Enabling Agile Testing through Continuous Integration

Abstract

A Continuous Integration system is often considered one of the key elements involved in supporting an agile software development and testing environment. As a traditional software tester transitioning to an agile development environment it became clear to me that I would need to put this essential infrastructure in place and promote improved development practices in order to make the transition to agile testing possible. This experience report discusses a continuous integration implementation I led last year. The initial motivations for implementing continuous integration are discussed and a pre and post-assessment using Martin Fowler's" Practices of Continuous Integration" is provided along with the technical specifics of the implementation. The report concludes with a retrospective of my experiences implementing and promoting continuous integration within the context of agile testing.