The Tester role is a full partner in the Team, to help discover and eliminate errors and their causes. This is related to one of the most fundamental Lean principles: To aim for perfection and to improve constantly. To this end the Tester role uses techniques such as root-cause analysis, examination of processes and infrastructure, and gaining understanding of customer requirements. The Tester also helps set up a testing environment that is consistent with the Team’s quality and continuous test and integration objectives.
The Tester works with both Products Owners or similar business roles (such as Business Analysts) and Developers to help them create and conduct tests that provide adequate requirements and design coverage to detect errors and support their removal.
Alternate roles:
- Quality Assurance, also called QA or Q/A. Note that QA clasically includes more responsibilities than the Tester role and is not limited only to being implemented at the team level.
Explore this role further in the Tester Reading Path.
Resources related to Testers
"Sustainability" in Test-Driven Development (Article)
Acceptance Test-Driven Development (Article)
Acceptance Test-Driven Development: A Quick Introduction (Blog Entry)
Are We Using Automated Acceptance Tests? (Article)
Carry-Over Work (Article)
Controlling Work-in-Process (WIP) (Article)
Daily Standups (Article)
Designing the Kanban Board (Article)
Estimation (Article)
Example RACI Chart for Lean-Agile Roles (Article)
Going Beyond Scrum, Part 1 (Blog Entry)
Going Beyond Scrum, Part 2 (Blog Entry)
How Is Integration Across Teams Being Handled? (Article)
How Should We Coordinate Teams? (Article)
How Small Are Our Stories? (Article)
How Will Teams Work and Deliver Together? (Article)
How Will UX Work With the Teams? (Article)
How Will We Make Visible Our Work at the Program Level? (Article)
If We Do Estimate, What Estimation Method Should We Use? (Article)
Impediments to Progress and Quality (Article)
Issues With Quality (Article)
Justifying TDD (Blog Entry)
Meetings for Lean-Agile (Article)
Online Learning (Article)
Overview of Roles (Article)
Should We Estimate Our Work? (Article)
Skills that Developers Need to Acquire in an Agile Transformation (Blog Entry)
Tester (Article)
Tester: Carry-Over Work (Article)
Tester: Controlling Work-in-Process (Article)
Tester: Growing in this Role (Article)
Tester: Issues of Quality (Article)
Tester: Iteration Planning Meeting (Article)
Tester: Iteration Retrospective (Article)
Tester: Meetings for the Tester (Article)
Tester: Overview of Roles (Article)
Tester: Practices (Article)
Tester: Product Demo and Review (Article)
Tester: Resources for Testers (Article)
Tester: Responsibilities (Article)
Tester: Standard Work (Article)
Tester: Types of Tests for Code (Article)
Tester: Visual Controls (Article)
Tester: Writing Tasks (Article)
The Need to Improve Clarity of a Requirement (Article)
To What Extent Will Test-First Methods Be Used? (Article)
To What Extent Will We Automate Tests? (Article)
Types of Tests for Code (Article)
Using Guardrails to Tie Business to Technology (Blog Entry)
What Design Method Will Be Used? (Article)
What Test Harness for Acceptance Tests Will Be Used? (Article)
Writing Explicit Policies (Article)
Podcasts related to Testers
Webinars related to Testers
