Monday, May 22, 2017

Agile Testing Essentials LiveLessons - A Review

Do you like video courses? Maybe you prefer them over reading books? In my case, I enjoy all kinds of media for learning, with a mixed approach working best for me. When I heard that Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory are working on a video course about the essentials of agile testing, I knew I had to check it out. Their books Agile Testing and More Agile Testing accompanied me on my personal learning journey and provided great advice in many situations. So I was curious how Lisa and Janet would convey the essentials using videos and what I still might learn from them.

Content

The video course contains the following six lessons on agile testing.
  1. Lesson 1: Introduction to the Whole Team Approach
  2. Lesson 2: Test Planning in Agile Contexts
  3. Lesson 3: Shared Understanding through Early Testing
  4. Lesson 4: Automation in Agile
  5. Lesson 5: Agile Exploration
  6. Lesson 6: Ingredients for Success
All these essential parts of agile testing are addressed in a condensed form. Of course there is way more you might be able to talk about, but it would have exceeded the scope of conveying the core messages. For more information, Lisa and Janet refer to their books and encourage you to dig deeper yourself. As a starting point, they added a great list of recommended further readings to the course.

Format

The video length ranges from a a few minutes to about ten minutes, which feels just right to be able to pause and resume any time. To get a first impression yourself, you can watch the introduction video for free. However, please be aware that this is the first video course Lisa and Janet did so far. As with every new experience, you learn as you go. In my personal opinion, the introduction video is not representative of how the two present their content throughout the course. With every lesson they get more used to the format and present way more naturally. To be honest, I love that this shows that we're all humans and constantly trying to improve.

Structure

In each lesson, Lisa and Janet first present the key concepts and then ask the viewer to do a few small exercises. This way you can instantly apply the theory. They have you pause the video and think how you would answer certain questions in your context, or which examples and cases you might think of to explore a sample application. I loved how they got me actively thinking and involved at any point. I just couldn't help comparing the presented ideas with my own situation, and found myself making lots of notes what I would love to try next with my team. Furthermore, they share their personal experience about many topics by telling stories from the teams they worked on. I especially enjoyed this part, as it combines the theory with "the real world", showing how they gained and applied knowledge. They also share how experiments might fail from time to time, making clear that failing is an essential part of learning.

Target Audience

In this video course, beginner testers find condensed essential knowledge, providing great guidance on their way to grow. However, I would still recommend them to read Lisa's and Janet's awesome books. In my point of view, the video course is not a replacement for them, but it is a great starting point.

More advanced testers probably know about most concepts (and most probably have read both books already). Still, the course is a great reminder of the basics and might trigger one thought or another. Although its content had not been new to me, the course got me thinking on how to better convey these essentials to my own team and company.

Which leads me to my most important point: This course is not only useful for people identifying as testers, especially as those most probably would not read the agile testing books. I warmly recommend it to everyone working in agile environments, as agile testing is in its core a whole team topic and everybody should know about its essentials.

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