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Requirements and tests are just two sides of the same coin. You can’t have a user story or requirement without an acceptance criteria (test). These two meld into executable specification. Gherkin Using gherkin syntax (given, when, then) we can represent requirements using examples and create specifications by example. As a potential customer, I want to collect…

In many situations, there are a lot of business rules that need to be tested. Say we want to test that the correct discounts get applied based on a certain number of items in a shopping cart. To test these rules, most testers will go through the UI and hop through several steps to get to…

Test driven development is a programming approach where before the developer writes any code, she first writes an automated test. This test will fail at first because no code exists. Then she writes enough code to make the test pass. After that she might want to clean up or refactor her approach, all along ensuring that…

Testing is everyone’s responsibility. The entire team works collectively to develop a quality product. Most of the automation is done by the people writing the code using an approach known as Test Driven Development or Test Driven Design (TDD). This includes unit, integration, component, and system tests. These tests verify that the application works as intended.…

What does your task board say about your team? Many teams have a separate testing column. This indicates that we are still doing hand-offs from development to testing and that testing is an afterthought. Testing is not a phase that happens at the end of a project and it’s not a phase that happens at the…

Most teams today use an inverted pyramid where most of the tests are manual User Acceptance Tests and System tests and are manually executed via the UI. Unit tests are non-existent or are too few to be beneficial. In order to have a maintainable test suite, as explained in this post, the base of our pyramid…

When trying to decide how to distribute our testing efforts and how many tests to write for each different type, it’s important to consider: Test coverage: How much of the code has a test that verifies its behaviorTest execution time: How long does it take to run the test and get a result backTest feedback: How…

When we look at the different types of tests and the Agile Testing Quadrant, which tests in which quadrant can we automate? In general, any tests that can be scripted can and should be automated. If we can map out a series of preparatory steps, followed by an action that results in an expected value or…

Brian Marick came up with a way to categorize the different types by 2 dimensions: Tests that support programming or the team and tests that critique the productTests that are technology facing and tests that are business facing Test that support the team: These are tests that help the team build and change the application with…

Test definitions vary. Sometimes they are categorized by type, level and approach. Below is my take on the different types of testing. Unit Testing: Verifies that a single unit of code (a specific behavior in a method) behaves as intended. Integration Testing: Verifies that two or more units communicating with each other behave as intended. Component…

Beyond Iterative Coding Many software teams think they're "doing Agile" when they're really just breaking down their coding phase into smaller chunks. This fundamental misconception might be holding your team back from achieving true agility and delivering real business value. The Misconception: "Agile Is Just Iterative Development" I've visited dozens of organizations that proudly claim to…

Over many consulting engagements, I’ve come to see 4 stages that organizations and teams go through as they try to learn and implement Scrum on their own. Typically, these engagements start when an organization reaches out asking for help as they are not seeing the benefits they expected after adopting Scrum. I usually find the organization…