29
votes
Accepted
What are developers expected to do during testing in the latter half of each Sprint?
TL; DR
Your question embeds some false assumptions about the linear nature of testing within an agile process. A mature agile team with cross-functional skill sets treats development and testing as ...
- 49.8k
21
votes
How do I overcome a bottleneck in a team's process, when what people are telling me doesn't match what I see
Your problem is not that you have developers and non-developers (as you call the business analysis/product owner, the designer and the testers). Your problem is that these people have individual ...
- 15k
18
votes
Accepted
How do I overcome a bottleneck in a team's process, when what people are telling me doesn't match what I see
Your team appears to do mini-waterfall development within each sprint, which is a known anti-pattern, as you don't get the collaboration within the team that make agile methods successful.
Also, ...
- 2,760
15
votes
Accepted
Should a Product Owner start testing while an item is in code review
The answer depends on whether this slows down or speeds up the process.
How many of the bugs she found were discovered during the Code Review phase?
If they were all discovered during the Code ...
- 4,562
13
votes
Accepted
How do you convince a client that testing is a must?
If you are building a product for a client, your internal testing / QC work is not subject to negotiations. It is part of the work, part of the price, and there is no reduction in that area. If the ...
- 37.1k
13
votes
What could be my risk mitigation strategies if my client wants to contract UAT?
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. Sherlock Holmes
A logical corollary is that it is a ...
- 8,728
11
votes
How to implement unit testing with a small Scrum team without spending half the Sprint unit-testing stories?
My devs are not used to unit testing framework and are still learning
This will improve over time as they gain more experience.
There are only 2 of them and each with their specialty (Front-end and ...
- 8,428
10
votes
When is the best time to create automated test cases?
An Agile team should have automation testing knowledge from the start, the team should be cross-functional. Personally I think a test in each layer of the test pyramid should be defined in the ...
- 5,533
10
votes
How do I overcome a bottleneck in a team's process, when what people are telling me doesn't match what I see
You are doing a lot of good things already, but I would also recommend the following:
Reduce how much you bring into each sprint
Keep on reducing it until the testing bottleneck disappears and the ...
- 19.4k
9
votes
Accepted
How can I make unit testing a priority?
Try to quantify (read: put a hard $ amount to) the increased time/expenses that build up over the lifecycle of the project - regression testing, bug-fixing, new feature risk and increased time to ...
- 957
9
votes
Accepted
Should we allocate separate hourly estimates for test tasks in addition to the development tasks
When you have dedicated testers it can appear to make sense to have a seperate testing task for them. But when you think about it, testing is really a team activity.
For example, a tester may need to ...
- 19.4k
9
votes
What is the role of test manager in a scrum team?
The traditional Test Manager role is not compatible with the Scrum framework. Testers are members of the Scrum Team and they may well do some development and other activities in addition to testing. ...
- 19.4k
9
votes
Accepted
Is QA stage mandatory to be included into user story cycle?
The direct answer for almost all teams is that QA must be complete to call a user story done. I would take that further and say that I have never worked with a team where this was not true.
The More ...
- 16.9k
9
votes
How do I overcome a bottleneck in a team's process, when what people are telling me doesn't match what I see
Other comments here all ring true: too waterfall-y, not enough team responsibility, etc. but I'd like to emphasize a point made just once in other answers: you're absolutely setting goals too high. ...
- 191
8
votes
What are some Agile Testing Estimation Techniques?
Agile teams are cross-functional teams. They estimate the work from design to delivery often on a story based level. This includes the testing work, since testing should be part of the definition of ...
- 5,533
8
votes
What are developers expected to do during testing in the latter half of each Sprint?
They could be doing a number of things. What they should be doing depends on your organization's Scrum/XP maturity but here are some common items:
QA work - yes devs can QA, whether thats writing ...
- 3,932
8
votes
Should a Product Owner start testing while an item is in code review
As a general rule I would say that the earlier the Product Owner starts testing the better.
The reason for this is that a lot of bugs happen as a result of misunderstanding of requirements. The ...
- 19.4k
8
votes
Accepted
Are development and testing of a feature done at the same time in Scrum?
Do QA-engineers write automated tests for the feature at the same time as developers write code of the feature?
Ideally yes. You need the two activities to be performed by a collaboration between ...
- 15k
8
votes
What is the good response to convince project manager about testing process?
Modern testing is all about how you assist to "Accelerate the Achievement of Shippable Quality".
Do your reviews help with accelerating? What metrics do you use to create proof of that? ...
- 5,533
7
votes
How can I make unit testing a priority?
TL;DR
Make unit testing part of your core development methodology, and ensure that test coverage is part of your "Definition of Done." Also, ensure your estimates include the overhead to develop and ...
- 49.8k
7
votes
QA-Challenged Team - How to Improve?
We've struggled with the same issue on my team, while there's no replacement for a quality QA on the team, we've managed to get along by wearing multiple hats.
This is our workflow:
TDD the story ...
- 1,380
7
votes
Test only stories in the Sprint?
Stop the Line; Fix the Process
Obviously this will continue going forward because there will be a backlog of stories to be tested, whereas development will continue (we can't halt development ...
- 49.8k
7
votes
Are there differences in Test plans for an agile model and a traditional model?
My in-Sprint testplans always try to cover the area's defined in Brian Maricks described Agile testing quadrants.
We look at each area at the beginning of the story and defined what effort we are ...
- 5,533
7
votes
How to handle stakeholders' different understanding of project requirements?
This is a great question. Several years back I analysed the bugs reported in a team and found that over half of them came about as a result of misunderstanding of requirements.
Some things that can ...
- 19.4k
7
votes
What is the good response to convince project manager about testing process?
What do you mean by "reviews" in this context? Many development teams do peer-reviews of code and analysis because they find that reviews improve productivity and quality. Many teams also ...
- 6,216
6
votes
Testing big systems in agile
We face this situation in our AOL Advertising platform today. Like @MrHinsh suggests, the very first thing to do is move all QA into the scrum teams. We are actually in the process of moving all our ...
- 12.5k
6
votes
Accepted
Scrum: Should user story acceptance criteria be mapped to test cases?
TL;DR
The acceptance criteria should be part of the feature story and be the basis for the test cases. There shouldn't be a separate test story, they might be a subtask of the story!
Long answer
...
- 775
6
votes
Should a Product Owner start testing while an item is in code review
In favor of eliminating waste I'd suggest waiting, too.
Assuming a PO's time is more expensive/valuable than a tester's or dev's, simply because of supply and demand as there is only one PO, but ...
- 8,428
6
votes
Accepted
Adding test cases to user stories (Backlog items) before the sizing session
A short answer to start with. If you have the Product Owner available with a well-defined list of Acceptance Criteria against User Stories, your agile team can conduct an effective Story Sizing ...
- 3,217
6
votes
How do I overcome a bottleneck in a team's process, when what people are telling me doesn't match what I see
The first question I would want to consider in your position is:
Are the issues being seen in test because the code is unreliable, or because the requirements have not been understood?
The ...
- 161
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