In Agile, it’s part of testers’ tasks to work closely with the other Development Team members, but they are already in a vulnerable position. After all, creators generally find it hard when someone points out everything wrong with their own outputs – and testers do just that. Aside from reporting test statuses and bugs, testers also need to do bug prevention work, such as design reviews and requirements clarification. And for the bugs that do surface, testers need to collaborate with the developers closely to ensure that the bugs are reproducible and fixed the right way.
All this talk on team size and complexity of relationships brings us to this question: How many testers to how many developers should there be in a Scrum team?
Tester – Developer Ratio/s
Aside from determining team size, tester – developer ratios are also one of the burning topics in software development, and coming up with a consistent, final answer is not as easy as it sounds. This is because there are a lot of things to look at when deciding on this ratio, including:
- Type of application to test
- Number of different configurations to test
- Test-ability of the application
- Skill level and experience of the developers and testers
- Quality standards to meet and maintain
- Tools that are readily available
Some organisations employ a 1:1 tester-developer ratio, while some organisations have it at 1:3. Because there are varying tester-developer ratios, it is very risky for an organisation taking another organisation’s ratio and applying them to their projects – without the assessment of the factors listed above. Furthermore, Agile testing practices should not change with the team size or ratio. This may mean that everyone will need to expand their skills and be able to collaborate with one another to the best of their abilities. Having a lower tester-developer ratio doesn’t mean that there was less testing work done – it simply meant that everyone shares ownership for the product quality and followed testing practices.
Team size and ratios matter in a way that they should be good enough for teams to build software efficiently and effectively. But no matter what the team size or ratio is, testers have the responsibility to have everyone on the Scrum team have sound Agile testing practices to build software with quality.
Recommended Further Reading
The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course:
Course Contents
Section 1: Agile Project Management
Section 2: Using the Agile Manifesto to Deliver Change
Section 3: The 12 Agile Principles
Section 4: The Agile Fundamentals
Section 5: The Declaration of Interdependence
Section 6: Agile Development Frameworks
Section 7: Introduction to Scrum
Section 8: Scrum Projects
Section 9: Scrum Project Roles
Section 10: Meet the Scrum Team
Section 11: Building the Scrum Team
Section 12: Scrum in Projects, Programs & Portfolios
Section 13: How to Manage an Agile Project
Section 14: Leadership Styles
Section 15: The Agile Project Life-cycle
Section 16: Business Justification with Agile
Section 17: Calculating the Benefits With Agile
Section 18: Quality in Agile
Section 19: Acceptance Criteria and the Prioritised Product Backlog
Section 20: Quality Management in Scrum
Section 21: Change in Scrum
Section 22: Integrating Change in Scrum
Section 23: Managing Change in Scrum
Section 24: Risk in Scrum
Section 25: Risk Assessment Techniques
Section 26: Initiating an Agile Project
Section 27: Forming the Scrum Team
Section 28: Epics and Personas
Section 29: Creating the Prioritised Product Backlog
Section 30: Conduct Release Planning
Section 31: The Project Business Case
Section 32: Planning in Scrum
Section 33: Scrum Boards
Section 34: Sprint Planning
Section 35: User Stories
Section 36: User Stories and Tasks
Section 37: The Sprint Backlog
Section 38: Implementation of Scrum
Section 39: The Daily Scrum
Section 40: The Product Backlog
Section 41: Scrum Charts
Section 42: Review and Retrospective
Section 43: Scrum of Scrums
Section 44: Validating a Sprint
Section 45: Retrospective Sprint
Section 46: Releasing the Product
Section 47: Project Retrospective
Section 48: The Communication Plan
Section 49: Formal Business Sign-off
Section 50: Scaling Scrum
Section 51: Stakeholders
Section 52: Programs and Portfolios