Disciplined Agile

Testing Quadrants

The agile testing quadrants of Figure 1, first developed by Brian Marick and then extended by Janet Gregory and Lisa Crispin in their book Agile Testing, overview some potential types of testing that we should consider adopting within the team. As you can see in Figure 2, these techniques are captured within the Develop Test Strategy process goal and each strategy is described and put into context within the Disciplined Agile Browser.

Testing Quadrants

Figure 1. The agile testing quadrants (click to enlarge).

2021 Project Management Institute Develop Test Strategy v5.2 Test Staffing Strategy Generalizing specialists Exploratory testers Behavior-driven development (BDD) analysts Test automation specialists Manual testers (from scripts) Test Teaming Strategy Whole team/embedded testers Parallel independent test team Independent test team External (outsourced) test team Level of Detail of Test Plan Outcome driven Lightweight overview Detailed specification None Test Approaches Black box Clear box Confirmatory Exploratory Stakeholder validation Test Intensity Life critical Business critical Product critical Project critical Development Strategy Test-driven development (TDD) Test-first programming (TFP) Test-after development Testless programming Quality Requirements Testing Strategy Accessibility Availability Concurrency Data privacy Internationalization Performance Resilience/reliability Scalability Security Usability Volume/rate Test Environment(s) Platform Strategy Cloud based Physical Virtual Test Environment(s) Equivalency Strategy Production equivalent Production approximate Disparate Choose Testing Types Accessibility testing Alpha/beta/pilot/canary testing Component testing Database testing Exploratory testing Functional testing (FT) Performance testing Prototypes Quality attributes (ility) testing Security testing Simulations Split (A/B) testing Story testing System integration testing (SIT) Unit testing (UT) User acceptance testing (UAT) User experience (UX) testing User interface (UI) testing Workflow/scenario testing Test Suite Strategy Multiple regression test suites Single regression test suite Manual testing Test Data Source Original production data Masked production data Generated data Engineered data Service/source virtualization Test Automation Strategy Continuous deployment (CD) Continuous integration (CI) Automated regression tests Scripts Manual testing Test Automation Coverage Multiple systems Solution Service/application programming interface (API) Component Unit User interface (UI) Defect Reporting Conversation Operational monitoring Agile management tool Bug/defect tracker Test management tool Quality Governance Strategies Nonsolo work Tool-generated metrics Automated code/schema analysis Quality guidelines Informal reviews Formal reviews Test case documentation

Figure 2. The Develop Test Strategy process goal diagram (click to enlarge).

February 2022