Agile Testing Is All about Risk—Not Bugs and Quality

Many organizations make huge investments in software testing, and unfortunately they often don’t understand or extract full value from these activities. This can lead to testing being viewed as a mere formality or necessary evil within an organization. Fortunately, we can deliver more value with relatively minor adjustments to our approaches. The transition to agile practices provides a natural opportunity for test specialists and others to put these adjustments into practice. Plan-driven approaches can also be adjusted to increase the value delivered from testing activities. Heather Fullen shares recommendations from her experience in project management, business analysis, and software testing that teams can use to take a more risk-oriented approach to conduct testing and utilize test results in decision making. Leave with techniques you can use to assemble a risk profile and better understand risk tolerance for the client and the project, as well as strategies to declutter and prioritize your test suites in order to tailor test planning and execution in ways that help the team focus on delivering value and managing risk.