Agile

Here’s my rant on Agile:

Agile is a bit of a buzz word these days. If you aren’t doing Agile, there is a tendency to think you are missing out. At it’s core Agile is about adapting to change. As a tester, I’m often asking myself, “How can I add value?”. You can be doing all the Agile in the world but if people aren’t collaborating, you are still going to have a shitty experience/product. One way we testers can adapt to change is to facilitate faster feedback. Tests/checks that run during the build phase are an examples of facilitating faster feedback, continuous integration/delivery is also another example.

There are a lot of Agile ceremonies out there and people saying they have the “Best” way to do Agile. THERE IS NO BEST WAY! But Agile is about people, collaboration and products that add value. You don’t have to have an Agile business to try and introduce some Agile practices into your team. I enjoy the Agile ceremonies that encourage collaboration, reflection and adapting to a changing environment.

Some people think Agile is anti-process. This is not true in my experience. It can be some of the most process driven work that I’ve been exposed to but it’s about creating and tweaking the right process for the right context. Ensuring that any process adds value and making sure it supports collaboration rather than hinders it.

I think businesses have a tendency to use Agile as an excuse to change requirements at the last minute but still expect high quality software. Changes need to be backed by evidence (validated learning) and have buy in from the teams building it and cannot change at the whims of some manager. And don’t get me started on the over emphasis of Automation Testing as the only “Valid” form of testing in many Agile development teams.

/End rant

Do you have any rants on Agile you’d like to share? What has worked for you? What hasn’t worked so well?

My take home message is to question the value you add and also seek out ways to facilitate faster feedback.

Further Reading:

Agile Manifesto