David Evans
David Evans is an independent agile consultant, coach and trainer with over 22 years of IT experience. A thought-leader in the field of agile testing, he has provided training and consultancy for clients in the UK, Ireland, Sweden, Germany, Australia, Israel, South Africa and Singapore. A regular speaker at events and conferences across Europe, David has also had several papers published in international IT journals. He currently lives and works in the UK, where he runs his own company "ThinkAlike Consulting".
Track abstract - Testers - J2
Cancelled! Exceptions, Assumptions and Ambiguity: Finding the truth behind the Story
User Stories are an almost universally adopted technique for defining units of valuable change for agile teams. But sometimes a Story unfolds in ways the customer does not expect. This can lead to wasted time, effort and rework at best, but also to pernicious defects, embarrassing failures and financial losses at worst.
In this talk I look at the factors that can lead to misunderstandings about Stories, from their specification, conversation, implementation and testing. I also discuss techniques for improving the shared understanding needed between business people, developers and testers.
Along the way I will explore issues that trouble many agile teams, such as: How much should be written down? When is the right time for a conversation? Who writes the acceptance tests? When is a story too big or too small? What should we keep and what can we throw away?
