4/6/10

Agile Methodology

For some weird reason, some higher being in the office decided to implement the Agile Methodology for the team that I am in. I hate it.. but there's nothing I can do about it at the moment. So rather than being spoiled and petty and pushing my personal issues on other people, I did some reading about it and looked for some way to make it work for me.

Apparently, most articles about the Agile Methodology is "developer" centric... bullshit! and most QA hate it. Articles that were from experiences of QA in an Agile environment say that test automation is the key to success in this methodology. In other words, the Agile methodology requires robots instead of real testers.

We can do test automation, how ever this may be a drawback for the company I am in. I see the hesitance of people on the management side to invest some time and effort to automate most tests. It is usually forgotten. Another drawback is that no one is knowledgable about the tool. It is easy to use as is but some knowledge of xpath, java script and other things would make the tool even more powerful if given the time and effort to learn them.

I still hate Agile testing... especially if the planning is done in a developer's mind set without any consideration on the load the QA gets...

I feel that the planners take the QA for granted... put in tasks, backlogs, stories in and add a few QA tasks for each just to say that the story has been tested to some extent.

Given the things I said, I still haven't found anything that could make my "Agile" testing life easier.

It's probably time for me to look for better management...
Time to update my resume~
Newskills to add:
1. Test Automation
2. Internet Banking
3. Agile Methodology <-- this might get me in trouble...
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3 comments:

  1. Vinod NarayanApr 9, 2010, 1:44:00 AM

    Hi Sushi,

    I understand where you are coming from, but don't loose heart, there are several ways you can contribute. But I guess being part of Agile teams is a key as more and more companies are adoptingthe same.

    It might take time to pick up as a way of work, but its not tough

    Regards
    Vinod
    http://www.agiletesting.net/

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  2. KaiApr 9, 2010, 8:15:00 PM

    Thanks for the encouragement, I really appreciate it. I guess I'll give it a little more time before I totally give up and hopefully the management become a little more aware that the QA are already burnt out.

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  3. ColinSep 4, 2010, 1:13:00 AM

    The idea I've always had about agile & automated testing is that when you automate the things that can be automated, you free up the QA experts to do things creatively. Things like finding new ways of using the system more than following the same however-many steps and checking to make sure things still work. A computer can often do that kind of "checking"-intensive job, and leave the more interesting work - like writing the tests, finding new ones that should be written, and doing things computers can't do - to the real testers. See Michael Bolton's article on Testing vs. Checking for more on this: http://www.developsense.com/blog/2009/08/testing-vs-checking/

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