I need your help here. Please provide a response in a comment on the relative maturity of testing in an agile environment.

Here is the question (your answer should be between 1-20):

If “agile” as a relative reference is 20, how would you score “agile testing” in terms of maturity?

I’m expecting some group folks to answer agile testing is part of agile, therefore it is included in the relative assessment of “agile”. Touché.

In my opinion, agile testing is an 8. Let me breakdown my assessment in terms of technology, process and people:

Agile Testing Technology

My score for agile testing tools alone is 13. Agile testing tools have come along way in term of delivering value to agile teams. If you look at distinct open-source projects, then you will find that there are very capable and advanced point tools that accelerate the testing process.

Cypress.io: Watch out Selenium there is a new web testing favorite sneaking into the environment. Cypress is fast and offers some very nice, advanced capabilities for test maintenance and execution optimization.

UiPath Test Suite: Is your organization evolving RPA capabilities or testing complex enterprise applications? Then look at what a modern testing tool looks like – UiPath Test Suite. There are two really nice differentiators with this solution. First, the interface for test design is ground-breaking. Second, the maturity of the execution environment moves testing into a reliable, production-grade experience.

If tools have advanced so much, why is the relative score only 13? Simple, adopting a tool to construct automation is only one small piece of agile testing. New concepts like an Open Testing Platform which assists organizations to have visibility into the software testing lifecycle (STLC) are critical for the evolution of testing.

Agile Testing Process

My score for agile testing process alone is 6. The fact is that testing has had to conform to an organization’s definition of the agile process rather than testing being designed into the agile process.

The biggest ‘win’ in the agile testing process has been that developers have more outwardly accepted the onus quality. Practices such as static analysis, structural analysis, early performance testing and unit testing matured slowly over the past two decades, but have evolved significantly as a consistent component of the developers' toolset. Developers improving the quality of the code with advanced quality practices will lead the way for testers to evolve how they test. We are in the middle of this evolution now.

Agile Testing People

My score for “agile testing people” is 5. Ouch! I know this seems brutal but there is logic behind it.

Over the past two decades, senior managers traded domestic, internal expertise in business and testing processes for offshore labor, reducing Opex. Known as labor arbitrage, an organization could reduce headcount and shift the responsibility for software testing to an army of outsourced resources trained on the task of software testing. There were two detrimental impacts to software testing with the shift to the Global Systems Integrators (GSI). The approach promoted manual task execution and the adoption of automation was sidelined. There was also a business process “brain-drain” or knowledge drain.

It’s obvious but needs to be highlighted that the GSI model which favored the manual execution of tasks also sidelined automation efforts. Why? Well in the GSI model, automation potentially eliminates headcount and reduces testing cycle times. Less headcount plus reduced cycle times equates to fewer billable hours and reduced revenue in a time and materials model. Therefore, the benefits of automation certainly would not serve the financial goals of the GSI.

Perhaps the greatest impact to the evolution of software testing was the business and process brain drain. With lower OpEx as the bait, the global software testing services market swelled to $32 billion dollars annually (that is “B-Billion”). This tectonic shift drained resources that had deep business process knowledge from the domestic organization. The net of this brain-drain was less impactful outcomes from the activity of testing.

Agile Testing Technology stand-alone score = 13

Agile Testing Process stand-alone score = 6

Agile Testing People stand-alone score = 5

Overall, Agile Testing score = 8

Home

Agile is 20 - Agile Testing is?