Agile Testing Shouldn’t Change Based on Team Size
Job responsibility is one of the major things people think about when it comes to joining a small start-up team vs. a major corporation. The project being worked on should scale based on the manpower available, but people often associate small companies with employees who have to do a bit of everything to keep up.
Mary Thorn, the director of agile practices at Ipreo and an expert in agile testing, recently spoke to StickyMinds about team size in an agile sense. Although every team will have some differences, Thorn argues that the processes should be the same no matter the scale.
“In my organizations, there are no differences in a small or large test organization. My goal is to make the processes the same across all testers so that they can become "fungible" across teams if I need to switch people around,” she explains. “Over the past three companies, I have used the same testing techniques for the testers regardless of the team size.”
No matter the situation, the agile tester needs to have interchangeable skills, a broad understanding of quality, and ability to address different bugs and issues early in the process. Thorn points out a handful of critical qualities the tester should own, including good communication skills, a great attitude, passion about testing, creativity, empathy, and high aptitude.
That’s a lot to expect from one person on a team, and as discussed many times on this site, the agile world can seem a bit unfair to your standard traditional tester. The software business is changing around them, and it’s the tester who seems to be forced to change their skillset to adapt to this fast, automated future.
Even with that said, it’s important to note the more collaborative nature that agile encourages for every single member of the team—not just the testers. Sure, testers might have to adopt the most new skills if they hope to make things work at this new pace, but product owners and developers can’t just rest on their laurels.
“The whole team owns quality, the automation is just a task on the sprint, and we need to have a few people on the team who can perform that task,” Thorn continues. “With that said, I do encourage and train those testers that want to learn on how to code. I believe in the T-shape scrum team—the more multi-skilled people on the team, the less ‘scrummerfall’ there is.”
You shouldn’t base how things are done in your organizations on the manpower available. Establish smart, consistent agile testing strategies, and you’ll be able to succeed no matter the situation.
