Testers and Testing
Learn about the roles of software testers in an Agile environment.
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Interestingly enough, in most Agile approaches, the specific role of the tester isn’t appointed. That said, this is a crucial role. The importance of it is well reflected in the Law of Boehm.
What’s Boehm’s Law?
Boehm’s Law illustrates why testing in Agile is much more effective. When developing a work item, there are similar phases, but they’re performed in an iteration here. The realization of individual work items takes up to a few days, not several months. This illustrates how starting to test from day one reduces the required effort highly.
However, it can be even more effective. Precisely because of Boehm’s law, we recommend developing, testing, and accepting work items in a single iteration. So, the effort to resolve errors is further reduced.
Lightweight Agile approaches assume that the customer is responsible for the testing of the work items. This presents challenges. Often the customer, user, or domain expert lacks sufficient time and understanding. Moreover, in complex projects, it’s important to test more thoroughly than users normally do.
Think of services in a service-oriented architecture ...