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incorporating system testing
System testing depends on a
complete system to test
If you’re velocity is pretty accurate and your estimates are on, you should
have a reasonably full iteration. It also means you don’t have a stack
of empty days for system testing...and on top of that, you won’t have a
system to test until the end of your iteration.
At a minimum, the system needs to get out for system testing at the end
of each iteration. The system won’t have all of its functionality in the early
iterations, but there should always be some completed stories that can be
tested for functionality.
Q: Can’t we start system testing earlier?
A: Technically, you can start system testing earlier in an iteration,
but you really have to think about whether that makes much sense.
Within an iteration, developers often need to refactor, break, fix,
clean up, and implement code. Having to deliver a build to another
group in the middle of an iteration is extremely distracting and
likely to including half-baked features. You also want to try to avoid
doing bug fix builds in the middle of an iteration—an iteration is a
fixed amount of time the team has to make changes to the system.
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You should be testing all along,
but that’s unit testing—
focusing on lots of smaller
components. You don’t have a
working system to test at a
big-picture, functional level.
You don’t have a system that’s
really testable until the end
of your iteration. It will
build at every step, but that
doesn’t mean you’ve got enough
functionality to really exercise.
They need to have the freedom to get work done without worrying
about what code goes in which build during the iteration. Builds get
distributed at the end of an iteration—protect your team in between!
Q: So what about the people doing testing? Where do they
fit in?
A: It’s definitely best to have a separate group doing system
testing, but as for what they should do while your main team is
writing code, that’s a good question. And even if you have other
developers do system testing, the question still applies...