Pair programming … why not team testing?

Recently I was asked to work on a project which was not known to me before. We had only few days to test the whole product in integration and there was only one tester working in the team with 5
development pairs, a BA and a PM. My testing colleague was also going on
holidays after the release. I was told the product is not in a stable build and
we need to get as much quality information as we can. I had been doing agile
testing for a while but I did not happen to join an agile project in such a
state. After a few minutes of brain storming with my testing colleague I found
there are two tasks ahead of me. One, in a very short time, I have to test as
well as learn the product. Two, how can I put the quality back in the minds of
the developers and in user stories. This was kind of a problem from the next
release. So, I decided not to focus on it for the time.

For the first problem, I didn’t have enough product knowledge and the time was short, so I decided to pair with my testing colleague. I, as a driving person, ran through the product about 20 times with
all possible flows on the first days. This not only highlighted the obvious
problems with the product, but also gave me a very good understanding of it.
The issues were raised/stared-fixing on the same day and the product was
released on time with greater confidence (and yes with few known issues). I
call this approach “team testing”. After finding team testing very useful and
engaging, I have applied this approach many times later while regression
testing and this is working very well for us.

Team testing… what is it?

In team testing two testers will sit together, explore the product to find obvious or hidden problems. This approach works particularly well when you don’t have enough knowledge of the product or you are regression
testing it. While you execute each flow
or feature of the product, you need to discuss how it should work and what can go
wrong with it. Write some short notes (test cases) as you go along and test the
product.

What if you have only one tester in the team?

This is not common where only one tester will be working in the team. The team testing concept can be applied by calling another developer, your BA or any member within or out of your team. However, it works well when every
one understands the testing objective of this activity; which is to gain product
quality information.

We also made some templates as we work along the product to record the testing activity. If you have any question on this approach or want to know more about it, please drop me a line.

http://agile-software-testing.blogspot.com/