from zero to agile: the learnings of a first-time quality analyst

A g i l e B r a z i l 2 0 1 4

FROM ZERO TO AGILEThe Learnings of a First-Time Quality Analyst

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About Me

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Tom Clement Oketch

QA Consultant

ThoughtWorks

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@tc_oketch github.com/tomclement

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What Is This Talk About

■ Experience Report

■ Reflections about the transition from traditional to Agile ~ and the Quality Analyst role

■ Learnings as well as new challenges

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Learnings…

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The Learnings…

■ Building quality in right from the start

■ Quality is the shared responsibility of the team

■ The concept of teams

■ Feedback is core

■ Automation and reproducibility

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Quality Right From The Start

■ Quality has to be built in right from the start

■ The quality assurance process starts on day one (not a gatekeeper role)

■ QAs have to be involved in the Inceptions + discovery

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It’s About Everyone

■ Quality is the shared responsibility of the entire team

■ A bad solution is the result of failure of the entire team

■ There are no good cops and bad cops

■ Success is for everyone. Failure is for everyone

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The Concept Of Teams

■ The team works harmoniously towards a common goal and depends on each of its members to achieve that common goal

■ There is only one goal for all members of the team

■ The priorities for everyone are the same (delivering value to the client)

■ Forget developers versus testers or BA versus client

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Feedback Is Core

■ Think of testing as feedback - it is essential

■ Has to be fast and frequent

■ The process has to be flexible enough to incorporate feedback (there must be actual loops).

■ Feedback on its own is not a useful tool. It must be acted upon

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Automation And Reproducibility

■ Since we are always testing, we must make the process effective

■ Frequent feedback through testing means copious amounts of work - it has to be automated

■ And for it to be automated, it has to be reproducible.

■ This means going a step further to ensure that not only actions performed by the system are reproducible but even the process followed to build it >> thus, infrastructure as code

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It’s not all ideal

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There Are Challenges

■ It is easier to talk about agile than it is to actually practise it. Appending agile to a term does not make it so

■ Unlearning is never easy. And even if we here are successful in doing so, there is a whole world out there that still has to be discipled.

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Moving Forward13

Moving Forward

■ We have to do a better job of practising what we say, even when it takes a significant amount of learning and unlearning to do so

■ We have to actually care about the solutions we are providing and about our clients > if we are going to strive to provide value for them

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Final Remarks

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Final Remarks

■ So how much of this is true for you? Are you still following the agile process that you set out to do?

■ Are you proud of the job you are doing for your clients?

■ If not, why? And what are you going to do about it?

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We can call it agile or any other name - but the essence is doing everything to provide the best value for our clients

and users

THANK YOU

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@tc_oketch