Top 10 Takeaways from the TISQA Conference: Agile Testing in the Carolinas

The message at the heart of the 2009 TISQA (Triangle Information Systems Quality Association) conference, "Agile Testing in the Carolinas," is that when organizations leverage Agile development methodologies, everyone becomes responsible for quality software development. Together with major corporations such as IBM, SAS, and BCBSNC; Paragon sent representatives from Development, Support, Professional Services, and QA to the conference and each attendee came back with renewed interest in Agile testing. This article summarizes the top ten ideas gleaned from this year’s TISQA conference.

Agile software development methodologies have been adopted by a variety of software development teams, including those at some major financial institutions. In 2005, Paragon development teams began by using Agile development methodologies such as pair programming and Test Driven Development (TDD), and now use the scrum process to manage all development efforts (including the associated documentation and testing). Together with major corporations such as IBM, SAS, and BCBSNC; Paragon sent representatives from Development, Support, Professional Services, and QA to the TISQA (Triangle Information Systems Quality Association) conference, "Agile Testing in the Carolinas."

The conference offered presentations from Agilists such as Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory, co-authors of "Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams" (Addison-Wesley, 2009); Michael Bolton, co-author (with senior author James Bach) of "Rapid Software Testing", and others. Agile veterans at Paragon, as well as those wanting to learn more about Agile development, benefitted not only from the presentations, but from exchanging ideas and experiences with other Agile practitioners in the Research Triangle area. Paragon attendees sought information that might be of use not only to themselves but to the developers and testers at the various financial organizations that Paragon serves. This article summarizes the top ten ideas gleaned from this year’s TISQA conference by Paragon software engineers Lavanya Reddy, Patrick Quentmeyer, and Tom Walker; and QA analyst, Paula Grange.

1) Enlist the skills of everyone on the team, and be prepared to learn new skills

Grange: Agile Testing is a combination of developers, testers, information developers, customers, project managers, and support specialists all collaborating and building what the customer wants. We are all on the same team with software quality and customer satisfaction as our primary goals. My job, when I’m testing, is not to determine if the product is ready for release, but to give management information about the functionality and usability of the product so they can make informed decisions about its release.

Reddy: For Agile team members, a greater range of skills is required. It isn't enough to be just a tester, or just a programmer, or just an analyst, or just a...whatever. Agilists are moving toward a highly iterative and collaborative approach which requires expanding and generalizing the roles of the specialists typically involved in producing software. Roles and responsibilities overlap and all team members need to be prepared to make meaningful contributions.

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