Reviews for Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams (Addison-Wesley Signature)

1. Excellent book, well thought-out (or tested) of course!

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, August 12st, 2009

   I bought this book as it appeared to focus more on the testing angle of 'AGILE' software development rather than the developers, and I have enjoyed reading this immensely.
   Not only have the authors laid the book out well, and have made it very readable, they have garnished the chapters with mind-maps and therefore made it very easy to find and review sections you want to read again.
   The two authors clearly have had plenty of experience in the AGILE development environment, both on 'disorganised' and 'organised' teams, and are keen to promote how to turn a newbie agile team into an effective one, stressing the collaborative nature for AGILE. Lots of examples from their own experience and from other AGILE practitioners demonstrate the pitfalls and improvements which can be made by thinking about the points made in the book.
   As a tester, I found this book very useful in describing how and where testers fit into the process, and how specialist testers can work to enhance things too, especially where views of testing have previously been that "it's done at the end", or that "anyone can test", or that "we'll let the testers know about the development work when (we consider) they need to".
   I would recommend this book both to software developers, and to testers, as it can teach everyone a lot about how to get everyone focused on the right goals, improving quality, and meeting customer expectations, and keeping the so-called 'technical debt' of difficult-to-maintain code at bay. The more it's done from the word go, the easier it should be.

2. Very valuable resource for every people involved in software testing

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, May 12th, 2009

   Some authors are good at presenting theories but unable to connect them to practice. Other are good at telling stories from the trenches, but without being able to produce an analysis of the situation and propose some solutions. On the less examined domain of agile testing, Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory are, luckily for us, presenting a book that covers both the personal experience of being a tester in agile projects and a conceptual vision of the place of quality assurance in software projects. Thus you will find in this book "stories" that comes from past projects and "mind maps" that helps to have a high-level vision of the material of each chapter.
   
   The book offers resource to organize the quality assurance and testing activities in an agile project. It explains also the relationship between test automation and agility. It provides also a part dedicated to the chronicle of the agile testing activities during project life, showing how every member of the team could contribute to quality.
   
   I think however that the more interesting contribution of the book is Testing Quadrants. This concept classifies testing activities depending on their focus (technology or business) and their intent (supporting the team or validating the product). Adding an agile perspective to the original work of Brian Marick, the authors provide resources and examples for each quadrant to make sure that you will cover all the aspects of testing for your project.
   
   This book is certainly a very valuable resource for every people involved in software testing, even if this is not in an agile project. It will also be valuable for ScrumMasters and project managers that have to think on how to integrate the testing activities in their projects.

3. Great book, long overdue

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, February 12rd, 2009

   The main theme of this book is fitting testing tasks into agile projects, and as such this book really is long overdue. Most agile books are written by programmers for programmers, leaving testers in particular to fend for themselves. No wonder why so many of them feel lost in this world. This book definitely delivers on the promise to ease the transition for testers and QA engineers who suddenly found themselves on an agile project. It has a testing focus and presents things in a way that testers, coming from more traditional process oriented software projects, should understand. The key pillars of practice on which the content of this book stands are improved communication, the whole team approach, agile testing quadrants and automation, so the book efficiently points traditional testers to new knowledge and ideas that they need to focus on to contribute to an agile project. It also provides a solid framework for executing traditional testing tasks in an agile environment without lagging behind the development and causing the project to fall into the "mini-waterfall" trap.
   
   I would also recommend it to project managers and team leaders as they will be able to see the project from the testers' eyes and complement their knowledge about quality on agile projects. As such, it is especially an important reading for teams that consider JUnit the extent of their "testing" process. The book raises valid concerns about commonly overlooked tasks such as test planning, security, performance and usability testing, documentation testing and provides some very practical advice how to plan and execute exploratory testing efficiently.