Software Testing Blog | Zenergy Technologies (3)

Building a Quality Software QA Team: Quality at Every Level

In thelast blog, we made the case that everyone on theagileteam owns quality and provided some ideas on how team dynamics can help build quality into the product. In today’s post, we will discusssome additional ideas on how your software QA teams can work together and ensure quality is on the forefront of everyone’s mind when building a product. As we noted in our previous post,waterfall tended to equate testing and quality, which can lead to all kinds of bad habits – the main one being...

May 31, 2019 qa process, Testing, quality assurance, agile team roles

Quality in Testing: Everyone's Responsibility

Once upon a time, in the land of Waterfall, the business analysts wrote the requirements, the developers coded the requirements and the Testers tested the requirements. Each of these people sat in his/her ivory tower, um, silo and did that which they had always done since the beginning of time.Quality was thought to be synonymous with testing, and therefore was considered to exist solely in the Tester’s realm. Present Day Quality Fast forward to today, on an agile team and the...

May 1, 2019 agile technique, being agile, Testing, agile team roles

Moving from doing agile to BEING agile

Are you an experienced tester who has recently joined an agile team? Maybe you have testing experience but until now it has only been on traditional waterfall projects. Are you going through the motions with this new way of doing things but don’t feel like you’re completely invested? Do you even feel like you’re adding value to your team? Often times, when a company begins their agile transformation they think they are BEING agile when in fact they are justdoing it. Being agile takes...

November 26, 2018 agile methodology, agile technique, Agile, being agile, agile team roles

The 4 Keys to Effectively Working with Agile Teams

Key Takeaways A Different Take – 4 Keys 1. Starting Properly 2. Committing to Agility 3. Collaboration tools are important, but… 4. Compensation structure and incentives Wrapping Up My first piece of advice is this: DON’T DO IT!!! Probably the worst possible setup for a team is spreading them around the country, world, or the universe and expecting them to behave and deliver like a close, cohesive team. My second bit of advice for those of you that blame it onmanagementand say you...

October 22, 2018 Agile, agile teams, agile project manager, agile team roles

8 Rules of Agile Architecture

Wow, the title sounds quite bombastic, doesn’t it? And I sound quite full of myself, don’t I? Well…perhaps I am. Nevertheless, I want to go on record withsome simple and pragmatic advice foragileorganizations and teams when they’re trying to sort out how architecture fits in agile contexts. 1. Allow Architecture to Emerge 2. A Picture is Worth… 3. Treat it Like a Product 4. Everyone is an Architect and Everyone Owns the Architecture 5. Keep it Simple and Connect to the Customer 6....

May 14, 2018 Agile, agile UX

Three Key Agile-Centric Metrics

In one of our previous blogs the term “just enough” was used to portray the idea that we (whether you’re in a testing, dev, or management roll) should help everyone on the team to resist gold plating and actively help and encourage each other to do just enough. And that by doing the “right just enough” we are BEING agile. But why? You may ask, is this term so important? Because it plays into the team’s overall velocity. My friend and colleague, Shaun Bradshaw, and I were recently...

March 15, 2018 agile methodology, agile technique, Agile, metrics

A Case for Quality... We Don't Need No Stinkin' QA

After 20 years in quality assurance, I’m still surprised to hear about companies that don’t have formal QA processes. Even more surprising are the companies that say having a QA function is not necessary. Maybe they are a newer tech company with a tiny, tight-knit development team and the software complexity hasn’t reached a level where defects reach a critical mass or perhaps the company doesn’t support a formal process even though it’s happening in some manner. For me, it is akin to saying...

December 11, 2017 qa process, unit testing, Testing, agile team roles, user acceptance testing, SDLC, shift left, qa budget, finding bugs in code, test case, qa process flow, regression test suite, qa process in agile, agile implementation

How an Old Test Lead Got Agile

1. Seek Out Advice from the Experts, Inside and Outside 2. Communicate Often and To a Wide Audience 3. Know What the Risks Are and Call Them Out ASAP 4. Get to Know Your Product Owner 5. Don’t Get Caught Up in What You Think You Know 6. Get to Know Your Developers 7. No More Multi-Tasking 8. Embrace the Retrospective 9. Slow Down (a Little) and Enjoy the Ride I spent eighteen years testing before I ever worked withagile. When I suddenly found myself transitioning to an agile team...

August 17, 2017 Agile, waterfall to agile, agile leadership roles

Pair-Coaching

Pair-Coaching in Agile Coaching Some Resistance to Pair-Coaching It’s Not Just the Teams Changing your Lens Adaptive Pair-Coaching Strategy One Voice Wrapping Up I’ve been doing more pairing lately. Much more. But, more specifically pair-coaching. I’ve been pairing in my conference workshops and talks, quite a bit, with Mary Thorn on theagilequality and testing side of things. I’m also pairing with Josh Anderson on our Meta-cast and I’ve done a few presentations with him. Very...

May 11, 2017 agile methodology, agile technique, Agile, pair-coaching

Caught in the Middle: How To Balance Agile Team Needs with Wayward Management Requests

Your Manager Asks for a Massive Test Plan During a Two-week Sprint Your Manager Asks for Resource Estimates for the Next 6 Months Your Manager Asks for a Detailed, Metrics-driven Daily Status Report Your Manger Thinks This is Doing Agile Wrapping Up

April 17, 2017 Agile

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