The Whole Team Approach to Agile Testing
Janet Gregory / Lisa Crispin

Three-Day Course

Abstract
This three day course explains how testers can become valued agile team members, how they contribute to delivering a continuous stream of business value, and ways to overcome common cultural and logistical obstacles in transitioning to an agile development process. It describes the values and principles that help testers adopt an agile testing mindset, and how the whole team contributes to the success of any testing practices, including automation.

Students will be shown how to complete testing activities in short iterations, and how testers contribute on a daily basis during each iteration and release cycle. Processes such as ATDD (Acceptance Test Driven Development) will be stressed throughout the course. Through interactive exercises and group discussions, participants will discover good strategies for driving development with both executable and manual tests. The course is filled with real-life examples of the many ways agile testers add value.

Learn how to:
Understand how testers contribute on agile teams, how agile teams successfully cover all dimensions of software quality in short release cycles, and collaborate to deliver the "right" business value at frequent, consistent intervals.

Is this course for you?
The course is aimed at anyone on who wants to learn what testing means on an agile team. All team members will benefit from understanding their contribution and the interaction with testers on the team. Test/QA and development managers, who work with testers, will also find the course valuable. Basic agile knowledge is recommended so the participants can actively contribute with questions and shared experiences.

Here’s what people are saying...

"Learned a lot about how testing fits into Agile projects. Extremely useful course." Sept. 3, 2009

If you have any questions, please E-mail janet@agiletester.ca

Agile Test Automation

Successful Automation in an Agile Environment
Janet Gregory

Two-Day Course

Description

• Understand how test automation fits into agile iterations
• Learn how to automate functional regression tests in an agile environment
• Know how to design automated tests for maximum effectiveness
• Keep your testing efforts in sync with iterations

Agile teams deliver “potentially” shippable software at the end of every iteration (one to four weeks), or even possibly every day. This goal can't be achieved without automated tests and many teams struggle with test automation. The challenge of automating functional regression tests frightens many testers, who feel their skills aren’t up to the job. How do we deliver good quality when we have to release so often?

By combining a collaborative team approach with appropriate tools and design approaches, over time you can not only automate your regression tests, but also use automation to enhance exploratory testing. In this interactive course, Janet Gregory describes how to use automation early and guide development; what tests should be automated; works through ways to overcome common barriers to automation. Janet will use examples to learn how to design automated tests for maximum effectiveness and ease of maintenance. Find out different approaches for evaluating and implementing automated test tools, shortening feedback cycles, creating realistic test data, and evaluating your automation efforts.

By the end of this course, you’ll understand how to fit automation activities within each iteration so that testing “keeps up” with coding.

Who Should Attend?
This course is designed for anyone who is either planning to automate or is struggling with automation in their agile project. No technical skills or experience are required; all technical concepts will be explained. Basic knowledge of agile methodology is a definite asset.

If you have any questions, please E-mail janet@agiletester.ca