Page - 236 - in The Future of Software Quality Assurance

236 E. van Veenendaal Fig. 4 T-shaped Agile team transformation.Following theT-shapedconcept, the tester is expected tohavedeep knowledge and skills in testing, but from other team members it is expected that they acquire testing knowledge and skills as part of their horizontal skill set bar (see Fig. 4). We cannot just direct other people to be involved in testing, they need to be trained and coached in testing to be able to perform this task. Remember what GlenfordMyers stated in his bookThe Art of Software Testing: “Testing is an extremelycomplexand intellectuallychallengingtask”. 3.2 Broadening:ITKnowledgeandSkills Working in a cross-functional team closely with developers and business analysts implies that at least a tester needs to appreciate and understand what other team membersare doingandpreferablyalso beable to support themin their tasks. From aT-shapedtester, it is typicallyexpectedtheycansupportasoftwaredeveloperwith unittestingandabusinessanalystwhentheyaredefiningacceptancecriteriaforuser stories. It is required to understand the life cycle model that is being used and the technical environment in which development takes place. IT knowledge and skills for a tester should cover a wide and varying range of knowledge skills of which someessential examplesare listedanddescribedhereafter. RequirementsEngineering/Business Analysis Testersareofcourseoneof themainstakeholders.Testplanning,productriskanal- ysis, test casesareallbaseduponrequirements.Tester are involvedin requirements reviews,andneed tounderstandwhat levelofquality is reasonable toask for.Often in Agile teams, testers support the identification and specification of requirements (user stories) and their acceptancecriteria. Programming It isn’t that testers need to work like a developer, but it is important to understand the inside of the application so that it becomes easy to comprehend its functioning