Context counts. In this section we will present a set of specific challenges that may not apply to everyone. We’ve gathered many stories from expert practitioners working in these diverse areas to help you.
Agile development has spread to large organizations with enterprise-wide solutions. We start this part of the book by looking at the particular challenges of “scaling up” agile testing. Chapter 18 is centered on the story of how one such organization transitioned its testing to agile.
Organizations large and small find themselves increasingly spread among different locations, perhaps around the whole planet. Our next chapter is, therefore, about testing on distributed teams. We will share strategies to cope with language, cultural, and technological barriers to keep everyone engaged in testing before, during, and after coding.
Other areas that have expanded dramatically over the past few years are mobile apps and embedded systems. These applications have high risks—both for safety and for success—in a fast-changing, opinionated market. They also pose unique testing challenges. Chapter 20 will look at what you need to test and how to fit all that testing into short release cycles using a whole-team approach.
Another domain that has puzzled teams that want to embrace agile is regulated software. Many teams feel that compliance and documentation constraints are mutually exclusive with agile development. We will share some success stories in Chapter 21 that show how well agile can meet the demands of regulatory agencies. Testers have unique opportunities to contribute their domain expertise and collaboration skills to help build products that delight customers and satisfy regulators.
Testing data warehouses and business intelligence systems in agile environments also benefits from short feedback cycles and an incremental approach. In Chapter 22, we will share ways to expose data quality issues early. We will also discuss specialized technical skills and business domain knowledge needed to verify the data used for business decisions.
The term DevOps gained popularity starting in 2009, but practitioners with operations and development backgrounds have collaborated with testers and other team members for many years. In our chapter on testing and DevOps, we will show how testing and DevOps work together.
Chapter 18, “Agile Testing in the Enterprise”
Chapter 19, “Agile Testing on Distributed Teams”
Chapter 20, “Agile Testing for Mobile and Embedded Systems”
Chapter 21, “Agile Testing in Regulated Environments”
Chapter 22, “Agile Testing for Data Warehouses and Business Intelligence Systems”