Organisations need to ensure they’re looking out for competitive threats, as well as new market developments. This is where agile comes in useful, helping identify experts and guide teams to tackle issues quickly through decision-making.

A healthy work culture plays a significant role in any workplace. It’s important to know where agility matters the most, as teams work on new products, strategic initiatives, or with clients.

Scrum meetings

In order to be agile, stand up meetings are critical, which is typically referred to as “scrum meetings”. Meetings usually take place every two weeks, at the end of the sprint. A sprint typically takes 1-4 weeks of a development lifecycle and consists of demonstrating features about the end project. Meetings should be at least an hour long, and consist of a number of goals to be achieved before the deadline date.

Before the meeting, a Product Owner will usually explain the user stories and use cases to the rest of the team, giving employees the chance to ask questions for clarification, in order to prevent confusion.

The team will then typically begin effort estimation using the method of “planning poker”. Once effort estimation is done, user stories are assigned to individual team members and work begins.

Team members can still add a new user story or task after the meeting, although new ideas must be communicated to the Product Owner if it isn’t originally a part of the plan.

Planning walls, also known as a scrum board, can be useful at this stage. A “board of progress” can easily be changed when something has been altered within a product. This ensures that all employees are aware of what stage of the development lifecycle the product is at.

Common pitfalls

Nevertheless, common pitfalls may arise which must be avoided when working towards agility. Different disciplines must be separated to steer clear of communication silos. Also, work must not be estimated by hours because it’s easy to fall into a trap of a small scope.

Another issue is reporting roadblocks, even when facing difficulties when working towards the deadline date. Reporting early is essential – in the long run, it will cost less and the end product will, without a doubt, be more effective.

New System Architecture can also be problematic, as it often involves new hardware components, different layers of an organisations IT infrastructure, as well as software applications that may be unfamiliar. In-house and third-party applications must be able to be built on, and security must be implemented accordingly.

Not forgetting, testers must test before the code. It’s not all about ensuring the code is stable and working properly, it’s about being focused on achieving the smallest thing possible in order for a test to pass.

As long as a structure is in place, projects are planned properly and communicated well, success is reviewed, and important aspects are adjusted when needed, then you should reap those benefits when climbing towards agility!

Written by Leah Alger

The post Climbing towards achieving agility appeared first on DevOps Online North America.

Marway has over 10 years’ experience as a software testing professional and is extremely passionate about quality assurance, with his key principle being “putting customers first”. Taking this approach helps him tailor his strategy, with the customer at the forefront of the journey taken to improve quality.

The Economist Group is the leading source of analysis on international business and world affairs. They deliver information through a range of formats, from newspapers and magazines to conferences and electronic services.

“What ties us together is the objectivity of our opinion, the originality of our insight, and our advocacy of economic and political freedom around the world,” revealed Marway.

‘Reflecting on overall system quality’

“As QA manager for the Economist, I form a centre of excellence and execute our QA practices globally providing services to our cross-functional product teams. The key to my role is reflecting on overall system quality.”

Marway’s general day starts with reading new articles around changes in the testing area and also world news. He is a firm believer that you have to always be willing to expand your horizons and in this field of work if you stay standing in one point you will get left behind.

He continued: “I own and coordinate the quality assurance of our business-to-technology relationships, and create innovative solutions to deliver high business value. My role is hands-on with day-to-day project operations; being involved in the finer detail is key to me.

“I believe that for me to assign a task to my team I must understand how to execute it myself; therefore, I can implement improvements more successfully. I am an early riser; this is when I’m most productive and it gives me time to plan my day before the meetings kick in!”

The Economist’s culture is built on digital vision as this puts the customer, products, and services they engage with at the heart of everything they do.

‘Customer focus, collaboration and innovation’

“We have created values based on outcomes, customer focus, collaboration and innovation that we live by and are able to demonstrate. At the Economist we have more of a software company mentality to the business and learn from the likes of Amazon, eBay and Google,” added Marway.

What he enjoys the most about his job is what the future holds: “You can feel that change is in the air; more companies are now progressing with agile, scrum, DevOps and continuous delivery. The key focus for many companies is delivering on new business value faster,” he revealed.

He believes “software can now be built and released far more quickly than it was in the past. This has had a huge impact on old testing strategies; this is where the future is exciting. If QA strategies are not progressive then QA professionals will get left behind.”

According to Marway, the cost of delivering poor quality software is rising and key examples in the news portray the impact to company revenue (e.g. Apple security flaw in November 2017). As a result, companies need better quality assurance; the QA manager is key in this new software-driven world.

He also noted the future of the QA manager role is ultimately dependent on how development frameworks move forward, and as DevOps takes hold, more and more companies are moving to a continuous testing model.

Written by Leah Alger

The post QA Manager shares his tailored strategies appeared first on DevOps Online North America.