Working Testing Tasks into the Product Backlog

If you've worked on an agile project, delivering to production on a regular basis, then you've struggled with the challenge of fitting in all the big tasks—performance, security, usability, and compatibility testing. To make matters worse, over time it becomes more and more challenging just to fit in all the functional testing that needs to take place, and that's even with rigorous unit and acceptance test automation. So how do you fit all that testing into the backlog when it doesn't tie nicely to one specific feature? Michael Kelly explains that by writing specific stories for each testing activity and understanding when to coordinate the timing of those activities with overall project and iteration goals, you can make the testing tasks more visible and acceptable. Backlogs are where teams work out priority, scope, and set expectations for levels of effort. Make sure testing is a part of your project’s backlog.