Most agile testing practices are counter-intuitive
Well, most complex things are
Well, most complex things are
Last Saturday were the first Deezer ConTEST, a fun and inspiring event mixing Product and QA organized by Deezer. (link at the end of the article)
For me, this event was also the opportunity to chat with peers. Among them was Florian Zilliox, who held an amazing talk during a previous Agile Testing Paris meetup session. (link at the end of the article)
Florian was one of the speakers of the Deezer ConTEST. He told me aferwards that he was surprised by some questions he was asked.
More specifically, he realized that most agile testing practices are counter-intuitive.
I was less surprised than him. Maybe because I am an avid reader of John Cutler who often explains how Product Management and Product Development are counter-intuitive. (links at the end of the article)
Let’s list quite a few such counter-intuitive agile testing practices.
We’re used to see… → Instead try this agile testing practice…
Developers develop and testers test → Developers test and testers design
Don’t test code you wrote yourself → Write tests before code
Test as much as possible before going in production → The best tests are in production
Testers own quality → Whole team own quality
Automate tests to optimize non-regression cost → Automate tests to enable faster development
Test plans are required → Test plans as stand-alone documents are useless
QA has to check it is right → Team is empowered and held accountable to get it right
Validation → Build shared understanding
Hold QA accountable for missing this bug → Hold developer accountable for introducing this bug
Developers and QA having different tasks and responsibilities → Have developers and QA pair on both development and test tasks
Good developers ship documented code → Tests are the best possible documentation
Estimate time to develop → Estimate time to develop + test
Quality is conformance to specification → Quality is a successful product
Sources and further reading
Deezer ConTEST
Deezer ConTEST, where Product and QA meet
Nous organisons Deezer ConTEST, premier événement qui associera une quarantaine de participants dans le cadre d’une…deezer.io
Florian Zilliox’s talk — Non-regression tests with exploratory testing : h̶a̶r̶d̶e̶r̶, Easier, Better, Faster
Some articles by John Cutler about how Product Management and Product Development are counter-intuitive
Our Intuition Says… Instead, Try…
When you’ve seen something work, you tend to view it as more “intuitive”. It’s easy to forget how counterintuitive it…hackernoon.com
10 Common PM Intuition Traps
Many situations in product development run counter to our intuitions. The nature of the work is constantly changing…medium.com
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