How are tests handled by Scrum using TFS 2012?

Question

We are, for the first time, trying to implement scrum on our company using TFS 2012. So far the process is not doing very well since we have questions that no one could find the answers so far.

Our main concern is how to handle the tests phase. Here are or scenario (in terms of people/jobs):

• We have 6 programmers
• We have a scrum master
• We have 2 testers (that are not programmers)

That is what we have until now:

• All desires go to the board
• We have the sprint meeting where we add tasks to those desires
• We prepare the sprint
• People start to do their jobs

Our definition of Done clarifies that a story can only be considered done when the story goes to the test guys and one of them (in that case, me) says that the story is done. So far so good.

We have a Test Server where all tests are executed and that server is similar to the production server (web app).

As I said, out main concern is how to handle tests:

• Since all developers can commit their code (using SVN), when should they commit? When a task is done or when a backlog item is done?
• When a test release should be released?
• When should the tests begin? Should we start testing after a task is done or after a backlog item is done? How can we get notified when we should begin testing?
• Should we create a Deployment task and a Test Task on every backlog item?

Any help would be nice.

Answer 1

- Since all developers can commit their code (using SVN), when should they commit? When a task is done or when a backlog item is done?

Ans: I think you should commit as soon as code is ready. If you have tasks created under a user story and a task covers some small development you can submit and close the task. So like wise you have smaller tasks for development of the user story. Once all tasks are completed User story (backlog item) is completed.

To test the these commits, what you can do is to have a automation test suite which runs against the CI environment. So you can cover the smoke test and the regression testing. Which type to test suite to run can be determined based on time. For ex, you can run the regression test suite weekly and smoke test suite nightly.

- When a test release should be released? - When should the tests begin? Should we start testing after a task is done or after a backlog item is done? How can we get notified when we should begin testing?

Ans: There shouldn't be strict deadline such to release a test build. Testing can be started while a user story develops. How a tester can help is testers can have 'show me session' on the code that developer works with and give some feedback. and start feature testing once the user story is resolved (you can have this state in tfs). But make sure to complete testing before the sprint ends.

If the testing debt is high you can have a hardening sprint.

-Should we create a Deployment task and a Test Task on every backlog item?

Ans: Yes there should be two different tasks for each user story. one task covers the feature testing (user story testing). This is important to do to estimations and also to get the correct team velocity.