It seems obvious that you need to have activities in the sprint for your testing activities. At least when you have something in your Definition Of Done what covers testing, like:
- Test Complete
- Integration tested done
- Functional testing done
- Regression testing done
- Performance testing done
- Acceptance testing done
See: http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/106-definition-of-done-a-reference. When there is totally no risk or business value in the system you are creating it can be that you don’t have to test it. (read: Risk and Business driven Tests), for all other systems… you need test tasks on the scrum board. I’ve seen multiple teams working with a scrum board which didn’t had any test activities, testing was a completely separate activity. So, this topic isn’t that strange.
These test tasks cover all the test activities the team need to execute to create a BPI conform the definition of done. this will be activities like:
- Create test cases based on this and this test design technique for this PBI.
- Setup the test infrastructure for load testing
- Create test data for regression testing.
- Automate this and this test cases.
You name it, there are a lot of test tasks which need to be executed for a PBI to get Done. Often people get scared when they see all the test activities that need to be done, and want to minimize them. Bad job, this is a main reason why you can’t finish testing in a sprint.
A good thing, people (Sogeti) already have been thinking about test activities and they have written a book about it: “TMap Next”.
An even better thing, I create a TMap 4 TFS app with all the test activities ready to publish to you TFS Scrum board.
| For every phase in the test lifecycle | a details page with test tasks | with a detailed description of this task. |
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When you don’t have a Windows Phone, you also can use the TMap for VS2010 process template, this one also contains a predefined set of testing tasks. Having predefined tasks isn’t really good, but it is still better as no testing tasks.
Past Tips:
01. Getting Testing Done in the Sprint - The Team and Activities
02. Getting Testing Done in the Sprint – Regression Test Sets
03. Getting Testing Done in the Sprint – Test Automation
04. Getting Testing Done in the Sprint – Undone Backlog Item
05. Getting Testing Done in the Sprint – No Double, Triple Testing
06. Getting Testing Done in the Sprint – PBI Implementation Sequence
07. Getting Testing Done in the Sprint – Risk and Business driven Tests
08. Getting Testing Done in the Sprint – Write Logical Acceptance Tests
Next Tips:
10. Getting Testing Done in the Sprint – Done
11. Getting Testing Done in the Sprint - The Customer Test Team
12. Getting Testing Done in the Sprint – The Test Branch
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