Agile testing: the first quadrant

Agile testing: the first quadrant

Unit testin, low level code

The first quadrant contains unit tests and component tests. The following image is about the Lisa Crispin's 4 quadrants 

Unit tests

Testing function, classes and methods following the discipline of test driven development and other extreme programming practices. We have a lot of unit testing frameworks that can help us to write our tests. The following list is for the most common programming language. You can find a large list of frameworks on wikipedia.

• PHP
  • PHPUnit, Enhance PHP
  • BDD: Codeception, Behat
• Javascript
  • Mocha is my favorite, highly recommended!
  • Qunit
  • Karma
  • Jasmine
  • BDD:
• Java
  • JUnit
  • BDD:
• Python
  • Unittest and Unittest2
  • Doctest
  • Nose
  • BDD:
• Ruby
  • BDD: Rspec, Cucumber

Component tests

Component testing is a method where testing of each component in an application is done separately. Martin Fowler definition: A component test is a test that limits the scope of the exercised software to a portion of the system under test.

• Broad-stack test:
• Test Pyramid: unit on the base, service and UI. Check the ice cream cone: an amazing article about the test pyramid and various testing levels

Other terms we must consider speaking about component testing:

• Stub
• Test Double is a generic term for any case where you replace a production object for testing purposes - Martin Fowler.

After testing

We must consider further steps in the software development life cycle with unit and component testing:

• Continuous integration
• Continuous delivery
• Continuous deployment: on continuous delivery, every change are ready to  be deployed. On continuous deployment, the process is automatic. This article is great and it explains the difference.

Q&A must find nothing!

Q&A must find nothing after we have deployed our application.

• Unit tests 100% coverage; all tests must pass
• Test the behavior: UI, forms, links, redirect are testable with BDD and browser automation tools like Selenium or Sahi.

People

Least but last, I have to remember the most important people around Agile and Agile testing:

• Robert C. "Uncle Bob" Martin.
• Martin Fowler
• Kent Beck
• Lisa Crispin
• Mike Cohn