Automated Agility?! Let's Talk Truly Agile Testing

The move towards agility is an acceptance that we operate in an uncertain world! We can’t predict what will change in the future so we’ve evolved our practices toward flexibility, instead of attempting precognition. But have we evolved every practice?

Adam doesn't see much agility in testing. Indeed, many Agile testing strategies appear to be charging in the other direction – chasing completely automated testing, forgetting that automation is literally the practice of encoding our present understanding on the hope or assumption it exposes future problems. In this talk, Adam shows how this automate-all-the-things testing strategy is discordant with our Agile evolution and instead explores testing strategies with real agility – allowing an adaptive combination of useful automation with learning-focused exploration and post-deploy monitoring. This type of strategy allows testing to deliver more cohesively within the model of rapid experimentation and iteration that Agile organisations have recognised is key to their future.

About Adam Howard

Adam Howard is the Test Practice Manager at Trade Me in Wellington, New Zealand. He is passionate about helping to evolve the way testing is perceived and performed. A regular speaker at Meetups and conferences in NZ and internationally, Adam also helps organise local WeTest Workshops (https://www.meetup.com/WeTest-Workshops/) and is chief design and layout editor for Testing Trapeze (http://www.testingtrapezemagazine.com/), a bi-monthly testing magazine. He also writes about testing on his blog and occasionally manages to be concise enough to tweet as @adammhoward (https://twitter.com/adammhoward).

How this session will run

Please arrive at Trade Me at 5.30 for a prompt start time of 6pm. We will end by 8pm.

We're charging a nominal fee of US$4.12* to cover the cost of pizza and soft drinks.

• This is approximately NZ$6 (it's in US dollars as Meetup doesn't allow for us to charge in NZ dollars).