The tester plays a supportive role in the execution of the Inception phase. The team and stakeholders may not be familiar with testing strategies. The tester plays an important role in developing the testing strategy which is a key deliverable during inception. During Construction, the tester serves as a full member of the team. Testing does help to discover bugs. But more importantly, helps the team to discover the causes of errors and eliminating them. This involves root-cause analysis, looking at processes, infrastructure, and the understanding of customer requirements.
Table 1 describes responsibilities of the tester as they help the team achieve their goals. Note that not all DA goals are represented here, only those where the tester plays a significant role. Articles in this reading path provide more detail about some of these.
Table 1. Goals and Responsibilities of the tester
|
Phase |
Process Goal |
What the Tester Does |
|
Inception |
Assess understanding and skills Assure sufficient technical resources Understanding regulatory compliance Helping to define the approach to testing and development Identifying test environments to use Defining strategy for testing non-functional requirements Setting up automated test suites Defining process to obtain test data Defining process for automated builds Defining process for reporting defects Working with product owner to define governance of quality efforts |
|
|
Help with acceptance tests |
||
|
Help team conduct BDD, TDD, TFD Help team document defects and put on the backlog |
||
|
Support ongoing team collaborations |
||
|
Construction |
Help team visualize their work Help team optimize their flow |