Technical specialists
In addition to the obvious titles (programmer, developer, software engineer), the XP ???programmer??? role
includes other software development roles. The programmers could include a database designer, a
security expert, or a network architect. XP programmers are generalizing specialists. Although each
person has his own area of expertise, everybody is expected to work on any part of the system that
needs attention. (See ???Collective Code Ownership??? in Chapter 7 for more.)
T H E X P T E A M 33
Testers
Testers help XP teams produce quality results from the beginning. Testers apply their critical thinking
skills to help customers consider all possibilities when envisioning the product. They help customers
identify holes in the requirements and assist in customer testing.*
NOTE
Include enough testers for them to stay one step ahead of the programmers. As a rule
of thumb, start with one tester for every four programmers.
Testers also act as technical investigators for the team. They use exploratory testing to help the team
identify whether it is successfully preventing bugs from reaching finished code. Testers also provide
information about the software??™s nonfunctional characteristics, such as performance, scalability, and
stability, by using both exploratory testing and long-running automated tests.
Pages:
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78