No More Automated Test Engineers

As I reviewed several candidates’ resumes recently, something bothered me.  The open position is for an Automated Test Engineer for Agile Teams.  I am looking for an automated test engineer, but I find that I am bothered by the automated test engineer role.  After I thought about this for a while, I realized that I am still thinking about the “Whole-team” Test Automation post.  If everyone is an automator, then there is no need for an automator.

The common thing about the automation engineers I have met with and interviewed is that their current career path depends on the ignorance of their testing colleagues.

Even though it may seem to be disingenuous (I grew my career as an automation engineer), but I see no place for it anymore.  The presence of an automation engineer at a company is a sign of a problem.  In all likelihood, it means that a two-tiered system exists in the company’s test team.  In a proper agile test team, all members of the team have the skills of automated test engineers and are ready to use them whenever they are needed.

BTW:  I recruit for automation engineers because the industry has not caught up with us yet. I look forward to a day when the base expectations of a software tester include high levels of technical proficiency and mad testing skills.

The Role of Reputation in Agile Testing

In Agile development teams, your reputation is more important than ever.

In traditional development teams, your peers certainly had opinions about you  They might love you or hate you or have no idea who you are.  The formal process of traditional development protected you, and it limited the impact that your reputation had on your professional work product.  For example, people from other groups may have approve test scripts you write.  Or you might execute test scripts written by someone else.  Your personal responsibility for your work was limited.  As long as you mechanically performed your tasks, you were covered.  

All that changes in agile.  In the most agile of shops, agile teams are self organizing, and the agile tester has a lot of discretion.  You are no longer protected by process. You can succeed or fail on your own.  

The roles on agile teams are not clearly defined in a traditional sense -- everyone should work together to complete the task, regardless of a person’s formal role.  Agile teams should be self organizing and figure out the best way to do things on their own.  What is best depends on a lot of things:  time, skills, interests, and trust.  Trust is based on reputation, and reputation is based on the sum of your past work.

At my company, we adhere strongly to the principles of agile, and development teams make a lot of their own decisions.  For example,  the amount of coding that happens during a sprint ultimately depends on the feeling of the team.  Of course, our teams are committed to delivering the most functionality they can each sprint, but the code has to be clean and the team has to have confidence in the work product.  

We deliver develop and deliver code in a two-week sprints.  In two weeks, there are only ten business days, and all our code is delivered into production at the end of the sprint.  Whether programmers feel comfortable creating new code for seven days or nine days during a sprint depends on things like testing confidence.  From the testing perspective, we need to provide good regression coverage (and share our results regularly with the team), and we must make everyone feel good about the sprint-level work we are doing.  It is, of course, essential to keep up to date with testing (immediate feedback), but the perception of success is greatly influenced by our reputation.  In this sense, a tester’s reputation has a real impact on the output of the development team.  

“Whole-team” Test Automation

At my company, we practice the art of “whole-team test automation.”  Very simply, this means that test automation is not a specialized skill on our test team.  For us, the ability to develop automated tests is a required skill for all members of our test team.  At our company, highly skilled automated test engineers are common as dirt.

If you thinking that this seems like a lot of work, you are right.  It takes an effort.  So, why would we invest in this idea?

• In agile development, rapid development of automated tests is critical.  While we still struggle with keeping up with automation during sprint work, the option is always there for the testers and the scrum teams to do what is best for the project.  This may mean aggressively developing regression tests throughout the project.  It is not acceptable for one project to have good coverage just because they happen to have the good automator – all projects deserve technically skilled testers.
• At many companies, automated tests are developed, executed, and owned by a separate group within the test team. This creates a two-tiered test team.  It creates a situation where the most technical members become more technical because they have the most practice and the least technical members have no opportunities to grow their skills.  That sucks if you not technical and have no opportunity to grow.
• The more technical a tester is, the more tools the tester has in his toolkit, and the better the tester will adapt to new situations.  The new and changing situations range from new technologies such as services testing to a fundamental change in how software testing is done.  Adapt or die.
• Agile testers are developers.  As members of a software development team, everyone should know how to code.  It is good for your self esteem, and it helps you gain and keep the respect of the other developers on your team.

If you are convinced that we are on to something, how do you go about it?

• Build or select a suitable test framework and implementation methodology, and develop a transparent approach to testing.  For this, we chose HP’s BPT framework with QTP as the underlying automation engine.  Using BPT and our “Archetype” implementation technique, all members work together and take advantage previous work and each other’s skills.  With a good framework, new team members can build tests, and experienced automators have opportunities to work on challenging work.
• Good recruiting.  Regular, run-of-the-mill “QAs” are not right people for the team.  Be prepared for this to take a long time.  Because of the history of testing (a combination of “QA” process types and non-technical manual script runners), many good people stay away from testing jobs.  My only advice here is to start with high standards, don’t let your standards drop, and keep hope.  Great people are out there.  And in my opinion, most recruiters will not be your friend.  They will pressure you to take conventional candidates.  Be aware of recruiters.
• Be prepared to train people .  Some of the most obviously experienced candidates will take the most time.  Many experienced automators do not work in a whole-team automation environment.  As a result, they tend to build tests for themselves and not for the team.  There is often “unlearning” that has to happen.  
• Promote technical skills. Learn new programming languages and new technologies.  This year when we studied Ruby together, we spent some time looking at Rails projects.  By looking at and studying Rails, we accidentally learned about MVC frameworks.  
• Devote enough time. In addition to the sprint work that we do (with or without other testers), we devote an hour each day to work together on automation.  This way, we share ideas, learn from each other, set high expectations for each other, and continue to practice our art.  There is a bonus with this approach when you are working on projects that are not interesting.  If your project stinks, you can work with other team members on their automation needs.  Everyone wins.

As you live with the “whole-team” automated test philosophy, be prepared for things you do not predict.  Train your team, give them the tools and support, give up control, and let them surprise you.

Checklist for Agile Testing

During a recent test team discussion, we reviewed the key features of agile software testing.  As a team, we all have a good idea of what is important with agile testing and how it is different from conventional testing.  We worked on the checklist to give us a tool for keeping our agile test mindset fresh.

Use the checklist to question your own agile test performance.  It is good for a self examination or a discussion with your project team.  For example, you can use it to share your vision of agile testing with a team that is new to agile development.

For most of the questions, "yes" is the best answer.  It is doubtful that you will answer "yes" (or whatever the best answer is ) for all the questions -- use the questions and answers to provoke thought.

Leadership

o       Am I taking items off the mental shelf space for the lead programmer, scrum master, and/or business user?

o       Am I the scrum master for the project? If not, could or should I have been?

o       Did I help the scrum team understand risks?

o       Do I organize work for the project?

o       Have I made decisions in the best interest of the project?  Did I give up ownership and did I take on ownership of right things to make the project successful?

o       Did I help new team members learn the project?

Analysis

o       Am I documenting the project, opening tickets and describing requirements?

o       Am I writing user stories?

o       Did I come up with any of the requirements for the project?  This is an indication that you are actively participating in the project.

o       Did I define and/or develop tests at the beginning of the sprint? Early work is good work.

Collaboration

o       Are other members of the scrum team helping with testing?  In agile, any member of the team should be able to test.

o       Do I feel like I am up to date with programmers and business users throughout the sprint?  A catch-up period later in the sprint is a bad sign.

o       During meetings, do I write on the white board?  This is an indication that you are actively thinking, communicating, and  participating in the project.

o       Have I sat with a programmer while he or she wrote code for the project?

o       Have I sat with the business users? 

o       Have I tested on the programmer’s workstation recently?  This is key to providing really immediate feedback.

o       Is there a lot of scrum team chatter?  Teams that talk to each other are more agile than those that don’t.

Testing

o       Am I giving really fast feedback to programmers on the most important things?

o       Am I known as “Fast Feedback [your name]” or “Quick Test [your name]?”

o       Are the programmers comfortable coding for the full sprint? Good agile testing can directly increase the productivity of the programmers.

o       Did I add value as a testing expert?  For example, did I help business users perform good test analysis?

o       Did I build any tools to help verify the project?

o       Did I update existing automated tests that changed because of my project work?

o       Did I use the simplest solutions for the problems I worked on?

o       Did we get user acceptance feedback very early and very often in the sprint?

o       Have I built regression tests for new functionality before or while it is being built?

o       How long are issues sitting with me before I turn them around?  Issues should sit no longer than a day or two.

o       How old are the bugs we are finding on the project?  The only good bug is a dead bug, and the best dead bug is one that didn't live long.

o       Is a lot of testing taking place at the end of the sprint?  Best answer is "very little."  Make an effort to test early and regularly throughout the sprint.  If you are testing a lot at the end, you are probably not being very agile.

o       Was more than one person involved in user acceptance sessions?  Do the users I worked with represent the user community well?

Distributed Agile Test Teams -- Making It Work

I just returned from a trip to Krakow, Poland where I visited with members of my test team.  Our test team is split between two offices.  In one office, we have programmers and testers, and in the other office, we have testers and no programmers.  Because of this, it is not possible for all the scrum teams to be colocated.  This creates some challenges, but so far, everything has been a solveable problem.  In some ways, using distributed agile test teams is not idea, and in other ways, it is a big strategic advantage.

Here are some things we do to make distributed agile testing work:

• Make the best use of the overlap hours.  In our case, we have at least three overlap hours between Poland and the eastern US.  These hours are precious.  During this time, we have stand-up scrum meetings and we work on test team projects.  
• Invest in the right tools.  This means buying or building tools that enable everyone on all teams to have the same advantages.  For example, we migrated to Quality Center when we opened the Poland office.  QC is just about as responsive in Poland as it is in the US.
• Communicate!  We use video conferencing, collaboration software, and instant messaging everyday.  Cheap tools can erase the miles and bring your teams together.  We have started using Adobe Connect for video conference and collaboration.  One cool feature of this is the ability to record meetings.  This gives the abilty for programmers to pass along a quick recorded demo of the day's work to the tester on the other side.  User acceptance test sessions can be recorded -- in fact, a UAT performed during off hours can be reviewed later in another office.
• Travel between sites.  New hires in our Poland office spend several months in the US working the development and testing teams.  A big success factor is building strong relationships.  It is difficult to really get to know and to trust someone if you only talk on the phone or communicate through email.  The benefits to people traveling and to the people being visited outweight the costs of traveling.
• Find the right projects.  Regression test analysis and many test automation-related projects are easily done in Poland.  Most new functionality projects are more easily done in the other office where there is better access to programmers and business users.  
• Hire the right people.  This is always important, but it is really important when you have to rely on trust and communication with people that you don't see on a regular basis.

What I have found so far is that the issues related to distributed agile testing are common with distributed agile development.  If you are looking for more information on distributed agile development, here is a great resource:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/4/a/44a2cebd-63fb-4379-898d-9cf24822c6cc/distributed_agile_development_at_microsoft_patterns_and_practices.pdf