Lisa Crispin gave a keynote at Agile Testing Days conference in Berlin today, discussing the topic of staffing an agile team with testers, in particular whether any tester can be on an agile team or are agile testers different from the rest. Crispin and Janet Gregory interviewed a lot of testers while working on their book and found that lots of people they interviewed had similar experiences and traits. According to Crispin, an agile tester mindset is such that they:
- Constantly look for new challenges and ways to improve: they learn new tools, scripting languages and approaches to testing
- Are proactive and willing to take on any task: they look for ways to contribute in different ways on a project, not limiting themselves to traditional testing tasks
- Collaborative, not antagonistic: they collaborate with the rest of the team to deliver the best possible product, not take an adversarial approach to developers.
- Customer-focused: they to work closely with customers, learn from them and help them do their job better
- Results-oriented: teams set goals for themselves and they aim to achieve these goals with everyone else
The “quality police” mindset typical for testers on traditional waterfall teams doesn’t work on an agile team. “You’re not there to stop bad developers put bad code into production, you’re there to help them build quality into the product from the start“, said Crispin.
To testers fearful about going into an agile project, Crispin said that “It’s an agile testers’ utopia”, because “agile is all about quality” and everyone on the team is concerned about delivering a good product.
I’ll be covering Agile Testing Days on this blog in the next few days. Monitor the agiletd tag on my blog for updates
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I’d really argue heavily against almost all of that.
All those traits are what I would expect to find in a tester, whether in an agile environment or not.
Agile is NOT all about quality – it’s about the CUSTOMER, it’s giving the CUSTOMER control over what is delivered. If they want something that’s low quality – ie. they ASK for a squirrel burger, that’s what they get, it’s THEIR call, not the developers.
Of couse, as developers and testers we all strive to deliver quality products, but if the customer is willing to take a hit on “good” in order to achieve “quick” and “cheap” that’s entirely up to them.
All those qualities are merely the traits of a a good team member and could apply to pretty much any role I could think of. In fact most CVs I see say something along those lines in their opening blurb to the point where it becomes meaningless.
Are agile testers different? No, agile testing is different. In general people and the qualities they exhibit are a reflection of the environment within which they exist.
Lee and Bob have beaten me here. I pretty much agree with everything they said.
Nothing particularly speaks “agile” in the traits you have described above. I have been working in a very “non agile” team in my previous job and yet most of our team members (not just testers) demostrated these qualities.
- Constantly look for new challenges and ways to improve
- Are proactive and willing to take on any task
- Collaborative, not antagonistic
- Customer-focused
- Results-oriented
I don’t see anything here that is inherently “agile”. These attributes apply equally to every “non-agile” team I have ever led.
We have to be careful when promoting a new technology or process, not to over-glamorize it.
There may indeed be distinguishing characteristics between “Agile testers” and “Non-agile testers”, but this doesn’t list any of them.
Have to agree with above posters. I do second round technical interviews for the consultancy I work for and wouldn’t be interested in hiring testers – regardless of whether they’re destined for an agile or waterfall project – if they didn’t demonstrate at least those characteristics. Self starting tech heads – the kind who download testing tools in their spare time just to see what they do or play with a new language just for the fun of it – are the kinds of people who will add a load of value to any project. While I’m tired of interviewing button pushers, those with the above traits are always a breath of fresh air, whether they have 3 years or 20 years experience. Doesn’t mean they have an Agile background.