How to Test a System That Is Never Finished
Nick Sewell · Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2009
SYNOPSIS In a fast-moving environment where requirements are changing all the time, in order to support the customer's needs, the testing strategy has to be superagile. How do you keep the relevant documentation up to date? How do you communicate the changes to your team? How do you ensure your testing covers the changes? How can you guarantee that you deliver a system that works and meets the customer's needs? This case study reviews the issues that are being faced by a large, multiyear project practicing incremental delivery, and shows how the team has used agile techniques to address these issues. In particular we will look at how using techniques such as daily builds, pairing testers and developers through an iteration, and the use of automated testing tools for regression testing have enabled the team to successfully test and deliver a new, high-quality release every six weeks! Introduction My name is Nick Sewell and I work for Ivar Jacobson Consulting Ltd. as the European Managing Director. I have over twenty years' commercial experience in the software industry – twelve of these ensuring that software teams deliver software successfully using a range of techniques. In a fast-moving customer environment where requirements are changing all the time to support the user needs, the testing strategy has to be superagile. For example, I have recently been working as a part of a team enhancing a large business critical information system that needs to be updated every six weeks to keep pace with an ever-changing variety of information sources and analytical needs.