The Agile Frameworks for Testers Part 2

Lean, which is short for lean manufacturing, is really a set of management principles that focuses on value and efficiency. Lean concepts are broken down into the following principles:

• Waste elimination
• Built-in quality
• Knowledge creation
• Commitment
• Fast delivery
• Respect
• Optimised production processes.

Lean development encourages teams to not spend too much time on processes, practices, and documentations that hinder the team from being productive, but to maximise strategies for a given plan. It also stresses the importance of observing and improving how the team works and functions as “the system.”

Scaled Agile Framework

Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is a light Agile framework that is able to handle complex system development projects in an organisation. SAFE 4.0 divides an organisation into four levels: Portfolio, Value Streams, Program, and Team. It is used for enterprise-level systems development, and requires significant effort on coordination. Think of Scrum, but with more roles like Release Train Engineers (RTE).

Portfolio level focuses on the different value streams identified by the organisation. Then in each of those value streams would be epics to be worked on, which are further divided into Agile Release Trains and Features at the Program Level. Finally, these trickle down to teams that handle different user stories. Each team would follow the same cadence and Sprint lengths, with progress reporting upwards to Program Level and then Portfolio Level.

Different Frameworks, Same Values

No matter which framework will be used by your project, it will boil down to honouring the following core values in the Agile Manifesto:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

As the Agile Manifesto says, teams must not necessarily do away with the items on the right, but rather values the items on the left some more.

It will always be a challenge for testers to keep up with the speed required for development in the different Agile Frameworks. Aside from basic testing tasks like test case writing and test execution, testers are expected to develop scripts, design test frameworks, and also guide stakeholders on test engineering practices. Due to the plethora of technologies used in software development, testers should be able to expand their skills and be able to test both API and GUI levels.

In the end, both the goals for software development and testing remain the same. And being an Agile tester means doing more than the usual, and doing things differently, no matter which Agile framework they’ll be working in.

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Our Book Recommendations

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