Challenges faced by agile testers: a case study

Abstract

In the agile framework developers and testers are part of a hyper-productive, self-organizing team. Testing scope changes when user stories are added, updated, or deleted. Moreover, test cases need to be re-written or update when user stories change or removed from the sprint, which wastes time and makes agile testers frustrated. Furthermore, the mini-waterfall model adopted within a sprint could develop unwanted stress in agile testers. Despite these challenges little seem to be understood about the challenges faced by agile testers. We fill this gap by closely studying the challenges faced by agile testers in a multinational IT services organization. We first set up a forum for agile testers to discuss their challenges, malpractices, and best practices. We then conducted an online survey based on the findings from the forum and literature review. Through this, we identified 15 challenges and best practices to overcome those 15 challenges. We further conducted a set of interviews with the subject matter expertise to identify a suitable set of solutions such as conducting retrospective in a fun and engaging way, managing story lifecycle using collaborative tools, setting up ground rules for geographically distributed teams, and introducing innovative sprints.