Pairing w developers_stpconpics

White Master

Pairing with Developers

Lanette Creamer�Sogeti Senior Consultant �testyredhead.com

Contents

What is a developer anyways?

Who are we?

How and why we started pairing.

Why we continued.

When we finished.

Our informal retrospective results.

You will leave with

At least one idea of how to start pairing.

A real example that worked in practice.

Two contacts who can help you.

Ideas that can be adapted to any context.

Ways to challenge existing role definitions.

Loading Project Background

1st Agile Project

Scrum Master Training (Woof)

Quality Initiative Dynamics

Distributed undersized Team with non-iterative goals

Very Late Delivery Expected

Grandiose Unit Test Coverage Planned

Testing Limbo

Define Software Developer

Anyone who codes?

Production code?

What about TDD?

Are tests part of production?

What about the code we didn’t write?

Integrated components?

Interacting with existing databases?

Software Developer?

Software Developer?

Software Developer?

Tester or Developer?

Developer Instance

Meet Marty

& his son.

Developer Instance

Marty is a Developer who tests sometimes.

His website is http://www.theflexguy.com/

He makes testing tools and flex applications at Adobe. Still, he is not the tester in this case. He is the tools developer.

Define Software Tester

The tester is the person taking action to obtain and provide current information about the suitability of the product for the intended use by performing tests.

Tester Instance

Tester Instance

Me.

Prior experience on agile projects == 0

Prior experience testing Flex Apps == 0

Prior coding experience?

Some .bat files

A few fancy excel spreadsheets

A few mouseovers in ActionScript

Tester or Developer?

The Start of Pairing

What is the URL for that dashboard you are working on?

It’s not really ready for test yet.

I understand, but can you show me what you are working on so I can think of some test cases?

Sure! I’ll walk you through it!

How to start-Just go

Testing before Testing?

A test can be a question that hasn’t been considered.

A test can be challenging an assumption someone didn’t know they made.

A test is any question you can think of that the code may not yet answer.

Pairing-Advantage Test

I came up with some tests and some questions.

Why don’t you stop by and we’ll go through them together.

Do you know how I could post some good data to test the limits of _________?

How can I compare this value to know what I’m seeing is right?

Avoid Pitfalls

Pairing-Advantage Dev

These parts are ready for some testing, but these areas aren’t hooked up yet. Stop by and I’ll walk you through it.

During small demo-What happens if? Why is it showing that? Where is that time coming from?

Let me show you. Here I get the time and I pass it,..wait? I did WHAT? Here, I can change that.

Hurricane Season?

Pairing-Advantage Both

He showed me how to post a build.

I got source control to look at his changes because I had to in order to post my test files.

He showed me how his dashboard used the metadata.

I found an example Python script and went to town making ugly non-object oriented code, but everyone got an automated acceptance test!

From that ugly first test we worked together & automated shipping all products at once!

Puzzles

Pairing-Why did it work?

A willing teacher who values testing skill.

A tester who understands the basics of programming. Someone who can’t write pseudo code and understand it should not try a code walkthrough.

More coding experience is better, but it doesn’t negate the value of an early test perspective.

My code got better, and his code was stable much sooner when the test expectations were built in.

Unlocking & Unblocking

Why not just code review?

Marty left me a great comment about my automation. He was excited.

Thanks for the comment, but I have no idea how to do that. In fact, it isn’t even a word in my vocabulary?

Oh. Research these three things before our next pairing.

The code changes we made together made my automation go down from taking 2 hours to running in less than 2 minutes. Pairing is more than a review.

Passes Code Inspection?

Isn’t it a waste of time?

If you have a dev who thinks it is a waste

If you have a tester who is afraid to be wrong or look a fool

If your goal is to have maximum documentation over speed and learning

If your employees gaining new skills isn’t as important as your very best people never being interrupted

If mentoring isn’t seen as a priority or rewarded

It could be.

Good Enough?

Good Enough?

Do

Try pairing for a short time with many people.

Respect that not everyone wants to pair.

Ask for feedback on what is most productive and adjust the focus from time to time.

Find the right time of day. 11am and 2pm were good for us. 9am and 4:30pm sucked.

Start small. We met just once a week for an hour at a time sometimes. It was enough to keep the pairing going through the project.

Do

Don’t

Make a mandate.

Say all coders must test, all testers must code.

Say it is a choice, then layoff or demote anyone who doesn’t oblige.

Insist that every pairing produce a deliverable. Some of our best stuff only produced ideas to go work on by ourselves.

Make introverts work with a tester staring at them all day (awkward!) Agile Nazis are still Nazis.

Don’t

Marty Says “Explaining the function of the code helped flush out potential problems early on.  Also, having another perspective helped pull my nose off the grindstone to get the big picture, which is good for keeping the project going in the right direction.” �

Marty Says “As a developer, it is very easy to get lost in your own little world, and you can develop blinders to the big picture. Working with someone else, especially a tester who can bring to the table a completely different perspective, can improve the quality of an application much faster than working alone. I’m going to look for more opportunities to pair routinely now that I see and reflect on the value of it.”

Summary

Before you can test the code, you can test the product if you expand what a test is.

Developers can make code more testable by pairing with the right testers.

Teamwork can be good for productivity, morale, and cross training your team.

It doesn’t matter if it is test code or product code. You need quality craftsmanship for both.

Pairing works well when you let the amount ebb & flow as needed.

Q&A

Lanette.creamer@gmail.com

http://blog.testyredhead.com

Twitter @lanettecream