Agile Testing Manifesto

Ever heard of it?

While researching “Agile Testing,” I came across the work of Karen Greaves and Samantha Laing. The Agile Testing Manifesto is a collection of guiding principles for testing in the context of agile software development. It shows us how we should think about tests in an agile context and provides excellent guidance on how to approach testing in an agile environment.

The manifesto can be seen as an extension of the Agile Manifesto, which outlines the values and principles of agile software development. Karen and Samantha created a great one-pager that is especially helpful if you and your team are taking your first steps with agile testing, or if you’re just starting to dive into the topic.

What is it exactly?

The Agile Testing Manifesto consists of five principles:

• Testing throughout over testing at the end.
• Preventing bugs over finding bugs.
• Testing understanding over checking functionality.
• Building the best system over breaking the system.
• Team responsibility for quality over tester responsibility.

We thought this tool was pretty amazing and wondered who was behind it and how the Agile Testing Manifesto was born. The search wasn’t difficult, and we were able to ask the authors a few questions:

• Hi! Thanks for taking the time to tell us a bit about the Agile Testing Manifesto. Could you briefly introduce yourselves? We’re Karen Greaves and Samantha Laing. We’ve been exploring the agile world since 2008, when we attended a Scrum course. Since then, we’ve coached many teams, spoken at conferences, and published a bunch of books to help other agile coaches worldwide.
• Where and in what capacity do you work in the field of testing? Karen was a tester at Microsoft for many years, and Sam was a developer with a strong interest in TDD. Together, we tried to bridge the gap between developers and testers.
• What motivated you to write the Testing Manifesto? We read Lisa and Janet’s book and then attended their training. That inspired us to create a simple page we could share with teams, and that’s how the manifesto was born.
• Looking back, were you able to solve problems with it? Yes, we’ve helped many teams rethink their approach to testing and start testing early in their sprints.
• You look back on many years of experience. What has changed in the eleven years since your manifesto? We had hoped this would be a common practice by now, but we are still introducing it to many teams and helping them use the techniques.
• That sounds like a long process. What challenges does Agile Testing pose for an organization that wants to adopt and practice it? It requires a change in mindset and a different approach to testing. Some organizations might find this very challenging.
• Have you ever measured the success of the manifesto? No… but that might be interesting. However, I’m not sure how one would go about that.
• It would be interesting to know how many people you’ve reached. We at Pragtics find this little tool very useful and will gladly recommend it in the future. What do you think the future of agile testing looks like? We’re not sure about that either. Hopefully, many teams will enthusiastically embrace (agile) testing and bring better software into the world.
• Thank you very much for the explanation and all the best for the future!

Links

• You can find out more about Karen and Sam on their website: Our Story - Growing Agile
• As a shortcut, here’s the link to the guide: Growing Agile: A Coach’s Guide to Agile Testing
• The book: Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory: “Agile Testing. A practical guide for testers and agile teams.” Paperback, illustrated, Dec 30, 2008 (Amazon Link)

Images and other credits!

• Cover image: Photo by Clark Tibbs on Unsplash