Featured Post - Changing Role of QA

Most agree the role of a tester will change within agile. Ask a group of so-called experts exactly what these changes are and you'll probably get a different answer from each of them!

I myself like the idea of the tester getting more involved in requirement gathering and even stepping into the scrum master shoes. However, I do see the role becoming more of an QA Enforcer and not necessary executing but co-ordinating tests with business users. These are just my views, but what do the rest of testing community expect these changes to be?

An Alternative Approach to Automated Testing

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automated testingSo you know you want to introduce automation into your regression suite, but not sure where to start? You could go down the traditional route and automate each module. But what if the software's an existing product and there's hundreds of modules already in place?.

It would take an awful long time (and cost) before you've caught up with the code. Mention this to stakeholders/managers and you could be derailed before you've even started.

I've recently heard of an alternative approach that sounds quite interesting and it wouldn't take too much effort to get automation up and running.

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Am I an Agile Tester?

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Agile testingI've often wondered if there's such a thing as an 'Agile Tester' or am I just a Tester who happens to work in an Agile Development environment. Having read countless blogs and based on my own experiences, I've come to the conclusion that the 'Agile Tester' really does exist. Let me explain...

The Agile Tester
As a Tester, you guide the development team in a way that ensures each user story/feature of the product behaves as intended and without bugs.

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Tester Troubles' gone mobile!

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Having spent the last month looking at Tester Troubles on my iPhone, I realised the Blogger platform lacks the ability to convert sites into a smart phone format.

Luckily last night, I decided to visit some of my favourite widget sites and found that widgetbox.com have introduced a new widget to convert feeds into app looking sites. And they give you some javascript to embed in your template that recognises if a visitor is using a mobile smart phone.

After 20 minutes configuring my site widget, I'm happy to say Tester Troubles is now mobile!

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Exploratory Testing - An Agile Approach?

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outside of the boxIn a previous post I touched upon the notion of developers helping with the testing bottleneck, by executing scripts predefined by the tester. However, this does come with a risk because one test approach that is difficult to handover is the exploratory side of things. Let me explain...

Since moving into agile development where the requirements are typically lightweight and evolve during the coding phase, its difficult to plan all test cases upfront. More often I'm finding myself having to use an exploratory approach to ensure as much coverage as possible.

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