Samedi 21 novembre 2009
6
21
/11
/Nov
/2009
11:50
For those who are familiar with XP, one of the founding values is COURAGE:
- Courage to tell the truth.
- Courage to implement practices every day.
- Courage to adapt the team to changes.
-
Etc.
A few months ago, I implemented a process to improve the quality of development delivered to the testing team, the
BAT (Build Acceptance Tests):
- The BAT is generally a short set of tests, which exercises the main functionalities of the application
- If the BAT fails, the build is rejected, and testing continues on the previous build (provided there has been at least one build that has passed the acceptance test)
Why BAT is important? What are the benefits?
- It lets developer know right away if there is a serious problem with the build
- It saves the QA team to waste time and to get frustration by avoiding test of an unstable build
- It minimizes integration risk when the different team members combine or "integrate" the code they have been working on separately
- It reduces the risk of low quality
- It supports easier defect diagnosis on something that happened between the two builds broke the product
- It improves motivation
We have succeeded in defining the scope of testing with development teams to find an acceptable and accepted
agreement by all the stakeholders of the product cycle. After many iterations, the BAT has revealed what we were suspecting:
- Not enough testing practice during code phase
- Not enough integration practice during code phase
- Severe bugs reported during the BAT
The main consequence of the application of the BAT process was to delay the campaigns performed by testing team and
finally to slip the delivery date of the product.
You will certainly ask why "Courage"?
Faced with the reality of the quality of builds, some managers want to call into question the principle of the BAT.
At this moment we must have the courage to leave our comfort to face obstacles.
What is important to do is to leave a form of struggle, to be aware of the interest of good practices and
finally demonstrate that over time, these practices are beneficial for all.
