In the previous blog we saw that what exactly is Agile testing and in this blog we will see in introduction to Principles For Agile Testers.

What is an Agile tester?

• So get into the principles for Agile testers we first need to know what is an Agile tester? A professional tester who is not scared of change has knowledge about technical and business aspects as well and understands the concept of using tests to document requirements to drive development is an Agile tester.
• Now let’s see what are in ten principles for Agile testers:
• Provide continuous feedback.
• Deliver value to the customer.
• Enable face-to-face communication.
• Have courage.
• Keep it simple.
• Practice continuous improvement.
• Respond to change.
• Self-organize.
• Focus on people.
• Enjoy

Provide Continuous Feedback

• Continuous feedback is the key to agile testing success. By providing feedback we can improve and not make the same mistakes again and again. The main aim is to learn from your mistakes. Testers should help product owners or customers visualize requirements for the stories. Their feedbacks helps in designing the test cases early in the software life cycle. As retrospectives are an important part of the Agile process, providing feedback in it is also helpful. It is one of the most important principles for Agile testers.

Deliver Value to the Customer

• As a tester, it’s your responsibility to tell customers which really is an important function and which is not. The testers help them identify the main functionality instead of just some cool features. The main focus is to try and deliver critical functionality and enhance it later. Critical functionalities should be worked on first as after seeing them implemented, customers can see what enhancements they want. Testing should work on corner cases but should not forget about the happy path of the service. As we get involved in testing it is possible to get involved in corner cases so much that we miss the core functionality. So, we need to maintain a balance between them.

Enable Face-to-Face Communication

• Good communication is the key to success. Agile’s success is totally dependent upon communication. Whether it is between customer and developer or between developers and the testers all communication is very important. Testers should look for unique ways to communicate. Teams may be working in geographically divided. But it should not hinder communications between the teams.
• Testers should never get in the way of any direct customer-developer communication but should help to make sure that communication happens. If a tester finds out that the developer has some confusion regarding the requirements. It’s the responsibility of the tester to set up a meeting between the developer and the business.
• The testers understand the story from the customer’s perspective and from the developers’ technical angle as well. The tester should be able to communicate both ways, that’s why it’s in testers’ best interest to be good at communicating, as they need to do it more than any other team member. Testers act as a bridge between customers and developers.

Have Courage

• The testers should have the courage to speak their minds. They should not be intimidated by anyone. If they find any issue they should report it. If they see any gap in the business requirements they should discuss it.
• The testers should be comfortable in asking customers for examples or developers for help. Asking for examples is the best way for getting the real-world use case of the services. In Agile anyone can perform any task. So, a developer can help a tester in testing some particular scenario. And a tester can help the developers in debugging an issue ass well.
• Testers should not be scared to fail but should learn from their mistake. It’s natural to make some mistakes but we should always learn from them and improve ourselves.

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