCRUM is a process in agile methodology which is a combination of Iterative model and incremental model.
Some of the key characteristics of SCRUM include:
Important SCRUM Terminologies:
1. Scrum Team
Scrum team is a team comprising of 7 with + or – two members. These members are a mixture of competencies and comprise of developers, testers, data base people, support people etc. along with the product owner and a scrum master. All these members work together in close collaboration for a recursive and definite interval, to develop and implement the said features.
2. Sprint
Sprint is a predefined interval or the time frame in which the work has to be completed and make it ready for review or ready for production deployment. This time box usually lies between 2 weeks to 1 month. In our day to day life when we say that we follow 1 month Sprint cycle, it simply means that we work for one month on the tasks and make it ready for review by the end of that month.
3. Product Owner
Product owner is the key stakeholder or the lead user of the application to be developed.
Product owner is the person who represents the customer side. He / she have the final authority and should always be available for the team. He / she should be reachable in case any one has any doubts that need clarification. It is important for the product owner to understand and not to assign any new requirement in the middle of the sprint or when the sprint has already started.
4. Scrum Master
Scrum Master is the facilitator of the scrum team. He / she make sure that the scrum team is productive and progressive. In case of any impediments, scrum master follows up and resolves them for the team.
5. User Story
User stories are nothing but the requirements or feature which has to be implemented. In scrum, we don’t have those huge requirements documents, rather the requirements are defined in a single paragraph.
6. Product Backlog
Product backlog is a kind of bucket or source where all the user stories are kept. This is maintained by Product owner. Product backlog can be imagined as a wish list of the product owner who prioritizes it as per business needs. During planning meeting (see next section), one user story is taken from the product backlog, team does the brainstorming, understands it and refine it and collectively decides which user stories to take, with the intervention of the product owner.
7. Sprint Backlog
Based on the priority, user stories are taken from the Product Backlog one at a time. The Scrum team brainstorms on it, determines the feasibility and decides on the stories to work on a particular sprint. The collective list of all the user stories which the scrum team works on a particular sprint is called s Sprint backlog.
Activities done in SCRUM Methodology:
#1: Planning meeting
Planning meeting is the starting point of SCRUM. It is the meeting where the entire scrum team gather, the product owner selects a user story based on the priority from the product back log and the team brain storms on it. Based on the discussion, the scrum team decides the complexity of the story and sizes it as per the Fibonacci series. Team identifies the tasks along with the efforts (in hours) which would be done to complete the implementation the user story.
Many a time planning meeting is preceded by a “Pre-Planning meeting”. It’s just like a home work which the scrum team does before they sit for the formal planning meet. Team tries to write down the dependencies or other factors which they would like to discuss in the planning meet.
#2: Execution of sprint tasks
As the name suggests, these are the actual work done by the scrum team to accomplish their task and take the user story into the “Done” state.
#3: Daily scrum meeting (call)
During the sprint cycle, every day the scrum team meets for, not more than 15 minutes (could be a stand up call, recommended to have during the beginning of the day) and state 3 points:
What did the team member did yesterday
What did the team member plan to do today
Any impediments (roadblocks)
It is the Scrum master who facilitates this meeting. In case, any team member is facing any kind of difficulties, the scrum master follows up to get it resolved.
#4: Review meeting
At the end of every sprint cycle, the SCRUM team meets again and demonstrates implemented user stories to the product owner. The product owner may cross verify the stories as per its acceptance criteria. It’s again the responsibility of the Scrum master to preside over this meeting.
#5: Retrospective meeting
Retrospective meeting happens after the review meeting. The SCRUM team meets and discusses & document the following points:
What went well during the Sprint (Best practices)
What did not went well in the Sprint
Lessons learnt
Action Items.
The Scrum team should continue to follow the best practice, ignore the “not best practices” and implement the lessons learnt during the consequent sprints. The retrospective meeting helps to implement the continuous improvement of the SCRUM process.
A software testing practice that follows the principles of agile software development is called Agile Testing. Agile is an iterative development methodology, where requirements evolve through collaboration between the customer and self-organizing teams and agile aligns development with customer needs.
SCRUM is a process in agile methodology which is a combination of Iterative model and incremental model.
Some of the key characteristics of SCRUM include:
- Self-organized and focused team
- No huge requirement documents, rather have very precise and to the point stories.
- Cross functional team works together as a single unit.
- Close communication with the user representative to understand the features.
- Has definite time line of max 1 month.
- Instead of doing the entire “thing” at a time, Scrum does a little of everything at a given interval
- Resources capability and availability are considered before committing any thing.
Important SCRUM Terminologies:
1. Scrum Team
Scrum team is a team comprising of 7 with + or – two members. These members are a mixture of competencies and comprise of developers, testers, data base people, support people etc. along with the product owner and a scrum master. All these members work together in close collaboration for a recursive and definite interval, to develop and implement the said features.
2. Sprint
Sprint is a predefined interval or the time frame in which the work has to be completed and make it ready for review or ready for production deployment. This time box usually lies between 2 weeks to 1 month. In our day to day life when we say that we follow 1 month Sprint cycle, it simply means that we work for one month on the tasks and make it ready for review by the end of that month.
3. Product Owner
Product owner is the key stakeholder or the lead user of the application to be developed.
Product owner is the person who represents the customer side. He / she have the final authority and should always be available for the team. He / she should be reachable in case any one has any doubts that need clarification. It is important for the product owner to understand and not to assign any new requirement in the middle of the sprint or when the sprint has already started.
4. Scrum Master
Scrum Master is the facilitator of the scrum team. He / she make sure that the scrum team is productive and progressive. In case of any impediments, scrum master follows up and resolves them for the team.
5. User Story
User stories are nothing but the requirements or feature which has to be implemented. In scrum, we don’t have those huge requirements documents, rather the requirements are defined in a single paragraph.
6. Product Backlog
Product backlog is a kind of bucket or source where all the user stories are kept. This is maintained by Product owner. Product backlog can be imagined as a wish list of the product owner who prioritizes it as per business needs. During planning meeting (see next section), one user story is taken from the product backlog, team does the brainstorming, understands it and refine it and collectively decides which user stories to take, with the intervention of the product owner.
7. Sprint Backlog
Based on the priority, user stories are taken from the Product Backlog one at a time. The Scrum team brainstorms on it, determines the feasibility and decides on the stories to work on a particular sprint. The collective list of all the user stories which the scrum team works on a particular sprint is called s Sprint backlog.
Activities done in SCRUM Methodology:
#1: Planning meeting
Planning meeting is the starting point of SCRUM. It is the meeting where the entire scrum team gather, the product owner selects a user story based on the priority from the product back log and the team brain storms on it. Based on the discussion, the scrum team decides the complexity of the story and sizes it as per the Fibonacci series. Team identifies the tasks along with the efforts (in hours) which would be done to complete the implementation the user story.
Many a time planning meeting is preceded by a “Pre-Planning meeting”. It’s just like a home work which the scrum team does before they sit for the formal planning meet. Team tries to write down the dependencies or other factors which they would like to discuss in the planning meet.
#2: Execution of sprint tasks
As the name suggests, these are the actual work done by the scrum team to accomplish their task and take the user story into the “Done” state.
#3: Daily scrum meeting (call)
During the sprint cycle, every day the scrum team meets for, not more than 15 minutes (could be a stand up call, recommended to have during the beginning of the day) and state 3 points:
What did the team member did yesterday
What did the team member plan to do today
Any impediments (roadblocks)
It is the Scrum master who facilitates this meeting. In case, any team member is facing any kind of difficulties, the scrum master follows up to get it resolved.
#4: Review meeting
At the end of every sprint cycle, the SCRUM team meets again and demonstrates implemented user stories to the product owner. The product owner may cross verify the stories as per its acceptance criteria. It’s again the responsibility of the Scrum master to preside over this meeting.
#5: Retrospective meeting
Retrospective meeting happens after the review meeting. The SCRUM team meets and discusses & document the following points:
What went well during the Sprint (Best practices)
What did not went well in the Sprint
Lessons learnt
Action Items.
The Scrum team should continue to follow the best practice, ignore the “not best practices” and implement the lessons learnt during the consequent sprints. The retrospective meeting helps to implement the continuous improvement of the SCRUM process.
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