Exploration Through Example

Example-driven development, Agile testing, context-driven testing, Agile programming, Ruby, and other things of interest to Brian Marick

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Wed, 12 Nov 2003

Matrices into trees

New blogger Jonathan Kohl has a different way of explaining my four categories of agile testing. He uses a tree instead of a 2-way matrix.

I think I like his approach better than mine. It provides an appealing sequence for presenting the ideas. The root of the tree sets the stage. The first two branches emphasize the importance of engaging with two worlds:

• the business world the product will live in
• the technology world the project team lives in

Then you introduce another distinction: between testing as support for other people during their work and testing as a critique of something those people have completed. You can dive into the details according to the interests of the audience: "which of these do you want to talk about?"

I may give this tree a try some time, although I'm still fond of "business-facing product critique". Rolls so elegantly off the tongue, don't you think?

Calgary, Canada - where Jonathan lives - is, by the way, a real hotbed of agile testing activity. It also happens to be where XP Agile Universe will be next year. Let's hope a lot of agile testers come.

## Posted at 12:48 in category /agile [permalink] [top]