The company I work for recently switched to the Agile SCRUM method of development. Not only that but the method for scheduling new work went into a process that supports Agile as well.
I’ve always tried to be a tester who makes sure I get full coverage on anything I’m testing but the question came into my mind today during a sprint review that maybe I’m creating too many test cases; too much attempted coverage.
After reviewing my test cases I found that I didn’t have any duplicate coverage on anything and the test cases were broken up and numerous to help support the automation initiative that is also in the building process.
The problem I see is that the majority of the tests that I’m creating are not viable to add to the automation/regression test list. I’m making sure that I get the individual acceptance cases tested for and the failure cases for those tested for. Throw in database testing, security testing, etc. Is the issue that I’m seeing of too much test planning and too much test writing time being spent?
I love covering everything possible, but if the majority of the cases that I’m creating aren’t able to be used in the automation or regression sets is it worth having all that extra?
I try to break a test case down (as you should) into one set of instructions with a specific end in it’s simplest form so that automation could consider grabbing and implementing that test case, but if I know a process isn’t going to be ported to the regression/automation set should I both breaking it down as much?
For those of you running in Agile environments do you find that the time you’re spending creating test plans for individual user stories cuts into the time that you have available to test too much? Are you running into the same issues that you did in waterfall that even if you have code that is being added and you have stuff to test are you still pushed for time at the end of the sprint? Are you pushing user stories to the next sprint because you didn’t have enough time to finish your testing?
Flickr Image Credit: Brymo “Overwhelmed”