QW2001 Plenary Talk 5P2

Ms. Lisa Crispin
(Tensegrent)

The Need For Speed: Acceptance Test Automation in an Extreme Programming Environment (QW2000 Best Presentation)

Key Points

Presentation Abstract

In my two and a half years working in a web environment, where quality and time to market are both essential to success, I've been frustrated by the difficulty in combining these traits within traditional software process. After reading Kent Beck's book, eXtreme Programming Explained, I couldn't wait to try this methodology to enable small teams to deal with short timeframes and changing requirements while still producing high quality software.

Testing in a Web environment can feel like leaping out of a plane. Testing in an XP environment feels like competing in a sky-surfing competition. You have to be better than everyone else, but you don't have much time. You can only hope for a soft landing. While the eXtreme Programming literature (including Ron Jeffries' book, eXtreme Programming Installed), centers around unit and integration testing as part of the XP core process, I felt that functional/acceptance testing from the customer perspective was incompletely defined. The role of the tester in XP is clearly defined - to help the customer choose and write functional tests and to make sure those tests run successfully. The question is, how to do this when the ratio of developers to testers is quite high (8 - 1 is recommended, and we are in a more extreme ratio than that) and the development iterations are so short.

Like an extreme-sports competitor, the XP tester needs courage, speed, stamina and creativity. Working with the developers and with input from an automated test tool vendor, I have developed an approach to designing modularized, self-verifying tests that can be quickly developed and easily maintained. I'll present my basic design and give some examples. I used the test tool WebART, but this methodology should be applicable to any au tomated tool that includes a scripting language.

About the Speaker

Lisa Crispin is a Senior Quality Engineer at Tensegrent (http://www.tensegrent.com/), a very different type of software development company built around the streamlined eXtreme Programming (XP) methodology. Consistent with the values of XP, Tensegrent focuses on delivering high quality software that provides immediate business value, while remaining responsive to changing requirements.

Lisa has managed to enjoy her work during almost 20 years of non-XP software development by demonstrating the flexibility needed to dodge the boring projects and grab the cool ones. Her most recent fun job before joining Tensegrent was as Quality Boss of TRIP.com, where she embraced the challenge of bringing QA to a chaotic web startup. While TRIP.com basked in much success - 4.5 stars from BizRate, in the top 5 of the Keynote Top 40 for performance, sale to Galileo International for $326M - Lisa was continually frustrated by the difficulty of finding a process to deliver high quality software quickly in a dynamic and competitive industry.

Since leaping into the unknown world of XP last June, Lisa has figured out the role of the XP tester and, with lots of help, developed a test automation methodology which can keep up with the pace of XP. She's happy to report that XP practices, well understood and diligently followed, really work! However, she is still trying to overcome the inherent disadvantages of not being good at Foosball.

Lisa also enjoys wine, horses and testing web applications which contain no Javascript.