Agile Testing by Lisa Crispin and Janet
Gregory

Some authors are good at presenting
theories but unable to connect them to practice. Other are good at telling
stories from the trenches, but without being able to produce an analysis of the
situation and propose some solutions. On the less examined domain of agile
testing, Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory are, luckily for us, presenting a book
that covers both the personal experience of being a tester in agile projects
and a conceptual vision of the place of quality assurance in software projects.
Thus you will find in this book "stories" that comes from past
projects and "mind maps" that helps to have a high-level vision of
the material of each chapter.

The book offers resource to organize the
quality assurance and testing activities in an agile project. It explains also
the relationship between test automation and agility. It provides also a part
dedicated to the chronicle of the agile testing activities during project life,
showing how every member of the team could contribute to quality.

I think however that the more
interesting contribution of the book is Testing Quadrants. This concept
classifies testing activities depending on their focus (technology or business)
and their intent (supporting the team or validating the product). Adding an
agile perspective to the original work of Brian Marick, the authors provide resources
and examples for each quadrant to make sure that you will cover all the aspects
of testing for your project.

This book is certainly a very valuable
resource for every people involved in software testing, even if this is not in
an agile project. It will also be valuable for ScrumMasters and project
managers that have to think on how to integrate the testing activities in their
projects.