Multi-skilling will come a long way
A skill worth having by testers would be test automation, a form of testing not limited to Agile projects. Having to manually run regression tests will eventually be impossible to complete as the number of tests increases. Given the short Sprints and iterations, test automation can become a necessity, especially for regression testing. Another skill that can be useful for testers would be doing the business analysis for the team. Ensuring that the team will build what the customers want involves being able to translate those needs into requirements and backlog items.
Quality metrics will be different
Organisations who adhere to certain international standards or are subject to appraisal have metrics that need to be strictly tracked. When it comes to testing, test coverage, defect validity, and re-open defect percentage are some of the metrics that are important to management. When an organisation decides to shift to Agile, the metrics will also need to adjust to the framework being used. What was once important for traditional projects may no longer be relevant for Agile projects.
Even though the Agile manifesto stated it values “working software over comprehensive documentation,” metrics serve as the basis for continuous improvement, making them a necessary part of Agile projects. The scientific nature of Agile makes it more predisposed to tracking metrics, with time-boxes as the fixed variables for experiments. The metrics to be tracked will depend on what the Agile organisation finds valuable. It could include quantitative measures such as site usage analytics, or more qualitative such as customer feedback. A few of the most common metrics used by Agile projects would be project burn-down and velocity, which depict how much work is left and how much work the team can take, respectively. Testers will need to adjust to these new set of metrics in order to help the team move forward.
Recommended Further Reading
The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course: