diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -28,20 +28,15 @@
 
 ### Required services
 
-Unit tests may require a running celery broker on your system (rabbitmq by
-default). You can set the `BROKER_URL` environment variable to specify the url
-to be used.
-
-If you do not want to use your system's broker (or do not want to have one
-running), you shold use [[ https://github.com/jd/pifpaf | pifpaf ]] to take
-care of that for you.
-
+Unit tests that require a running celery broker uses an in memory
+broker/result backend by default, but you can configure it to use
+true broker by settig `CELERY_BROKER_URL` and `CELERY_RESULT_BACKEND`
+environment variables.
 
 For example:
 
 ```
-$ pifpaf --env-prefix PG run postgresql -- \
-  pifpaf --env-prefix AMQP run rabbitmq nosetests
+$ CELERY_BROKER_URL=amqp://localhost pifpaf run postgresql nosetests
 
 .....................................
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
diff --git a/swh/scheduler/tests/celery_testing.py b/swh/scheduler/tests/celery_testing.py
--- a/swh/scheduler/tests/celery_testing.py
+++ b/swh/scheduler/tests/celery_testing.py
@@ -1,27 +1,13 @@
 import os
-import urllib
 
 from celery import current_app
 
 
-CELERY_BROKER_PROTOCOLS = ['amqp', 'redis', 'sqs']
-
-
 def setup_celery():
-    broker_url = None
-    if 'BROKER_URL' in os.environ:
-        broker_url = os.environ['BROKER_URL']
-
-    elif 'PIFPAF_URLS' in os.environ:
-        urls = os.environ['PIFPAF_URLS'].split(';')
-        urls = [x.replace('rabbit://', 'amqp://') for x in urls]
-        for url in urls:
-            scheme = urllib.parse.splittype(url)[0]
-            if scheme in CELERY_BROKER_PROTOCOLS:
-                broker_url = url
-                break
-    if broker_url:
-        current_app.conf.broker_url = broker_url
+    broker_url = os.environ.get('CELERY_BROKER_URL', 'memory://')
+    result_backend = os.environ.get('CELERY_RESULT_BACKEND', 'cache+memory://')
+    current_app.conf.broker_url = broker_url
+    current_app.conf.result_backend = result_backend
 
 
 class CeleryTestFixture: