Testing in an Agile Environment

Test analysts, test team leaders, test managers, developers or project managers who wish to understand agile software development practices and how testing fits in.

This course is ideal for testers about to become involved in testing on agile projects.

Graduates of this course will be enabled to:

• Understand the need for, and principles of, agile methods.
• Recognise the constituent parts of Scrum.
• Understand the role of a tester in agile software development.
• Take part in iteration planning and make a positive contribution to estimates of size and duration.
• Be able to write tests based on user stories.
• Choose appropriate tests and test approaches in an agile development project.

Delegates are expected to be familiar with the fundamentals of software testing.

• Agile Software Development
• The Agile Manifesto
• Agile Manifesto principles
• Defined and empirical processes
• Project constraints in agile
• An agile approach to projects
• Working as one team
• Working in short iterations
• Delivering each iteration
• Focusing on business priorities

• Introduction to Scrum
• Scrum theory
• Starting Scrum
• Product Backlog
• Sprint planning
• Sprint Backlog
• Sprint Reviews
• Sprint Retrospectives
• Daily Scrums
• Scrum roles – Scrum-Master, Product Owner, The Team.
• Customers and Stakeholders.

• Other Agile Approaches
• History of agile
• eXtreme Programming (XP)
• Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM Atern)
• Lean Software Development
• Kanban
• Disciplined Agile Delivery

• User Stories
• Requirements gathering
• What are user stories?
• Levels of detail
• Story decomposition
• Story elaboration
• Backlog grooming
• Acceptance criteria
• Scenarios, Behaviour Driven Development
• User story testability
• Defining done

• Planning
• Multiple levels of planning
• Backlog prioritisation
• Release planning
• Iteration planning
• Defining test goals and strategies
• Agile testing quadrants
• Testing techniques

• Estimating
• Cone of uncertainty
• Agile estimating
• Estimating size with story points
• Estimation scales
• Estimating velocity
• Shared estimates
• Planning Poker
• Affinity Estimation

• Testing in Agile
• Iterations
• Iteration duration
• Pair programming
• Test-driven development (TDD)
• Quick attacks
• Exploratory testing
• Risk-based testing
• Refactoring and technical debt
• Continuous integration and regression testing
• Performance testing in an iteration
• Security testing
• Usability and accessibility testing
• Release testing