Why (so many) Testers (still) hate Agile

keywords:
room: Grand Ballroom D North — time: Monday 16:00-16:45, Monday 16:45-17:30
Level: Practicing

A good QA is worth their weight in gold, but the reality is that the best QA often have trouble working in an Agile Environment. The shift to a quality centred approach surely must be every QA’s dream but there are underlying issues that prevent this adoption. In this session we delve into the mind of a career tester, probe the pain points & explore strategies to communicate the value of agile testing to the classically trained. We look at personalities & what drives people to want to test & the benefits that QA provide to a project beyond rubber-stamping the ‘done’ column on the task board.

Process/Mechanics

Interview/Debate between an Agile Coach and a Professional Tester, backed up with slides. Simple exercises and audience feedback used throughout.

Learning outcomes
  • What drives people to become a tester? Understanding the motives behind a career choice gets to the heart of emotional responses to change. What traditionally are the characteristics of a good tester? And do these change for Agile testers?
  • To understand why testers think they hate Agile. Addressing the most common arguments they use as to why testing in Scrum is “impossible”; delving down into underlying beliefs and potential misunderstandings behind these opinions and satisfying these core needs with examples of solid Agile practice.
  • Showing how other team members can unwittingly create an environment which incentivises testers to stick to traditional practices even if they themselves want to become more agile.
  • To discuss how testers can help with requirements definition, get the best from your product owner and make your developers lives easier - thus fulfilling the promise of the cross functional team and increasing quality across the board.
  • Showing how to eliminate the “great tester bottleneck” on Scrum projects.
Featured participants
Primary target persona