Agile tester in an agile team plays a very important role towards the end product quality testing. He or she should be able to collaborate well with the agile team members and other project’s stakeholders. In order to collaborate well with the team members, the tester is expected to have an agile mindset in terms of testing skills and other quality assurance activities that a tester should perform as being a part of the agile team.

Agile Testing Mindset:

To play a role of agile tester, the tester should have the Agile testing mindset which will help him to break free from the traditional project methodologies such as SDLC, V model, waterfall etc. In order to develop the correct mindset, the agile tester should possess the following characteristics.

• “Prevention is better than cure”. An agile tester should be focused on preventing defects rather than finding defects.
• An agile tester should provide the Quality Assistance over the Quality Assurance.
• An agile tester should not believe in enough testing but should believe in the continuous testing approach instead of starting testing at the last moment.
• An agile tester should not play as an individual player but the agile team player and should work closely with the whole team in collaboration.
• Responsibility wise in agile testing mindset, it should be team responsibility instead of an individual tester responsibility.
• Testing focus should be on automation rather than manual testing when it comes to regression.
• An agile tester should prefer the Exploratory Testing over the Scripted Testing approach.
• It is not SDLC methodology, therefore; agile user stories from product owner should be used for customer requirement gathering over the traditional requirements specification.
• When it comes to web testing, the focus should be on Technical, API Testing and GUI Testing in order to ensure complete end to end testing.
• The mindset of an agile tester is to make sure that the software is built correctly instead of breaking the software like Monkey testing.
• An agile testing approach does not wait for the testing phase to start, therefore, with the agile mindset the tester should be involved in testing as early as possible.
• An agile testing approach does not require providing the detailed testing report after the end of testing instead Short Feedback helps the team to get the idea that they are building the software in the right direction. This approach gives lots of time to fix the defect if it is identified in the early stage as a short feedback.

After all, it is “Attitude that makes the altitude”. Therefore, if a tester has the above Agile testing mindset then definitely he or she is a perfect fit to the project’s agile team.

Role Of The Agile Tester:

So far, we have discussed about the agile testing mindset, now let’s grill on the various roles of the agile tester. An agile tester is responsible for the following roles.

• First of all, an agile tester should comply with the agile project methodology i.e. the active participation in daily standup meetings, joining session based on the grooming on user stories, retrospective team meetings, continuous improvement suggestion to make the process the best.
• Active collaboration with the agile team which involves the developers, business stakeholders, etc. which may help in making the requirements on the product functionality crystal clear and help the testing team to widen the scope of testability.
• Clear understanding of the agile testing strategy at the project level.
• Close working with the product owner in order to capture the acceptance criteria which will later evolve into the acceptance tests.
• Measurement of the overall test coverage that the acceptance tests cover.
• Well versed in the use and implementation of the automation testing tool in order to help in the regression testing.
• Setting up of the test environments, test data for functional and the volume testing and the maintenance of the existing test cases and scenarios.
• Execution and the development of the automation test scripts to automate the acceptance tests.
• Preparing the test report and sending the report to the agile team. So that the team is informed about the defect and the testing progress on the current product.
• If as an agile tester you are leading a team then it comes under your role to coach or train the testing team so that they can collaborate well in the current testing expedition.
• An agile tester should help in testing sign off from the stakeholders for the project release and should also participate in iteration planning for the product testing.

An agile tester should not forget that though it is working in collaboration with the developers as an agile team but still he or she is a tester and should comply with testing roles and health online without prescription responsibility with the appropriate testing mindsets. A tester failed to follow the above roles and responsibilities may result in insufficient testing and hence the failed software end product.

The following could be the risk to the organization with the agile testing methodologies.

• As we know, testers work in collaboration with the development team then it may happen that they lose their testing mindset and start thinking as a developer. Both have different mindset should follow their assigned responsibilities in order to develop the correct software product.
• Being a tester, one should not hesitate to escalate inappropriate or ineffective practices within the team. No matter whether the tester is collaborating in the best way with the developer, the incorrect thing which cannot be made correct and therefore, should be discussed in the Daily Scrum meetings.
• In agile methodologies, the sprint is of the short duration. The small sprint may sometime result in sparing very less time for tester to test the developed product in the current sprint or to run the complete regression.

All the above risks should be well discussed with the agile team as a part of the daily meeting.

Over to you:

In this article, we have discussed the various roles and the agile mindset that an agile tester should possess in order to become an asset to the agile team.