Agile Adoption

In February of 2001 a small group of software development pioneers and thought leaders gathered in the mountains of Utah to create a set of four key values and twelve principles better known as the Agile Manifesto. Over the past nine years these ideals have grown throughout the software development community to spawn “agilistas” throughout the world as well as a host of conferences focused on Agile concepts. 

Zenergy Technologies recently exhibited at one of these conferences last week in Las Vegas, the Agile Development Practices Conference. Hosted by SQE, publisher of Better Software Magazine and StickyMinds, this conference provided the leadership at Zenergy a chance to do one of its favorite things: take the pulse of the software development community, specifically, a segment of the Agile populace.

As attendees visited our booth in search of information about our company and solutions, tchotchkes, and the iPad we planned to give away at the SQE drawing, although not necessarily in that order—we know most people just wanted the iPad; we wanted one too—we took the opportunity to ask them how long they had been using Agile methodologies. While our survey was by no means scientific, the answers pointed to the fact that the majority of attendees we met with had been using Agile for about 18 months, long enough to begin to feel at ease after having stepped outside their comfort zone of the traditional waterfall methodology, but still new enough to experience a variety of challenges. Three challenges in particular were popular topics at our booth:

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Automation Tool Considerations

Last week we spoke to a company attempting to integrate test automation into their Agile development process. Confusion abounded when it came to the plethora of tool choices. To add to their uncertainty, they were unsure which team within their group would have responsibility for the selected tool’s implementation and usage. This organization knows they want an open source tool. While new automation tools in this category spring up each year,  some of the more popular ones include:

• NUnit

• JUnit

• FitNesse

• Selenium

• Ruby Watir

Our recommendation to the company when evaluating the available automation software, was to consider them falling into one of three categories:

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What's the Real Risk to Our Test Effort?

When planning a test effort, the topic of risk and contingencies always comes up. Sometimes we answer the call of identified risks by listing boilerplate issues we’ve encountered, or have read about, rather than truly considering what risks are likely to impact the project and more specifically, which risks are likely to negatively impact our test effort.

For example, some common risks you find in test plans include: 

• Requirements are incomplete and/or ambiguous
• There are limited testing resources available for the project
• Previously established deadlines for other activities have been allowed to slip, but QA’s execution start and completion dates remain fixed 

When identifying risks and determining contingencies for inclusion in a test plan, it’s important to go beyond the standard issues and evaluate the ones likely to occur. To do this, it may be helpful to view risks as falling into one or more of the following categories:

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