What is the role of Manual Testing in an Agile World

1. What is the role of Manual Testing in an Agile World Emergence Tech Training / emergencetechtraining;com

2. The Agile Testing Pyramid Emergence Tech Training / emergencetechtraining;com

3. The Agile Testing Pyramid • Automation is a core value proposition of Agile Development teams • Begins at the code level (TDD) and grows from there • All the way through Functional level (BDD) • Why is this important? • Sprints need Speed • Speed needs Process • Automation is the process that we use to gain fast feedback when things fail through continuous integration tools such as Jenkins/Hudson. Emergence Tech Training / emergencetechtraining;com

4. Risks of Automation • Teams can rely too much on automation as the primary indicator of quality • Teams can become disconnected with the Application: • Lose sight of the user. • Don’t challenge or ask questions • More focus on testing small parts of the application over end to end. • Applications can become less intuitive. • Not all tests SHOULD be automated. Emergence Tech Training / emergencetechtraining;com

5. Quality Assurance vs. Testing • Quality Assurance is a process that is: • Measurable • Repeatable • Sustainable • Testing is an activity: • in a controlled setting that tests the specifications or behavior of an application. • That follows repeatable patterns of testing via test plan/automation • Provides evidence of quality via testing stats output. • That reduces risk of product failures. • Testing and Quality Assurance are not entirely synonymous. Emergence Tech Training / emergencetechtraining;com

6. The Role of Manual Testing • Perform testing that can’t or should not be handled by Automation: • Ad-Hoc/Exploratory – Experienced testers have both a Technical and Functional perspective to the Application under test. This type of testing is unscripted and allows the tester the opportunity to explore various ways they can break the system. • Session Based Testing – Time boxed testing that is more formal than Exploratory. Will typically want to execute this for areas of the application that have known complexity, have recently undergone a large level of refactor or for new features/functionality. Emergence Tech Training / emergencetechtraining;com

7. The Role of Manual Testing • Vulnerability/Security Testing – Many teams still pay little attention to testing for security vulnerabilities in their software. This type of manual testing can be facilitated by tools such as Webscarab (opensource) or other tools such as Burp and Appscan. • Negative Testing – – Manually changing data to reflect negative behavior and edge cases are best handled by manual testing due complexity often involved. Emergence Tech Training / emergencetechtraining;com

8. Value Proposition • Testing from the User perspective • Tests edge cases that aren’t easy to automate • Cost of automation should always be evaluated • Allows knowledge of the application to be applied in a non-repeatable process: • Tester has the freedom to explore and attempt to break the system • Automation’s goal is not to break the system but to notify when a change in the underlying code has broken a test Emergence Tech Training / emergencetechtraining;com

9. Challenges to Manual Testing • The team tells me I don’t have to do Manual Testing if I’m on an Agile team • Answer – Provide evidence of defects found during manual testing. Work with the team to find a balance between automation and manual testing. • Features get delivered late in our Sprint, I barely have time to test the basics • Answer – Use both your daily scrum and retrospectives to talk about the issue and find a resolution. • The more we build the less time I have to perform regression • Answer – This is where automation provides its value. An effective base of automation provides Progressive Regression with each run of the automation. Emergence Tech Training / emergencetechtraining;com