Augmenting Regression Testing in Agile Teams
Today, three things are undeniable facts of business—projects are becoming more agile, teams are learning to function well remotely, and the tester’s role is evolving. Mike Hrycyk believes that testers in agile teams face daunting challenges and often struggle to keep up with the pace of new feature development while performing all the needed regression testing activities. Mike offers a strategy as an alternate path: the creation of a regression testing team to augment feature teams, one that works in parallel, handling the testing regression cycle while the feature teams—developers and testers—continue to work through new development. Mike offers tips for successful feature handoff, intra-team communication, and troubleshooting hurdles that will be encountered. Although augmented regression testing is at odds with the advice of many agile “experts,” it enabled their agile development to achieve higher velocity.
Director of quality for PQA Testing Mike Hrycyk has been trapped in the world of quality since he first did user acceptance testing nineteen years ago. He has survived all the different levels and a wide spectrum of technologies/environments to become the quality dynamo that he is today. Mike believes in creating a culture of quality throughout software production and strives to create teams that not only share this ideal but also advocate it to the rest of their workmates. Previously he worked in social media management, parking, manufacturing, web photo retail, music delivery kiosks, and at a railroad. Intermittently, Mike blogs about quality and tweets.