The Scrum Framework for Testers Part 2

In order to regularly inspect and adapt the product, scrum events are facilitated among the stakeholders. They minimise unnecessary project meetings and establish consistency by having these meetings at specified times for specified duration’s (called time-boxes). The following are the main events in the Scrum Framework:

• Sprint – the heart of Scrum, which is a short timeline of between one and six weeks wherein the Product increment is being developed.
• Sprint Planning – the event for scoping and planning the work to be done for the Sprint.
• Sprint Review – the inspection of the Product Increment, where the product status is being reported and given feedback on by stakeholders.
• Sprint Retrospective – the inspection of the Scrum team’s processes in order to find out what works, what doesn’t, and what improvements can be made.
• Daily Scrum – a quick, 15-minute meeting where the team members share what they’ve completed, what they intend to complete next, and the impediments to their work.

Testers perform their testing tasks in all of these Scrum Events and help to clarify requirements, assessing the test-ability of user stories, and actually testing the product.

What Scrum Means for Testers

 Scrum challenges testers to collaborate more closely with other team members, as opposed to working independently, in silos. More than just finding and reporting bugs, testers should find ways to prevent bugs from happening in the first place.

Scrum gives opportunities to the testers to expand their skill set.  In addition to writing test cases, executing tests, and reporting status reports, they can acquire business analysis skills by helping the Product Owner and the team translate customer requirements into user stories and acceptance tests.

Given the short Sprint cycles, testers are challenged to test differently. They need to adopt a risk and business driven approach to testing, as opposed to going for full test coverage. Testers should be able to prioritise tests and know which product features and attributes matter the most to their customers, and ensure that those will not fail and prevent the users from completing important tasks.

Frequent changes to the product entails the need to make sure that negative impact on the product is minimised. Therefore, having a strategy for regression testing is also a must for testers in Scrum projects. Part of this strategy should include automated testing, which grows more vital to the product as more features are added. This is because having more features to test means having a bigger test coverage, but the Sprint length remains the same.

All in all, being a tester in Scrum doesn’t really mean doing away with traditional testing tasks. It simply means being analytical enough to inspect and assess the product as well as being able to be open enough to adapt to changes.  It also means removing silos between teams and focusing more on collaborating with other developers and analysts.

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Our Book Recommendations

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