This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by Keith Ray. Original Post: Doctor, It Hurts Feed Title: MemoRanda Feed URL: http://homepage.mac.com/1/homepage404ErrorPage.html Feed Description: Keith Ray's notes to be remembered on agile software development, project management, oo programming, and other topics. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by Keith Ray Latest Posts From MemoRanda

The old joke: "Doctor, it hurts when I do this (raising arm over head)." The Doctor responds "So don't do that." I heard a complaint about an XP project: the acceptance testing for many stories were not being completed until the next iteration. This company was doing three-week iterations, where the stories themselves took three weeks to do (not including the testing time). So don't do that. My advice: smaller stories that aren't considered "done" until the acceptance testing for them is done. If a two-day story ends up taking four days, it still can be finished (including testing) before the iteration ends.

Estimates for a story should include testing time. I also recommended that they look into "Fit" and "Fitnesse" to see if they can ease the creation of their automated acceptance tests, and even get the tests done before the code to make them pass is done.