Declaration of Interdependence for Testers Part 2

#4 – We unleash creativity and innovation by recognising that individuals are the ultimate source of value, and creating an environment where they can make a difference.

The environment influences  people’s actions and decisions because it facilitates their interactions among each other. This isn’t just the physical space- it’s also the culture and collective consciousness within it, as well. When the environment is conducive for creativity and innovation, great things can emerge from the team, which can lead to an exceptional product that will be well-loved by customers.

Testers can help make the product development environment better by avoiding ‘the blame game’ when it comes to finding defects in the system. They can work with the development team in order to discuss their test plans and ensure everybody is clear with regards to the testing process for particular features.  When there is a good relationship among the scrum team, the communication will be clear and the collaboration will be seamless.

#5 – We boost performance through group accountability for results and shared responsibility for team effectiveness.

Agile methods often make use of empirical approaches that generally revolve around inspecting the product, people, and processes and then adapting to the needed changes. As with scientific experiments, data and results need to be as true or accurate as possible in order for teams, customers, and management alike to decide and act on accordingly. When everyone is motivated and has shared ownership over the product, it will be in the best interest of everyone to create a great product together.

Any creator would have emotional ties to their work, having worked for long hours on the product. Developers, designers, and even testers are no different from this behaviour. Therefore, when testers create bug reports and raise them to the team, they must do so effectively.  Alongside with good sportsmanship and teamwork, the testers should be able to diagnose these bugs and defects as accurately as possible. Having a good understanding of the requirements is a must to ensure that the testers can guide the team towards the right direction, and providing reproducible steps will be very helpful. Clearly presenting information will help speed up defect resolution.

#6 – We improve effectiveness and reliability through situationally specific strategies, processes and practices.

There is hardly ever a one-size-fits-all solution for anything, and the best businesses know this very well in staying ahead in the competition. Thankfully in Agile, inspect and adapt is already ingrained in its principles and practices, and there are prescribed processes to make these activities possible. For example, the Sprint Reviews and Sprint Retrospectives in Scrum projects.

Testers should also adapt their testing strategies to the situation at hand. For example, manual functional testing, although definitely needed, may not be enough in the long run. As the product grows to have more features, the testing coverage will also be larger. Given that Sprints can take 2 to 4 weeks, they simply will not have the resources to effectively carry out regression testing manually any longer. Automated tests can simulate users and execute scripts in a shorter amount of time, and this would help in the coverage needed before releasing the code to production. Testers could also consider including API testing in their skill set, so that they can be QA engineers who cover each layer of the application.

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Our Book Recommendations

We found these books great for finding out more information on Agile Scrum: