The New Agile Testing Quadrants: Bringing Skilled Testers and Developers Together

You want to integrate skilled testing and development work. But how do you accomplish this without developers accidentally subverting the testing process or testers becoming an obstruction? Efficient, deep testing requires “critical distance” from the development process, commitment and planning to build a testable product, dedication to uncovering the truth, responsiveness among team members, and often a skill set that developers alone—or testers alone—do not ordinarily possess. James Bach and Michael Bolton present a model which is a redesign of the famous Agile Testing Quadrants that distinguished business vs. technical facing tests and supporting vs. critiquing. Their new model frames these dynamics and helps teams think through the nature of development and testing roles and how they might blend, conflict, or support each other on an agile project. James and Michael include a brief discussion of the original Agile Testing Quadrants model, which the presenters believe has created much confusion about the role of testing in agile.