What can be the Role of Testers (QAs) in Modern Delivery Models?
1 What does book Says for Scrum?
1.1 Role of Tester in Scrum
There is no active role of Tester in the Scrum Process. Usually, testing is carried out by a developer with Unit Test. While product owner is also frequently involved in the testing process during each sprint. Some Scrum projects do have dedicated test teams depending on the nature & complexity of the project.
The next question is, what tester do in a scrum? Following note will answer
1.2 Testing Activities in Scrum
Testers do following activities during the various stages of Scrum-
1.2.1 Sprint Planning
- In sprint planning, a tester should pick a user-story from the product backlog that should be tested.
- As a tester, he/she should decide how many hours (Effort Estimation) it should take to finish testing for each of selected user stories.
- As a tester, he/she must know what sprint goals are.
- As a tester, contribute to the prioritizing process
1.2.2 Sprint
- Support developers in unit testing
- Test user-story when completed. Test execution is performed in a lab where both tester and developer work hand in hand. Defect are logged in Defect Management tool which are tracked daily. Defects can be conferred and analyzed during the scrum meeting. Defects are retested as soon as it is resolved and deployed for testing
- As a tester, he/she attends all daily standup meeting to speak up
- As a tester, he/ she can bring any backlog item that cannot be completed in the current sprint and put to the next sprint
- Tester is responsible for developing automation scripts. He schedules automation testing with Continuous Integration (CI) system. Automation receives the importance due to short delivery timelines. Test Automation can be accomplished by utilizing various open source or paid tools available in the market. This proves effective in ensuring that everything that needs to be tested was covered. Sufficient Test coverage can be achieved with a close communication with the team.
- Review CI automation results and send Reports to the stakeholders
- Executing non-functional testing for approved user stories
- Coordinate with customer and product owner to define acceptance criteria for Acceptance Tests
- At the end of the sprint, the tester also does acceptance testing (UAT) in some case and confirms testing completeness for the current sprint
1.2.3 Sprint Retrospective
- As a tester, he will figure out what went wrong and what went right in the current sprint
- As a tester, he identifies lesson learned and best practices
2 What can we do for Modern Delivery?
2.1 Role of Tester in Modern Delivery
Considering the many advantages of having a separate testing team, we must be having testers/QA in the team for modern delivery process.
Testers should be responsible for following items:
- Review Functional Design
- Writing Test Cases
- Support developers in unit testing
- Testing the Features in Dev Instances
- Creating Test Automation Script
- Exploratory Testing in SIT
- Supporting UAT testers in UAT
2.2 Testing Activities in Modern Delivery
Testers should do following activities during the various stages of Modern Delivery-
2.2.1 Sprint Planning
- In sprint planning, a tester should help in picking a user-story from the product backlog for development, Design Review & Test case creation.
- As a tester, he/she should decide how many hours (Effort Estimation) it should take to finish testing for each of selected user stories for development.
- As a tester, he/she should decide how many hours (Effort Estimation) it should take to finish Functional Design Review and Test Case creation for each of selected user stories for Test Case Creation.
- As a tester, he/she should decide how many hours (Effort Estimation) it should take support UAT team.
- As a tester, he/she must know what sprint goals are.
- As a tester, contribute to the prioritizing process.
2.2.2 Sprint
- Review Design and Write Test Cases for User Stories selected for creating Test Cases.
- Create Query Clarification Work Item for any design related query.
- Support developers in unit testing.
- Test user-story in Dev instance when completed. Manual Test execution will be performed in an instance where both tester and developer will work hand in hand.
- Tester will be responsible for developing automation scripts.
- Perform exploratory testing for all the work items deployed to SIT instance.
- Defects will be logged in Defect Management tool which will be tracked daily. Defects will be conferred and analyzed during the Triage call. Defects will be retested as soon as it is resolved and deployed for testing.
- Send Test Reports to the stakeholders.
- As a tester, he/she attends all daily standup meeting to speak up.
- As a tester, he/ she can bring any backlog item that cannot be completed in the current sprint and put to the next sprint.
- Support for UAT team.
- Executing non-functional testing for approved user stories.
2.2.3 Sprint Retrospective
- As a tester, he/she will figure out what went wrong and what went right in the current sprint
- As a tester, he/she identifies lesson learned and best practices