The Human Factors of the Agile Software Tester

Paruch, Lucas; Stray, Viktoria; Florea, Raluca

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-58793-2_38

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…Although there has been extensive research on the technological aspects of software testing-such as tool usage, test automation, and test processes-little research has been conducted on the human factors central to the role of the software tester (Deak et al, 2016;Kanij et al, 2015). The current paper extends our preliminary findings on the human factors of the agile software tester from a single-case study involving 13 participants (Paruch et al, 2020a(Paruch et al, , 2020b.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 55%

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Exploring human factors of the agile software tester

2021

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Although extensive research has been conducted on the characteristics of the agile developer, little attention has been given to the features of the software-testing role. This paper explores the human factors of the software testers working in agile projects through a qualitative study focusing on how these factors are perceived. We interviewed 22 agile software practitioners working in three international companies: 14 testers, five developers, and three designers. Additionally, we observed 11 meetings and daily work of 13 participants in one of the companies. Our findings show that the views on the human factors shaping the agile software tester’s role were crystallized into seven traits, which the agile team members saw as central for the software-testing role: the ability to see the whole picture, good communication skills, detail-orientation, structuredness, creativeness, curiosity, and adaptability. The testers spent half their day communicating and learned how to mitigate the fact that they had to bring bad news to other project members. They also facilitated communication between the business side and development. Based on our results, we propose the seven traits as dimensions to consider for organizations recruiting agile software testers, as well as a reference for IT and non-IT professionals considering a software-testing career.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 55%

“…The interviews were conducted between October 2019 and February 2020. A preliminary analysis of 13 of the interviews is reported in Paruch et al (2020aParuch et al ( , 2020b, and seven of the interviews are partly analyzed in Florea and Stray (2020).…”

Section: Interviewsmentioning

confidence: 99%