ISTQB Glossary — Agile Testing and the Agile Tester Extension

In plain English

Short sprints, close collaboration, working software over documentation, and continuous change.

From real testing work

The regression pack runs on every merge to main and blocks the deploy when it fails. Agile Development is the piece of that setup being named here — and the cost is not writing the tests, it is keeping them green when the UI changes next sprint.

- name: Regression suite
  run: npx playwright test --grep @regression
- name: Publish report
  if: always()
  uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
  with: { name: playwright-report, path: playwright-report/ }

In plain English

The 2001 document that started agile: individuals over process, working software over docs, collaboration over contracts, response to change over following a plan.

From real testing work

Two weeks before a release the test manager compares planned versus executed cases, open defects by severity, and remaining effort. Agile Manifesto is where that number comes from — and the exam cares that it is used to inform a decision, not just published.

In plain English

Testing tailored to agile: short cycles, in-sprint automation, early involvement, whole-team quality.

From real testing work

The regression pack runs on every merge to main and blocks the deploy when it fails. Agile Test Approach is the piece of that setup being named here — and the cost is not writing the tests, it is keeping them green when the UI changes next sprint.

- name: Regression suite
  run: npx playwright test --grep @regression
- name: Publish report
  if: always()
  uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
  with: { name: playwright-report, path: playwright-report/ }

In plain English

A 2x2 grid mapping tests: unit/component (Q1), functional (Q2), exploratory/UAT (Q3), non-functional (Q4).

From real testing work

Before a release the team books two 90-minute sessions against the new payments screen. Agile Test Quadrants is what they are doing: no scripted steps, a written charter ("probe refund handling on expired cards"), notes taken as they go, and a debrief that turns findings into defect reports.

In plain English

The soft skills the syllabus asks of testers on agile teams: adaptable, collaborative, curious, unblockable.

From real testing work

In a two-week sprint the team tracks work on a board, agrees what "done" means before pulling a story, and reviews the outcome in the retro. Agile Tester Mindset is the agile artefact or practice involved, and testers are expected to shape it rather than receive it.

In plain English

Discuss the story, distill acceptance tests, develop code + tests, demo to stakeholders.

From real testing work

A story reads "As a returning customer I can reuse a saved card." Before estimating it, the three amigos add acceptance criteria for an expired card and a card removed from the account. ATDD Cycle is the artefact or link involved, and it is what lets you prove later that every requirement has at least one test.

In plain English

A regular meeting to break down, estimate and prioritize upcoming backlog items.

From real testing work

A requirements review on a "forgot password" story raises that the acceptance criteria never say what happens to an unverified email address. That is backlog refinement in practice — an issue found in a document, before a single line of code exists, at a fraction of the cost of finding it in UAT.

In plain English

Everyone drops their normal work and hunts bugs together for a few hours.

From real testing work

A tester files: "Checkout returns HTTP 500 when the cart contains a gift card and a subscription." Steps, expected, actual, environment, build number. Bug Bash is one of the fields or states in that workflow, and getting the term right is what makes the report actionable for the developer picking it up at 9am.

In plain English

A graph that goes down each day as the team finishes work — projects when the sprint will complete.

From real testing work

In a two-week sprint the team tracks work on a board, agrees what "done" means before pulling a story, and reviews the outcome in the retro. Burn-Down Chart is the agile artefact or practice involved, and testers are expected to shape it rather than receive it.

In plain English

A graph with two lines: total scope and work completed — makes scope changes visible.

From real testing work

In a two-week sprint the team tracks work on a board, agrees what "done" means before pulling a story, and reviews the outcome in the retro. Burn-Up Chart is the agile artefact or practice involved, and testers are expected to shape it rather than receive it.

In plain English

Give the team fast, ongoing signals — reviews, tests, monitoring, retrospectives.

From real testing work

A requirements review on a "forgot password" story raises that the acceptance criteria never say what happens to an unverified email address. That is continuous feedback in practice — an issue found in a document, before a single line of code exists, at a fraction of the cost of finding it in UAT.

In plain English

Pay a large pool of external testers to hit your product on real devices.

From real testing work

The Android app works perfectly on the team's Pixel and crashes on a three-year-old budget device on a 3G connection. Crowd Testing is what keeps that from reaching production: a device matrix chosen from real analytics, not from what is on people's desks.

In plain English

A tool that ties Gherkin scenarios to executable code (step definitions).

From real testing work

The regression pack runs on every merge to main and blocks the deploy when it fails. Cucumber Framework is the piece of that setup being named here — and the cost is not writing the tests, it is keeping them green when the UI changes next sprint.

- name: Regression suite
  run: npx playwright test --grep @regression
- name: Publish report
  if: always()
  uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
  with: { name: playwright-report, path: playwright-report/ }

In plain English

The 15-minute daily meeting where each team member says what they did, will do and any blockers.

From real testing work

Two weeks before a release the test manager compares planned versus executed cases, open defects by severity, and remaining effort. Daily Stand-up is where that number comes from — and the exam cares that it is used to inform a decision, not just published.

In plain English

An Agile team’s shared checklist for ‘this work is really done, including tests, docs and deployment’.

From real testing work

A story reads "As a returning customer I can reuse a saved card." Before estimating it, the three amigos add acceptance criteria for an expired card and a card removed from the account. Definition of Done is the artefact or link involved, and it is what lets you prove later that every requirement has at least one test.

In plain English

An Agile team’s shared checklist for ‘this story is clear enough to work on’.

From real testing work

A story reads "As a returning customer I can reuse a saved card." Before estimating it, the three amigos add acceptance criteria for an expired card and a card removed from the account. Definition of Ready is the artefact or link involved, and it is what lets you prove later that every requirement has at least one test.

In plain English

The self-organizing, cross-functional group (devs + testers + designers) that builds the increment.

From real testing work

The regression pack runs on every merge to main and blocks the deploy when it fails. Development Team is the piece of that setup being named here — and the cost is not writing the tests, it is keeping them green when the UI changes next sprint.

- name: Regression suite
  run: npx playwright test --grep @regression
- name: Publish report
  if: always()
  uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
  with: { name: playwright-report, path: playwright-report/ }

In plain English

"Done for real" — including tests, review, and deploy — not just "code written".

From real testing work

A requirements review on a "forgot password" story raises that the acceptance criteria never say what happens to an unverified email address. That is done-done in practice — an issue found in a document, before a single line of code exists, at a fraction of the cost of finding it in UAT.

In plain English

Whiteboard exercise that turns a story into rules and concrete examples.

From real testing work

A story reads "As a returning customer I can reuse a saved card." Before estimating it, the three amigos add acceptance criteria for an expired card and a card removed from the account. Example Mapping is the artefact or link involved, and it is what lets you prove later that every requirement has at least one test.

In plain English

An agile method focused on engineering practices: TDD, pair programming, refactoring, CI, small releases.

From real testing work

The regression pack runs on every merge to main and blocks the deploy when it fails. Extreme Programming is the piece of that setup being named here — and the cost is not writing the tests, it is keeping them green when the UI changes next sprint.

- name: Regression suite
  run: npx playwright test --grep @regression
- name: Publish report
  if: always()
  uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
  with: { name: playwright-report, path: playwright-report/ }

In plain English

A user-facing capability of the product, bigger than a story but smaller than an epic.

From real testing work

In a two-week sprint the team tracks work on a board, agrees what "done" means before pulling a story, and reviews the outcome in the retro. Feature is the agile artefact or practice involved, and testers are expected to shape it rather than receive it.

In plain English

The Given-When-Then syntax file format that Cucumber-family tools execute as tests.

From real testing work

A requirements review on a "forgot password" story raises that the acceptance criteria never say what happens to an unverified email address. That is gherkin in practice — an issue found in a document, before a single line of code exists, at a fraction of the cost of finding it in UAT.

In plain English

The BDD scenario template: Given (context), When (action), Then (expected result).

From real testing work

A story reads "As a returning customer I can reuse a saved card." Before estimating it, the three amigos add acceptance criteria for an expired card and a card removed from the account. Given-When-Then is the artefact or link involved, and it is what lets you prove later that every requirement has at least one test.

In plain English

A stabilization sprint dedicated to bug fixes and non-functional testing before release.

From real testing work

A tester files: "Checkout returns HTTP 500 when the cart contains a gift card and a subscription." Steps, expected, actual, environment, build number. Hardening Sprint is one of the fields or states in that workflow, and getting the term right is what makes the report actionable for the developer picking it up at 9am.

In plain English

The working, tested, potentially shippable piece of product delivered at the end of a sprint.

From real testing work

In a two-week sprint the team tracks work on a board, agrees what "done" means before pulling a story, and reviews the outcome in the retro. Increment is the agile artefact or practice involved, and testers are expected to shape it rather than receive it.

In plain English

The six-letter test for a good user story: Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, Testable.

From real testing work

A story reads "As a returning customer I can reuse a saved card." Before estimating it, the three amigos add acceptance criteria for an expired card and a card removed from the account. INVEST is the artefact or link involved, and it is what lets you prove later that every requirement has at least one test.

In plain English

A fixed-length development cycle that delivers a working increment (a.k.a. sprint in Scrum).

From real testing work

In a two-week sprint the team tracks work on a board, agrees what "done" means before pulling a story, and reviews the outcome in the retro. Iteration is the agile artefact or practice involved, and testers are expected to shape it rather than receive it.

In plain English

Same idea as sprint planning — pick items and plan how to build them for one iteration.

From real testing work

The regression pack runs on every merge to main and blocks the deploy when it fails. Iteration Planning is the piece of that setup being named here — and the cost is not writing the tests, it is keeping them green when the UI changes next sprint.

- name: Regression suite
  run: npx playwright test --grep @regression
- name: Publish report
  if: always()
  uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
  with: { name: playwright-report, path: playwright-report/ }

In plain English

Scrum, but stretched to many teams working on one product.

From real testing work

The regression pack runs on every merge to main and blocks the deploy when it fails. LeSS is the piece of that setup being named here — and the cost is not writing the tests, it is keeping them green when the UI changes next sprint.

- name: Regression suite
  run: npx playwright test --grep @regression
- name: Publish report
  if: always()
  uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
  with: { name: playwright-report, path: playwright-report/ }

In plain English

A ranking system: must, should, could, won’t.

From real testing work

A story reads "As a returning customer I can reuse a saved card." Before estimating it, the three amigos add acceptance criteria for an expired card and a card removed from the account. MoSCoW Prioritization is the artefact or link involved, and it is what lets you prove later that every requirement has at least one test.

In plain English

Two testers (or a tester and dev) at one screen exploring together.

From real testing work

Where you meet this in real work: during a sprint, pair testing is the piece of vocabulary a tester reaches for when explaining a decision to a developer or a stakeholder — for example, justifying in a stand-up why a specific check belongs in this build rather than the next. One drives, one observes and asks questions — swap often.

In plain English

Also called Three Amigos — dev + tester + business talk each story through before it's built.

From real testing work

A story reads "As a returning customer I can reuse a saved card." Before estimating it, the three amigos add acceptance criteria for an expired card and a card removed from the account. Power of Three is the artefact or link involved, and it is what lets you prove later that every requirement has at least one test.

In plain English

The prioritized, evolving list of everything the product might ever need — owned by the Product Owner.

From real testing work

A story reads "As a returning customer I can reuse a saved card." Before estimating it, the three amigos add acceptance criteria for an expired card and a card removed from the account. Product Backlog is the artefact or link involved, and it is what lets you prove later that every requirement has at least one test.

In plain English

The multi-sprint plan showing which backlog items will ship in which release.

From real testing work

A requirements review on a "forgot password" story raises that the acceptance criteria never say what happens to an unverified email address. That is release plan in practice — an issue found in a document, before a single line of code exists, at a fraction of the cost of finding it in UAT.

In plain English

Deciding which features go in which release across several sprints.

From real testing work

Two weeks before a release the test manager compares planned versus executed cases, open defects by severity, and remaining effort. Release Planning is where that number comes from — and the exam cares that it is used to inform a decision, not just published.

In plain English

A last-mile pass on the release candidate — smoke, regression, non-functional spot checks.

From real testing work

A fix goes in for a broken invoice total. The failed test is re-run to confirm the fix, and the surrounding billing suite is re-run to check nothing else moved. Release Testing is one half of that pair — mixing the two up is the single most common vocabulary slip in Chapter 2.

In plain English

A scoring formula: (Reach × Impact × Confidence) ÷ Effort.

From real testing work

The regression pack runs on every merge to main and blocks the deploy when it fails. RICE Prioritization is the piece of that setup being named here — and the cost is not writing the tests, it is keeping them green when the UI changes next sprint.

- name: Regression suite
  run: npx playwright test --grep @regression
- name: Publish report
  if: always()
  uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
  with: { name: playwright-report, path: playwright-report/ }

In plain English

A method for running agile across many teams and many products.

From real testing work

The regression pack runs on every merge to main and blocks the deploy when it fails. SAFe is the piece of that setup being named here — and the cost is not writing the tests, it is keeping them green when the UI changes next sprint.

- name: Regression suite
  run: npx playwright test --grep @regression
- name: Publish report
  if: always()
  uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
  with: { name: playwright-report, path: playwright-report/ }

In plain English

The servant-leader who removes impediments and coaches the team on Scrum.

From real testing work

In a two-week sprint the team tracks work on a board, agrees what "done" means before pulling a story, and reviews the outcome in the retro. Scrum Master is the agile artefact or practice involved, and testers are expected to shape it rather than receive it.

In plain English

A blend of Scrum and Kanban.

From real testing work

In a two-week sprint the team tracks work on a board, agrees what "done" means before pulling a story, and reviews the outcome in the retro. Scrumban is the agile artefact or practice involved, and testers are expected to shape it rather than receive it.

In plain English

Five patterns for breaking big stories into small ones.

From real testing work

Before a Black Friday sale, the team models 5,000 concurrent shoppers against staging. SPIDR is the part of that exercise that answers a specific question — not "is it fast", but "at what point does it stop being fast, and what breaks first".

// k6 scenario
export const options = {
  stages: [
    { duration: "2m", target: 500 },
    { duration: "5m", target: 5000 },
    { duration: "2m", target: 0 },
  ],
  thresholds: { http_req_duration: ["p(95)<800"] },
};

In plain English

A short, timeboxed investigation to answer a technical or design question.

From real testing work

Before a Black Friday sale, the team models 5,000 concurrent shoppers against staging. Spike is the part of that exercise that answers a specific question — not "is it fast", but "at what point does it stop being fast, and what breaks first".

// k6 scenario
export const options = {
  stages: [
    { duration: "2m", target: 500 },
    { duration: "5m", target: 5000 },
    { duration: "2m", target: 0 },
  ],
  thresholds: { http_req_duration: ["p(95)<800"] },
};

In plain English

The tasks and stories the team commits to during a sprint, owned by the Development Team.

From real testing work

Two weeks before a release the test manager compares planned versus executed cases, open defects by severity, and remaining effort. Sprint Backlog is where that number comes from — and the exam cares that it is used to inform a decision, not just published.

In plain English

A wall of sticky notes that lays out user stories by user journey (top axis) and release (bottom axis).

From real testing work

Staging has last quarter's anonymised production snapshot, seeded with fifteen deliberately broken accounts. Story Mapping covers how that is created, versioned and restored — because a suite that passes only on Tuesday's data is not a suite you can trust.

make db-reset && make seed-fixtures ENV=staging
# fixtures are versioned with the tests, in the same commit

In plain English

A story for tech debt / infra / plumbing work — no direct business value but enables future stories.

From real testing work

A requirements review on a "forgot password" story raises that the acceptance criteria never say what happens to an unverified email address. That is technical user story in practice — an issue found in a document, before a single line of code exists, at a fraction of the cost of finding it in UAT.

In plain English

The tester is not the coder — objectivity comes from independence.

From real testing work

Where you meet this in real work: during a sprint, test independence is the piece of vocabulary a tester reaches for when explaining a decision to a developer or a stakeholder — for example, justifying in a stand-up why a specific check belongs in this build rather than the next. Syllabus lists five levels of independence: none, dev-team, separate team, external, external + independent.

In plain English

Red-green-refactor: write a failing test, make it pass with the simplest code, then clean up.

From real testing work

The regression pack runs on every merge to main and blocks the deploy when it fails. Test-Driven Development is the piece of that setup being named here — and the cost is not writing the tests, it is keeping them green when the UI changes next sprint.

- name: Regression suite
  run: npx playwright test --grep @regression
- name: Publish report
  if: always()
  uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
  with: { name: playwright-report, path: playwright-report/ }

In plain English

Write the test before the code — the umbrella idea behind TDD, ATDD and BDD.

From real testing work

The regression pack runs on every merge to main and blocks the deploy when it fails. Test-First Programming is the piece of that setup being named here — and the cost is not writing the tests, it is keeping them green when the UI changes next sprint.

- name: Regression suite
  run: npx playwright test --grep @regression
- name: Publish report
  if: always()
  uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
  with: { name: playwright-report, path: playwright-report/ }

In plain English

Quality is everyone's job — testers, devs, PO, ops all own it together.

From real testing work

After a bad release the team runs a root-cause session and changes the definition of done rather than adding more tests at the end. Whole-Team Approach sits on that side of the fence: preventive and process-oriented, distinct from executing tests against a build.

In plain English

Do the shortest, most valuable work first.

From real testing work

Where you meet this in real work: during a sprint, wsjf is the piece of vocabulary a tester reaches for when explaining a decision to a developer or a stakeholder — for example, justifying in a stand-up why a specific check belongs in this build rather than the next. WSJF is the SAFe Program Increment prioritization method.