Agile Testing! How can it be useful

[palla sridhar]

Hello Lisa and Janet!

Thanks for the offer. But I got a few questions.

What is the Agile Testing?
Is this a new method or technology?
Can it be used for legacy systems like Mainframes?
What are the technologies you should know to learn this technology?
Are there any tools?
How is it different from Extreme Programming?

Thanks in advance

[Tina Ma]

As Lisa replied to my question:

In our book we have some real-world stories from real teams on how they approached different challenges such as automation (this includes a sidebar on why a team chose to use Selenium RC). The message we try to get across in the book is that test automation, along with all other aspects of testing, is a team problem. The whole team should be committed to making the application testable and finding good solutions for automation. Be willing to experiment. The beauty of short agile iterations is that you can try out a tool and know quickly whether it will work for your situation.
-- Lisa

Agile is a methodology followed by a software development team. Any automation testing tools adapted for the tested-application can so be used for agile testing the application. Extreme programming is an advanced version of the Agile methodology.

(Ofcourse this did not answer your Mainframe question )

[Janet Gregory]

Palla,

I suggest you look at the agile manifesto http://agilemanifesto.org/ and the principles behind them http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html. That may help you understand agile as a methodology. Agile testing is just testing in an agile way, or testing on an agile project. We use both definitions.

I have used agile when working on a legacy system, although it is a bit tricker since there is usually a lot of technical debt (poor coding, lack of unit tests, etc.). Michael Feathers has written a book on the subject. I haven't used agile on a mainframe but I don't see why it wouldn't work. There are several articles on the subject - just google mainframe and agile.

As Sreerupa mentioned, eXtreme Programming is just one type of agile methods. Scrum is another. DSDL yet another. There are a number of them, but XP and Scrum seem to be the most popular.

[Ilja Preuss]

Janet, I guess you meant DSDM, not DSDL. ;)

[Lisa Crispin]

palla sridhar wrote:Hello Lisa and Janet!

Thanks for the offer. But I got a few questions.

Can it be used for legacy systems like Mainframes?

To add to the other answers - we have an example in our book from John Voris about testing legacy systems. John explains how he uses a "minutes afterward" test automation approach on an RPG / AS 400 application. It's not test-first, but it does the job of making sure testing is done continually., and that tests help guide coding. If everyone involved in developing and testing software works together, you can usually find good ways to apply agile principles and practices to your application and get a higher quality product.
-- Lisa