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    Agile Quality Assurance: Deliver Quality Software- Providing Great Business Value
    Agile Quality Assurance: Deliver Quality Software- Providing Great Business Value
    Agile Quality Assurance: Deliver Quality Software- Providing Great Business Value
    Ebook175 pages2 hours

    Agile Quality Assurance: Deliver Quality Software- Providing Great Business Value

    By Anthony Baah

    ()

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    About this ebook

    This book describes the activities carried on by QA team working with the empowered agile teams. Everyone on a cross-functional software development team must understand and embrace the entire team approach to quality. The book explicitly explains QA as it relates to: improving communication between QA and development, putting QA in the same iteration as development.
    The book explains how QA continues to help to reduce agile risks and cost as the product continues to change from sprint to sprint. It explains QA’s contribution to agile scaling; QA verses test plans and test cases development, QA’s involvement in the acceptance criteria development and reviews
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateJun 30, 2017
    ISBN9781543904550
    Agile Quality Assurance: Deliver Quality Software- Providing Great Business Value

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      Book preview

      Agile Quality Assurance - Anthony Baah

      Agile Quality Assurance

      Deliver Quality Software- Providing Great Business Value

      Print ISBN: 978-1-54390-454-3

      eBook ISBN: 978-1-54390-455-0

      © 2016 Anthony Baah. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

      Table of Contents

      Foreword

      Preface

      Acknowledgement

      Dedication

      About the Author

      Part I

      Overview: Agile Teams And Quality Assurance: How to Make It Work

      Chapter 1

      Agile Software Development Approach

      Chapter 2

      What QA Stands for in Agile Software Development

      Chapter 3

      The Evolving Role of QA

      Chapter 4

      QA and the Agile Development Team

      Chapter 5

      Scaling Agile QA

      Chapter 6

      Risks, Cost Reduction in Agile Software Development

      Addressing Risks and Impediments

      Project Risk Reduction

      Cost Reduction

      Part II

      Agile Methodology:

      The Big Picture of Agile QA

      Chapter 7

      The Whole Team Approach

      Chapter 8

      Agile QA vs Test Plans/Test Cases

      Chapter 9

      Agile QA to Determine if Testing is Done

      Chapter 10

      Agile QA vs AC: Development and Review

      Chapter 11

      Tracking Production Defects—Agile QA

      Defect Tracking and Reporting

      Chapter 12

      Improving Agile QA, Development Communication

      Conclusion

      Bibliography

      Appendix A

      Appendix B

      Foreword

      Integrating quality assurance (QA) practices successfully is very challenging within agile software development especially for teams getting out of waterfall arena. My involvement in the information technology (IT) sector with software development approach has become very dynamic as I moved from the waterfall methodology to agile methodology transformation. The initial idea was to derive a better approach to understanding and managing customers’ requirements making sure customers’ needs were met in a timely manner.

      An important first step for QA integration is for both the business and the agile teams to recognize that QA team is beneficial to the project (Opelt, & Beeson, 2008). Benefits include but are not limited to: finding bugs before they go to production, adding a different perceptive during development, and being advocates for critical bug fixes.

      However, it has been discovered that most project sponsors do not see these benefits. In my observation, I have found two common reasons why some business people might claim that QA practice is not necessary, they think:

      QA slows down development.

      A good set of unit tests should suffice.

      In respect to QA slowing down development, I would like to respond by indicating that speed and quality are often competing forces on a project. The key to this is to strike a balance that is right and truthful for the business needs. Certainly, quality would be critical if for instance an individual is working on a medical device that could place a life at risk in case it fails.

      In this kind of situation, it would be reasonable to expect that product development would take longer. On the other hand, if people were to work on a demo for a trade show that is not going to be released to production but would be used to attract investors, it would be appropriate to forego quality in return for speed of development.

      There is the need to have an open conversation with the key business people and stakeholders to discuss if an investment in QA is important to the business needs and the degree of that investment.

      In my experience, QA is best integrated when the need for the team is highly recognized by the project; however, the amount of resources devoted to quality is normally balanced with the needs of the business.

      As you read this book, I encourage you to pay particular attention to how, as an individual, I was actively involved in all the things that make software development a reality and special. Special attention must be paid to how QA continues to evolve in the agile software development arena and the rigid set of practices that must be adopted in order to be successful when working with agile teams.

      I have provided a detailed description of agility and have shown the activities and accomplishments of a QA team. By the end of the book, you will a have greater understanding of why companies are adopting this new software development approach and why QA has been heavily involved in the ongoing independent verification and validation (IV&V) activities to ensure that product quality is achieved to satisfy end users’ needs.

      There is definitely a place for QA role in the agile software development arena, especially a role that has to be geared toward quality management within the organization. There is one important takeaway as a reader you keep in mind. QA is not only showing interest in the quality of the final product, but also showing interest in all the intermediate work products.

      Preface

      In 2012 When I joined agile teams in software development methodology as a QA analyst, there came a point where the teams would not share information with me. The reason being they did not know where I was coming from and the purpose of my present within the agile teams. Initially, the teams felt I was there to observe and report them to management as majority of them never possibly understood QA team’s involvement in agile transformation.

      As time went on and the teams realized the value-added results from my presence as a team player, they began involving me in most of their decision-making processes in the agile software development. This whole thing explains why QA has not been fully initiated in the agile teams. Most people think QA team’s main assignment in the agile environment is to do testing and nothing else.

      QA team is definitely not a separate entity but truly speaking, it is part of a cross-functional project team. QA team is basically involved in the project right from the beginning, and the entire team works together with developers and testers on user stories and acceptance criteria development. The QA analysts work closely with the assigned agile development teams, and at times with the product owners, release managers to identify and resolve product issues and to enhance product quality as required.

      QA team like agile teams is empowered to involve significantly in supporting projects and adding value to achieving deliverable quality product always. The team’s continuous involvement in agile software development results in effective design reviews, user stories and acceptance criteria assessments, gate reviews, test documents reviews, process, tools, risk assessments, and assisting in determining definition of readiness and definition of done.

      Today, agile methodology has opened a brighter way of developing software that tends to satisfy customer needs. Incremental delivery, which is highly scalable, allows teams to work collaboratively with stakeholders. Agile methodology requires that all teams with the product owner, scrum master and QA work together with stakeholders across all business functions.

      Unlike former days, QA team continues to sit with the agile project teams and has the ability to take part in the conversations and problem solving in real time. The team has the opportunity to attend and contribute to all relevant daily standup, reviews and planning meetings and most of the sprint ceremonies. The team also works directly with clients on quality and testing processes.

      This book describes the activities carried on by QA team working with the empowered agile teams. Everyone on a cross-functional software development team must understand and embrace the entire team approach to quality. The book explicitly explains QA as it relates to: improving communication between QA and development, putting QA in the same iteration as development.

      The book explains how QA continues to help to reduce agile risks and cost as the product continues to change from sprint to sprint. It explains QA’s contribution to agile scaling; QA verses test plans and test cases development, QA’s involvement in the acceptance criteria development and reviews.

      Finally, the book shows QA team’s involvement in determining if testing is done, QA team’s involvement in tracking defects of the products, and working with the development teams on how to make things work within the agile project.

      Why I wrote This Book

      Joining the agile transformation community made me see the real world of software development approaches and the real product delivery. The agile community has developed a very significant and powerful tool that has achieved greater results. Customers are extremely happy and confident as they see incremental delivery towards the end result of a useful product.

      So far there have been several excellent books written on agile software development and most of these books have touched various aspects of testing scenarios that help testers and developers. However, most of these books address QA as just doing testing and bringing the product quality needed, but there is more to what QA team does than just testing in the agile software development arena.

      Having worked as a QA / IV&V analyst for over five years, I decided to write the book to show the other side of QA to agile software development teams, and help them become more successful in delivering quality software. This is also to help other QA professionals who have had the opportunity to work under the traditional software development methodologies to be able to transition to agile development methodologies.

      In the book, I have shown many ways and scenarios that testing can be done, which I

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