Tester in Agile Team: Areas of Expertise

July 27 06:45 2016 by Nataliia Vasylyna Print This Article

Seasoned expert of software testing always knows (or quickly finds out) what to do and how to do it. A software testing company expects testers to have a wide area of responsibility if they work within Agile team.

What Are the Main Duties of a Tester in Agile Team?

In every sprint, testers should conduct exploratory testing. Their offbeat thinking and ideas allow finding bugs that cannot be detected by automated test scripts.
Testers have to perform manual testing once all user stories are finished. This implies manual execution of test cases in accordance with acceptance criteria. Manual tests will help not only to discover bugs, but also to decide what tests should be automated in future sprints.
Business analysts often need help of testers when formulating acceptance criteria for the next sprint. Experience, creativity and curiosity of a test team can be useful in this demanding undertaking.
Testers participate in automation and even play a key role in this process. If the product functionality is stable, rational test automation may prevent multiple problems.
Test team helps to plan the ongoing sprint as well as the next sprint. Testers are also engaged in review and retrospective meetings for the ongoing sprint.
API automation is also a part of testers’ expertise. Most testers already have SoapUI experience, which is very useful in API automation.

In addition to these basic tasks, each Agile team may ask testers to perform other activities typical for this methodology.