Agile Thoughts

Over the last twenty years the Agile revolution which used to be edgy and alternative is now mainstream with most teams in the IT industry using Scrum and Kanban. You may not have realized that although those two popular lite weight frameworks are valuable changes, they don't at all address how to construct code that supports frequent delivery. The post 010 Agile and TDD Neglect first appeared on Agile Thoughts.

Today is the future. [echo, jetsons sounds or future sounding music] The world has been marching forward but still there are no flying cars. [whawha wha..] Well, there are flying cars but none mass produced. Why not? Are We developers and we managers part of the reason why we still don't have such nice things? Is the low quality track record of IT to blame? Must we be used getting patches, and upon installation, hoping this new version doesn't make things worse? The post 009 Introducing the Test Driven Development series first appeared on Agile Thoughts.

​ Recall the pyramid generally has three floors: the penthouse filled with UI macro tests, the middle is inhabited by subcutaneous macro tests, and the ground floor--a plethora of micro tests. The goal of CI is to give valuable feedback to a team as fast as possible. The post 008 The Conductor—Continuous Integration first appeared on Agile Thoughts.

​At this point, I hope you got the ideas of why overdoing the upper floors of the pyramid will cause it to tumble. In the previous episode I mentioned you can get a test pyramid worksheet. This worksheet can be used to plan out how to build your project's mighty pyramid of test. The post 007 Size Matters first appeared on Agile Thoughts.

​ Sphinx, a mythological creature with the head of a man and the body of a lion, loves to ask questions and demands answers. If you don't answer the questions correctly, the Sphinx eats you. In IT, the closest to a Sphinx are QA or Release managers, who although may not eat you, will ask questions in order to decide if your product is in good shape. The post 006 Riddles of the Sphinx and Answers within the Pyramid first appeared on Agile Thoughts.

Teams have found that just because acceptance criteria COULD be made into hard to maintain and unreliable UI test, many of them actually don't need to be executed via the UI but instead in some sub layer beneath. The post 005 Subcutaneous Tests first appeared on Agile Thoughts.

Images of the test automation pyramid are available online and you'll see good agreement that macro tests are at the top and micro tests in the bottom. But there's a lot of mystery about what goes into the middle floor. I've put on my leather hat and brought my bullwhip and explored the automation pyramids at many other companies. The post 004 The Pyramid’s Secret Floor first appeared on Agile Thoughts.

While the bottom of the test pyramid is biggest enough to house a few soccer fields and a monster truck rally, the top floor of the pyramid only has room for a long long table, a big screen tv, and a minibar fridge. Oh yeah, and macro tests. The post 003 Macrotests at the Top of the Pyramid first appeared on Agile Thoughts.

The smallest floor of the pyramid is the top as it's much narrower than the spacious bottom. While the top only has room for a ping pong table and a TV, the bottom has room for a soccer field or two. The post 002 The Pyramid’s Ground Floor first appeared on Agile Thoughts.

To have sustainable test automation, there is this idea that you need two levels of testing: macrotests, and microstests. The post 001 Build a Solid Pyramid first appeared on Agile Thoughts.