agile testing for distributed teams and large orgs

SQDG – Calgary

October 2014

With input from Lisa Crispin

Agile Testing - 2009 More Agile Testing

Oct. 2014 www.agiletester.ca

www.janetgregory.ca

@janetgregoryca

janet@agiletester.ca

Let’s learn a bit about your experiences

- Different cities, same time zone (or 1 hr. apart) - Time zones more than 7 hrs difference - More than 3 remote teams - Less than 100 people - Larger than 1,000 employees - Larger than 5,000 - Others?

What are some issues implementing agile

large organizations or distributed teams?

• Cost savings

• Mergers & acquisitions

• Remote availability

• Lack of expertise

in-house

• Able to hire the ‘right’ people ◦ Independent of where they live

• Leverage time zones to your advantage

• More diversity

• Extra communication efforts

• Time zone differences

• Dependencies

• Less productive

• Organizational controls

• Working with third parties

• Involving customers

• Managing dependencies

• ERP system integration

Distributed teams and large organizations mean cultural issues. Many teams just don’t

take it into consideration. 10

Norms & values Language

Infrastructure challenges

History, habits

Interactions

It’s relatively simple for a co-located team to adapt to agile, make the values’ their own,

and follow the principles.

• Lack of trust

• Lack of face time

• Splitting work between teams

• Collaboration / Communication

Let’s talk about tools & practices for communication & collaboration 15

• Collaboration means ... ◦ Working together to find solutions, etc.

• Communication means ... sharing ◦ Ideas, information, decisions, solutions, etc.

◦ Understand the media

◦ Know the audience

• Set up communication channels so all team members have access to ◦ decisions made

◦ planning sessions

◦ meeting notes

• Lowest common denominator for communication

• Email ◦ Broadcast, individual, follow-up on

conversations

• Photos – task boards, smart boards

• Videos

Remember .....

• Emails do not show emotions and can be misinterpreted

• Telephone

• Chat rooms

• Wiki

• Collaborative automation tools

• Mind-mapping tools

• Remote pairing: VPN, Skype, instant messaging, desktop sharing

• Use video whenever possible ◦ Skype, Google phone, teleconferencing

• Put faces on stories and tasks ◦ Physical task boards

◦ On-line systems

◦ Use avatars

• Virtual tele-presence

• Tests provide feedback

• Tests show desired behaviour

• Developers think about testability

• Testers think about the big picture

• Multiple skill sets mean better solution

• Keep the feedback cycle short

• Remove dependencies early

Note: Feature teams are preferable with all team

members co-located

25 Picture by Augusta Evangelisti, based on diagram from Elisabeth Hendrickson

Think in Levels of Detail

• Power of 3

• Pairing

• Question

• Draw pictures

• Repeat verbal conversations in writing

• Continuous integration

• Integrate testing and coding

• Use common tools ◦ Version control

◦ Test frameworks

◦ Defect tracking

Consider operations / maintenance

teams for support of tests,

• Share information

• Share awareness of dependencies

• Keep everyone “in the loop”

• Same vision

• Same goal

• Common orientation

• Off –shore teams

• Acquired teams

• New remote team members

• Foster a learning culture ◦ Tolerate mistakes

◦ Personal safety

• Give time to experiment, to try

• Command and control

• Think – how to give confidence?

• Provide transparency

• Provide the right support ◦ For self-organizing teams

◦ Extra positions for liaison

• Schedules ◦ Overlapping times

◦ Meetings

◦ Share the pain

• Use retrospectives ◦ Identify problem areas

◦ Experiment with solutions

• Think constantly of other teams or team members

• Extend help to others

• Between management and development

• Whole team

• Small chunks of work

• Use your diverse skills

• Respect culture: yours and others

• Give teams time to experiment, learn

• Maintain discipline

• Avoid silos – geographical or functional

Collaborate to innovate

Innovate to collaborate

Use retrospectives to improve!!

Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams

More Agile Testing: Learning Journeys for the Whole Team

By Janet Gregory and Lisa Crispin www.agiletester.ca

Contact info

www.janetgregory.ca Email: janet@agiletester.ca

Twitter: janetgregoryca

• Practices for Scaling Lean & Agile Development: Large, Multisite and Offshore Product Development with Large-Scale Scrum, Craig Larman and Bas Vodde, Addison-Wesley, 2010

• Agile Software Development in the Large: Diving into the Deep, Jutta Eckstein, Dorset House, 2004

• Fearless Change: Patterns for introducing new ideas, Linda Rising and Mary Lynn Manns

• Agile-testing@yahoogroups.com

• Pictures taken on safari in Kenya and Tanzania with Nature Encounters Tours,

• www.lisacrispin.com

• Rothman Consulting Group, Inc. Vol 9, #5: Building Trust in any Team

• http://leadingsoftwaretestinginanagileworld.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/distributed-agile-test-teams-making-it.html

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