Agile Quality Test Strategy
This chapter will focus on the overall quality test strategy and its importance in an Agile world. Most Agile product development teams develop on cadence and release on demand. An Agile release may consist of multiple program increments (PIs). Being able
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7 Agile Quality Test Strategy Shift Left This chapter will focus on the overall quality test strategy and its importance in an Agile world. Most Agile product development teams develop on cadence and release on demand. An Agile release may consist of multiple program increments (PIs). Being able to fully test new features and ensure there is no regression in existing ones is always challenging. A clear test strategy should be an integral part of every new feature. Ensuring a quality architect (or a very senior quality-passionate technical individual) is included in conversations when a new feature is discussed will be necessary to get the proper level of attention on this very important topic. Quality engineers are able to lead the team in understanding how much and what level of testing should be planned for a given feature and a release. These types of discussions at the scrum-team and release-team levels will guide the team in creating appropriate quality-impacting stories and allow for more accurate estimation to be done for every story and feature.
© CA 2019 N. Nader-Rezvani, An Executive’s Guide to Software Quality in an Agile Organization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3751-9_7
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Chapter 7 | Agile Quality Test Strategy
Role of a QA Engineer Before we get into the details of test strategy, it is important to highlight that often quality from a QA perspective suffers more than quality from a developer’s perspective. That could be the result of a poor ratio in team compositions, old organizational structures, balancing a new team structure, imbalanced pay, or lack of QA leadership during initial stages. In the world of Agile, you may have seen controversies about the role of a QA engineer. I have seen examples where QA is used synonymously with a tester. Some believe that since every developer should test his/her own code, there is no need for a QA on a scrum team. Some bad decisions have actually been made where companies got rid of all QA engineers when embarking on the Agile journey, only to find out soon after that they had created a huge skill gap! I am a firm believer that QA does a lot more than just test and report defects. They play a customer-advocate role and take pride in breaking the code! In most organizations I have been in, there are certain individuals who, even with a strong coding background, prefer to break the code before our customers do so! They are proud of their QA profession and work very well with the developers on their scrum team to promote the test-first approach. They should be considered as an equal member of a scrum team and not be viewed as second-class citizens. It is important for the internal organizational structure to function seamlessly so that we can continue to focus on our customers. A well-designed structure in any organization allows for stronger accountability, breaking down barriers, and more efficient workflow. With that, we can expect superior and highquality products that deliver value to our customers and lead to better sales and increased revenue.
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