The benefits of making quality the responsibility of both developers and testers are increasingly recognized by Agile teams. Such an approach improves accountability, eliminates bottlenecks and allows testers to focus on the most complex and difficult testing issues. However, getting developers engaged in non-code facing testing is often a challenge. This presentation will detail two techniques - blitz testing and mentored testing, that we've developed at Atlassian that have been highly effective at not only engaging developers to undertake such testing, but also to gain the knowledge and skills they need to improve the quality of the software that they write. Blitz testing, widens test coverage, and involves regularly assembling an internal “SWAT” team to perform focused testing as a group for short periods. The roles within the group and the structure of the sessions are adapted to suit the various goals of the testing. Mentored testing, deepens test coverage, and involves a tester working directly with a developer to help guide the testing that developers perform, as well as a combination of paired and simultaneous test execution to help developers identify where and how to improve their testing. Together, these practices result in developers who spend less time fixing their code and testers who are able to focus on complex testing challenges, enabling the team to improve quality without sacrifice.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/TestersRole_Agile2012.pdf
