Testing in Agile¶

In agile delivery there is no testing phase, because there is no phase at the end to put it in. Testing happens inside every iteration, on work that is incomplete, by the whole team.

graph LR
    REF[Refinement: examples and criteria] --> DEV[Development with tests]
    DEV --> AUTO[Automated checks in the pipeline]
    AUTO --> EXP[Exploratory session on the built story]
    EXP --> DONE[Definition of done]
    DONE --> REV[Review and feedback]
    REV --> REF

What changes compared with phase-based testing¶

	Phase-based	Agile
When	After construction	Continuously, per story
Who	A separate team	The whole team
Planning artefact	A test plan document	Definition of done plus acceptance criteria
Regression	A manual pass before release	Automated, on every commit
Entry criteria	Formal handover	The story is ready
Exit criteria	Sign-off	Done means done, every time

The agile testing quadrants¶

Brian Marick's model, still the clearest way to check nothing is being ignored.

graph TD
    Q1["Q1: technology facing, supports the team<br/>unit and component tests, automated"]
    Q2["Q2: business facing, supports the team<br/>examples, story tests, prototypes"]
    Q3["Q3: business facing, critiques the product<br/>exploratory, usability, acceptance"]
    Q4["Q4: technology facing, critiques the product<br/>performance, security, reliability"]

Quadrant	Automation	Common failure
Q1	Fully automated	Rarely neglected
Q2	Mostly automated	Skipped when stories go to development without examples
Q3	Manual by nature	Squeezed out by sprint pressure, which is where surprises come from
Q4	Tooling assisted	Deferred until a production incident forces it

A team doing only Q1 and Q2 ships software that passes its own expectations and fails on the ones nobody had.

Testers in an agile team¶

The role moves upstream rather than disappearing.

Refinement. Asking "how would we know this works" before estimation, which changes the story rather than the release.
Examples. Contributing the edge cases in the three amigos conversation.
Exploratory testing. The work automation cannot do, on each new story.
Test architecture. Deciding what belongs at which level and keeping the pyramid upright.
Coaching. Helping developers test better, which scales further than testing personally.

Practices that keep it working¶

Practice	Purpose
Definition of done includes tests	Prevents a growing tail of untested "finished" work
No separate testing sprint	A hardening sprint is a phase gate rediscovered
Slice stories thin	Small stories are testable within the iteration
Test in-iteration, not next iteration	Testing a sprint behind recreates the handoff
Automate regression continuously	Otherwise manual regression grows until it consumes the iteration
Fix red immediately	A broken build blocks the whole team by design

The classic anti-pattern is testing running one iteration behind development. It looks like agile and behaves exactly like a phase gate, with the added cost that developers have moved on by the time defects arrive.

Check Your Understanding¶

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A team develops in one sprint and tests that work in the next. What is the problem?

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Which testing quadrant is most often squeezed out by sprint pressure, and why does it matter?