Early in October, the Agile Alliance held the Agile Alliance Functional Testing Tools Visioning Workshop. Part of the workshop involved lightning talks which have been put online. Yes, I’m a little late watching and commenting on these, but better late than never.
Elisabeth Hendrickson – Why Automated Acceptance Tests Are Crucial
- repeatability in testing is overrated
- exploratory testing is by its nature not repeatable
- therefore, expectations should be automated
- these expectactions are the acceptance criteria
Elisabeth Hendrickson – A Place To Put Things
- Many things succeed because they have a structured place to put things (xunit has setup, test, teardown, fit has tables and fixtures)
- functional tests don’t have have nice places to put things (models, etc)
- her proposal
- expectations about externally observed behavior : in version control (in text, not binary)
- fixture code : in version control
Naresh Jain – ProTest: Framework for Prioritizing Tests For Dynamic Execution
- build test suites dynamically
- create a dependency between classes and tests
- complexity
- tune the amount of feedback you get depending on the scope of the change
- faster feedback is great, but there is a cost
Antony Marcano – To Test or Not to Test
- fit is really good at communication, not automation
Brian Marick – Boundary Objects
- boundry objects sits between two social worlds and allow them to interoperate together
- don’t argue about the definition of a boundry object, just use them
- Brian’s paper on boundary objects
- packages bring theories along with a tool and by using the tool the theory infects
- using a hybrid language in a trading zone, two groups can communicate
Jim Shore – Does it Work? Is it Done? Is it Right? (Make it Light!)
- functional tests
- expensive
- slow
- brittle
- don’t deliver directly to the product
- we want to know 3 things when testing, see the title
- TDD is part of the solution as it confirms the developer’s intent (does it work?)
- involve a ‘customer’ to determine whether they are done
- actual customer
- ui designer
- etc.
- concrete examples determine if it is right
- fit is a way of automating your examples
Kevin Lawrence – What Worked (and what didn’t)
- the tutorial is very good / effective oracle
- “pretend you are speaking to an expert user over the phone”
- examples make better tests than tests
John Dunham – Fresh Eyes: What’s the problem
- no sound
Gerard Mazaros – Wish List Continued & Misc. Thoughts
- no sound
Brian Marick – Let Them Eat Cake
- redefines the chasm curve
- rebukes the non-passionate ‘it’s a paycheque’ tester
- give up the conservatives and concentrate on the people who care