{"id":9481,"date":"2017-10-10T04:06:22","date_gmt":"2017-10-10T04:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abstracta.us\/?p=9481"},"modified":"2025-05-05T21:20:44","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T21:20:44","slug":"can-there-be-testers-in-scrum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abstracta.us\/blog\/testing-strategy\/can-there-be-testers-in-scrum\/","title":{"rendered":"Can There Be Testers in Scrum?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!-- Go to www.addthis.com\/dashboard to customize your tools --><script src=\"\/\/s7.addthis.com\/js\/300\/addthis_widget.js#pubid=ra-58d80a50fc4f926d\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h1>Testers + Scrum = ?<\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Several times I\u2019ve had conversations with people who work with Scrum or Agile methodologies who claim they don\u2019t have testers and don\u2019t run into any problems. On the other hand, I have seen testers within these schemes who often feel excluded from the development team. Other testers who have not yet worked in Agile teams question whether there is even room for testers in Scrum. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s often\u00a0stated that everyone in a Scrum team should be able to perform different tasks and that all are responsible for quality. But, there are some things that a tester can handle better than others. For example, writing good acceptance criteria requires a tester skillset, as one must keep in mind and worry about certain characteristics such as quality, testability, maintainability, etc. These are all things that the tester role is responsible for obsessing over. Therefore, when you need to write acceptance criteria, you\u2019ll be better off delegating it to someone trained in testing over someone that\u2019s not. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, can there be testers in Scrum?<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Lets_Check_the_Manual\"><\/span>Let&#8217;s Check the Manual<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Looking for what the <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.scrumguides.org\/scrum-guide.html#team-dev\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Scrum Guide<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> says about the development team, I found this:<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_Development_Team\"><\/span>The Development Team<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Development Team consists of professionals who do the work of delivering a potentially releasable Increment of \u201cDone\u201d product at the end of each Sprint. Only members of the Development Team create the Increment.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Development Teams are structured and empowered by the organization to organize and manage their own work. The resulting synergy optimizes the Development Team\u2019s overall efficiency and effectiveness.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Development Teams have the following characteristics:<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They are self-organizing. No one (not even the Scrum Master) tells the Development Team how to turn Product Backlog into Increments of potentially releasable functionality;<\/span><\/i><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Development Teams are cross-functional, with all of the skills as a team necessary to create a product Increment;<\/span><\/i><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b><i>Scrum recognizes no titles for Development Team members other than Developer, regardless of the work being performed by the person<\/i><\/b><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">; there are no exceptions to this rule;<\/span><\/i><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b><i>Scrum recognizes no sub-teams in the Development Team, regardless of particular domains that need to be addressed like testing or business analysis<\/i><\/b><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">; there are no exceptions to this rule; and,<\/span><\/i><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b><i>Individual development team members may have specialized skills and areas of focus, but accountability belongs to the Development Team as a whole<\/i><\/b><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/i><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Analyzing the three points marked in bold, we can see that Scrum does not recognize roles or sub-teams, but there may be members with specialized skills and an area in which they focus. That is, there may be testers (with a tester\u2019s skillset) that focus on quality tasks. However, the responsibility for quality is on the whole team.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From my professional experience, having worked with all sorts of development teams, including Scrum, I believe the \u201ctester role\u201d is still very relevant, as I mentioned in this article, \u201c<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/abstracta.us\/software-testing\/what-is-a-qe\/\">What is a QE?<\/a>.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d A critical aspect of Scrum and Agile methodologies is that it is fundamental to have T-shaped skills, meaning that it is not only necessary to have the testing mindset and capabilities, but also to have some skill in the specialties of the people you work with, for instance, business, development, operations, etc. In such a way you can contribute more, making the team self-sufficient and promoting its excellence. Inside of our teams, us testers have to help shift testing left, allowing developers to test earlier, frequently and more easily, with CI\/CD support, and then they can do pair testing, or the devs can test each other\u2019s code. Anyway, developers still have a developer\u2019s mindset, which is great for development, but not for testing. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>In the words of Melissa Eaden, &#8220;Anybody can do testing, but only a tester can do good testing.&#8221;<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Speaking of Agile testing, here is a little reminder of the Testing Manifesto published by Growing Agile, which we love so much that we have it hanging on the walls in our Abstracta headquarters!<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/abstracta.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/TestingManifesto-768x384-min.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9482\" src=\"http:\/\/abstracta.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/TestingManifesto-768x384-min.jpg\" alt=\"testing maifesto drawing\" width=\"768\" height=\"384\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What do you think\u2026 is there room for testers in Scrum?<\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Recommended_for_You\"><\/span><strong>Recommended for You<\/strong><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"color: #00b674;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/abstracta.us\/blog\/agile-testing\/what-is-isnt-scrum-master\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What Is and Isn&#8217;t a Scrum Master<\/span><\/a><br \/>\n<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/abstracta.us\/agile-testing\/not-convinced-yet-shift-left-testing\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Not Convinced Yet About &#8220;Shift-Left&#8221; Testing?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Testers + Scrum = ? Several times I\u2019ve had conversations with people who work with Scrum or Agile methodologies who claim they don\u2019t have testers and don\u2019t run into any problems. On the other hand, I have seen testers within these schemes who often feel&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[636],"tags":[68,107],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v14.0.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Can There Be Testers in Scrum? | Abstracta<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In Scrum, team members may have special areas of focus, but accountability belongs to the team as a whole. 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