Whether agile testing is a panacea or another trick

Recently read a lot online about the agile debate, I think of a story:

In the Qing Dynasty, the Empress Dowager Cixi heard that Western countries have a new means of transport, cars, it sits comfortably running quickly. So I asked someone to buy a car back. But the use of time no one will open, so had to put the car with a few pillars tied up to make a sedan chair, let a few people carry. Because the car is too heavy, a few bearers stumble, can not walk a few steps will have to rest. It turned out that the half-hour road had gone for several hours. And then because the door is very narrow, car to do the sedan chair, she also had to come down a long way down. The Empress Dowager Cixi was unhappy and concluded:

1, the early investment of automobiles, high maintenance costs.

2, no sedan walk fast.

3, many local cars are not applicable.

4, the car is a big flicker of things, simply does not work.

So are we now familiar with agile as Hadi to cars? Is it because we don't use agility, or is it because agility is a trick?

In foreign countries usually a concept has been accumulated for many years before, and then for everyone to exchange convenience or improve the popularity of a name. So there is practice first, then there is the concept. But in the domestic opposite, we first introduced the concept of foreign "advanced" and put the concept of the years of practice ignored. But the concept of taixu can not be eaten, and ultimately the need for specific things and specific practices. So we have to design a variety of methods according to the concept. These practices sound good, well-suited to concepts, but in the project one use is not working, the old problems are not solved, the new problems are a lot. The final conclusion is that the car is a big bluff.

Agile and cloud computing are two very typical examples. Many people in order to agile, the document does not have, the plan is not, the test case also does not have, think several people stand in the corridor to communicate to all take care of everything, because agile. But the problem is not solved because of "agile", so the agile is a bluff conclusion. Cloud computing is also the same, many people think that cloud computing is the data center, so we build a data center. But what about the data center after it was built? It's no use. So everyone is touting cloud computing, is not a big trick. As everyone knows, because the business needs for many years has a data center, in order to improve the use of data center, began to open resources to the public, so there is cloud computing.

First, the practice of concept reengineering violates the law of the development of things, not only solves the existing problems, but also brings new problems. Agility is a good thing, under certain circumstances. What we need to figure out is what the problem is? How it's solved. Don't care what it's called or prevent mechanically. And the more advanced things are, the higher the demand for people and infrastructure. For example, the plane is better, there is no pilot or no airport is useless. The faster the high-speed rail runs, the higher the demand for railways.

Software testing is the same, do quality control is not to fashion. If your project is completely over in 3 months, and 3-5 people, no one will leave, no one will come in, no need to deal with any other projects, or your product in the early stage of the experiment, you can not document, do not plan, do not record bugs, completely by verbal communication. otherwise:

1. Cannot have no documents: but to reduce unnecessary documentation, avoid overly detailed documentation, and use dynamic documents that are easy to update and maintain.

1. There is no plan: the farther away the plan is, the more vague the plan is, but the more detailed it is.

1. There can be no discipline:

Instead of figuring out how to test agile, it's better to step into the automation, make continuous integration, create more test tools to improve testing efficiency, make quality feedback system, and make the quality check before Dev commits the code, make the test in the product, and improve the quality of the test engineer.

When these are all set up, you find that you are actually very agile.

Source: Bill LIu

Whether agile testing is a panacea or another trick