Agile Testing Strategies - SQAForums：敏捷测试策略sqaforums.docVIP

Agile Testing Strategies Scott Ambler As Scott shows here, the quality of your system is only as good as the quality of your testing efforts. Scott is a DDJ Senior Contributing Editor and author of numerous IT books. He can be contacted at / scottAmbler.html. 1 Philosophical Groundwork Over the past few months, Ive had more and more people ask me about how we go about testing on agile projects. Agile developers are definitely test infected, and this month, I explore several strategies for testing on agile software development projects. A word of warning: Although we clearly dont follow our fathers serial testing methodology of yesteryear, I suspect that we can still learn a few tricks from dear old dad. Lets start by setting the philosophical groundwork: First, you want to test as early as you possibly can because the potential impact of a defect rises exponentially over time (this isnt always true, but its something to be concerned about). In fact, many agile developers prefer a test-first approach. Second, you want to test as often as possible, and more importantly, as effectively as possible, to increase the chance that youll find defects. Although this increases your costs in the short term, studies have shown that greater investment in testing reduces the total cost of ownership of a system due to improved quality. Third, you want to do just enough testing for your situation: Commercial banking software requires a greater investment in testing than membership administration software for your local Girl Scouts group. Fourth, pair testing, just like pair programming and modeling with others, is an exceptionally good idea. My general philosophy is that software development is a lot like swimming—its very dangerous to do it alone. 2. Testing Throughout the Lifecycle Figure 1 presents a high-level view of the agile lifecycle for the purpose of testing (see Initiating an Agile Project at /dept/architect/188700850 for details). Agile projects go through an ofte