Michael Bolton: Agile Software Development and Rapid Software Testing

Over the last several years, a set of ideas and activities have been dumped into a big bucket called “Agile Software Development”. Agile development has hit mainstream recognition. Yet there is often uncertainty and turmoil around what “Agile development” means, in theory and in practice, and the confusion affects Agile projects and the people in them. There have been some discussion points, such as Mike Cohn’s Agile Testing Pyramid and Marick, Crisipin and Gregory’s Agile Testing Quadrants, and many people have found them helpful. Yet James Bach and Michael Bolton, authors of Rapid Software Testing, still hear testers expressing a good deal of pain over the role of the tester and the structures of testing activity in Agile projects.
Rapid Software Testing (RST) is a skill set and a mindset focused on doing the fastest, least expensive testing that still completely fulfills the mission. From RST’s perspective, testing is testing and Agile is context. Whether you adopt RST, working in Agile contexts, or neither, or both, Michael Bolton will provide observations and advice on how to adapt your testing to fit mission context you’re in.
Bio
Michael Bolton is a consulting software tester and testing teacher who helps people to solve testing problems that they didn’t realize they could solve. He is the co-author (with senior author James Bach) of Rapid Software Testing, a methodology and mindset for testing software expertly and credibly in uncertain conditions and under extreme time pressure. Michael has 25 years of experience testing, developing, managing, and writing about software. For almost 20 years, he has led DevelopSense, a Toronto-based testing and development consultancy.