Agile Testing Days take-aways #2 - Accelerating Agile Testing

This is the second in my series of take-aways from Agile Testing Days.

The ever-enthusiastic Dan North did a high-energy keynote on Accelerating Agile Testing. His slides were as innovative as ever - this time a series of index cards stitched together using Cam Scanner. Check them out at Speaker Deck.

My personal take-aways were:

• UX is all about the experience a user has when they use the product - e.g. what drives Apple users to stay loyal and queue up overnight. How do we develop our culture so that it thinks as much as Apple does about UX?
• What we do reveals what we value: values and beliefs drive our capabilities which drives our behaviour. Consultants and coaches typically work at the capabilities level, unless they have permission to help people adjust their values. Working systemically can help make adjustments at the values level.
• Are we testing in all the right areas, in the right ways? Check the testing capabilities matrix:

Testing capabilities matrix

• We should be putting most of our testing effort in the upper right quadrant of the impact vs. likelihood matrix. Bear in mind that this matrix has several planes, with each being specific to a context/stakeholder.

Impact vs. likelihood matrix

• Explore other testing methods, consider opportunity cost (i.e. not everything is worth automating), test deliberately (consider how, where, what, when).