I attended a meeting about Scrum Yesterday. All the participants (approx. 20) were certified Scrum Masters and most them are using Scrum daily.
The idea was to exchange ideas about Scrum and to learn from experiences from each. It’s a great idea, certainly because the number of companies in the Netherlands that use Scrum are not big. The Dutch Agile Group is not so active and there are not so many conferences in the Netherlands about Agile Software Development.
The host organised a retrospective to find some common Scrum problems and some actions to solve those problems. I personally don’t believe in common solutions for Scrum problems, why not? Every project has a different culture, different people, different software factory, different customers, everything is different, so how can you describe a common solution for a common Scrum Problem. (By the way, there are no Scrum problems, just problems becoming visible because you use Scrum). So at the end of the meeting we discussed that we focus more on exchanging ideas the next time, probably an Open space conference.
But anyway… one of the most “common” problems was Testing and Scrum. I was wondering, why is that a problem? I could give you all kind of solutions but I won’t, just one solution, OK three solutions.
The common solution for Testing and Scrum are:
- Some general information about testing and Scrum, link to a website to find information 😉
- My posting about ten tips for agile testing, to get some ideas to get you started;
- JUST DO IT, stop finding the right process, stop complaining about missing requirements, stop finding reasons to don’t start with testing in a development team. We have thirteen testers and they all like working in Agile environment, so why would your testers (or you, if you are a tester) don’t like it?
I read your article “Scrum and Testing”, where you said “All testers hold the ISTQB Foundation certificate”, and, for the recruitment process, looking for an “Agile Tester”, you put the question “What does the applicant know about testing(ISTQB)”. My doubt about this is why do you said that the tester must hold the ISTQB Foundation certificate? and what relationship exists between ISTQB and SCRUM when ISTQB teaches that independent tests increase the quality of the testing process (rather than teams of developers, to use testing teams -testers- or teams with external staff for testing)?