Agile Acceptance Testing Workshop

Workshop |

Agile Acceptance Testing

Brian Marick's report summarizing this workshop and some related activities at the conference

A workshop to be held in conjuction with XP Agile Universe in Chicago, Illinois on Sunday August 4, 2002.

Call for Position Papers

Overview

Unit tests are tests of code modules by the programmers who created them. Acceptance tests are tests of software functionality from a customer, or user, perspective. Both types of tests are important. Tools and practices to support and encourage unit testing on extreme programming and other agile projects are well-developed and well-documented. The goal of this workshop is to discuss and develop practices for supporting acceptance testing on agile projects. (Some refer to acceptance testing as system or functional testing. GUI testing is a common approach.)

How can acceptance testing be planned and executed on agile projects? What skills are required? Who should do this testing? And how should they interact with other members of the team? How can agile projects be managed to support the definition and automation of these tests?

The purpose of this workshop is to understand the needs for system testing on agile projects and survey various approaches that participants have used or observed on their projects.

Goal

The goal of the workshop is to share experiences with acceptance testing on agile projects. Participants will gain a better understanding of what has and hasn't worked, including the contextual factors that are relevant.

Participation is encouraged from testers, developers and anyone with an interest in acceptance testing and experience with testing on agile projects.

Themes

Testing benefits from multiple perspectives. There is no best role or skill-set for testing. Rather, testing improves when multiple roles are involved in testing.
There is often a need for dedicated testers on agile projects, especially on larger ones.
Some testing must be done with the goal of finding problems, rather than verifying that the system meets requirements.
Traditional testing methodologies do not suit agile projects well. They require too much planning, have trouble adapting to change, and are confounded by light-weight specifications.

We are looking for participation from people who are sympathetic with these themes. We realize that they are controversial and that some people may want to debate them. This workshop, however, will not be the place for such debates.

Participants will be accepted based on submitted position papers. The workshop will be limited to 18 participants in order to ensure that everyone will have a chance to contribute to the discussion.

Workshop Activities

The workshop will be organized as a moderated discussion. Participants will describe their experiences with agile acceptance testing in detail, with questioning from the other participants. The discussion format will follow the format of the Los Altos Workshop on Software Testing <http://www.kaner.com/lawst.htm>.

The goal of the discussion is to allow the experiences of the participants to be explored allowing for an understanding of the assumptions and limits of the practices used.

Organizing Committee

Bret Pettichord, Pettichord Consulting, bret@pettichord.com
Brian Marick, Testing Foundations, marick@testing.com

Bret Pettichord is the chair and contact person. The organizing committee will jointly review the position papers and moderate the workshop. After the workshop, the organizers will prepare a summary of the workshop discussions.

Organizer Backgrounds

Bret Pettichord specializes in software testing and test automation. Most recently he has been researching techniques for improving software testability. He believes that improved testability is the most important factor for successful system test automation and that the agile community's serious commitment to testing provides an opportunity for developing advances in system testing.

Bret is the founder and host of the Austin Workshops on Test Automation and has co-hosted the Patterns of Software Testing workshops. He is co-author of "Lessons Learned in Software Testing: A Context-Driven Approach."

Brian Marick specializes in software testing, especially code-based software testing. Long an proponent of test-first programming, he believes that there is an untapped potential to use acceptance tests to drive the specification and development of software.

Brian has been an independent consultant since 1992. As such, he often works with groups in lecture, tutorial, and workshop formats. Most recently, he's lead the Patterns of Software Testing workshops <http://www.testing.com/test-patterns>. Brian is an author to the Agile Manifesto and co-hosts the Agile Testing mailing list <agile-testing@yahoogroups.com>.