Testers & QA's,
There is something interesting that we might want to try. I came across an upcoming agile practice called Mob Programming. In gist, this takes pair programming to next level by coding as a team. The idea is simple that you can write the best code when one person is actually typing the code and rest of the team is providing inputs. This has helped teams deliver builds without bugs. If you think, you are developing, unit testing, reviewing and testing the code all-at-once. How cool is that?
Read about it @ http://mobprogramming.org/mob-programming-basics/
Driver/Navigators
We follow a “Driver/Navigator” style of work, which I originally learned from Llewellyn Falco as a pair programming technique. Llewellyn’s approach is different from any other I have been shown, have seen, or have read about (and I think he invented it or evolved into it.)In this “Driver/Navigator” pattern, the Navigator is doing the thinking about the direction we want to go, and then verbally describes and discusses the next steps of what the code must do. The Driver is translating the spoken English into code. In other words, all code written goes from the brain and mouth of the Navigator through the ears and hands of the Driver into the computer. If that doesn’t make sense, we’ll probably try to do a video about that or a more complete description sometime soon.
In our use of this pattern, there is one Driver, and the rest of the team joins in as Navigators and Researchers. One important benefit is that we are communicating and discussing our design to everyone on the team. Everyone stays involved and informed.
The main work is Navigators “thinking , describing, discussing, and steering” what we are designing/developing. The coding done by the Driver is simply the mechanics of getting actual code into the computer. The Driver is also often involved in the discussions, but her main job is to translate the ideas into code. Of course, being great at writing code is important and useful – as well as knowing the languages, IDE and tools, etc. – but the real work of software development is the problem solving, not the typing.
If the Driver is not highly skilled, the rest of the team will help by guiding the Driver in how to create the code – we often suggest things like keyboard short-cuts, language features, Clean Code practices, etc. This is a learning opportunity for the Driver, and we transfer knowledge quickly througout the team which quickly improves everyones coding skills.
I would suggest that if we apply the same to testing how productive it can be. I know exploratory testing is cool but what would be even better is that the entire test team gets into a room and one person takes the responsibility of "driver"- he will follow the instructions of the team and document/execute the test cases. Rest of the team will play "navigators" and suggest scenarios and different test condition. This will be a great demonstration of collective IQ and things like mails, meetings, triage calls can be eliminated to reduce unproductivity.
Let me know your thoughts and if you find this interesting, we can pilot this in one of your projects and evangelize it.
