Month: November 2016

Creating a Valuable Signoff Process

~ Adam ~ Leave a comment

We all have them, a series of tests which need to be run before a build is considered good enough to be released to a customer. You may have different scripts for different stages of release (Alpha/UAT/Live), you may have different processes depending on the severity of any bugs found. Whatever your process I’m sure we can all agree that your signoff process is one of the most important pieces of your development puzzle and one of the most vital to get right in order to avoid issues further down the line.

But what makes a signoff process good? These are the things I believe a good signoff process needs to achieve:

  • Detect all unknown bugs in all critical features
  • Quick and easy to complete

Clearly these are at odds, if you want to find every bug then you’ll need to invest significant time! Let’s look at why each of these are so important before we try to find a solution.

The first one is fairly obvious, the most critical parts of your system are the ones which will generate the most urgent Support Tickets. In order to minimise those stressful late nights we need to validate that those areas of the system are as robust as possible.

But why the speed? Why not simply run through every test and permutation before each release (assuming you don’t mind driving your QA team mad)? In this world of Agile Development and quick turnarounds it’s becoming more important than ever to test and release quickly. After all, I mentioned in my previous post about Sprint Planning I suggested that you should aim to both develop and test your new features in each Sprint. In order to maximise your development potential you need to make your signoff process as efficient as possible.

So how do we do this? The key is to target your testing effectively. You need to work with your Product Owner to identify the Critical Functionality which must not fail, these form the basis of your signoff scripts. Other areas of the system can be tested on a rotational basis or when changes are made.

This prioritisation of the most critical functionality guarantees that the vital happy paths are always tested. This leaves more time for the QA team to expand their efforts into other areas while the developers are coding new features. By targeting your signoff scripts you can guarantee a high quality build without the lengthy delays which come from a bloated signoff process.

The Importance of Testing Early

~ Adam ~ Leave a comment

I recently had a conversation with a Development Manager at a company based in Leeds. We were discussing when to involve the QA Team in a release we were planning, I argued that there was little value in wasting the QA guys’ time until we were feature complete. After all, everything was still subject to change and they’d only have to repeat those test again at a later date.

Ironically I now hold the opposite view.

If you walked up to me today and asked at what stage of development you should bring QA resource into a project I would always advise that as soon as the developers start coding it’s too late.

Your QAs are not automated test machines, I can crank out a few Selenium scripts to test a UI during my lunch hour! Your QA team are there to ensure that the features you deliver are the highest quality they possibly can be. So when does quality begin? I would argue in the design phase!

I’m currently working with a QA who, for a variety of reasons is trying to work out all a feature’s permutations eighteen months after the design was originally done. He’s documenting these, generating Functional Tests for them, and raising bugs where required. This is incredibly time consuming and takes lots of time from him, a development resource, and the Product Owner. Imagine if he’d had the opportunity to work this out before development work had begun!

The key here is to allow you Product Owner, QA, and Developer to create the spec together. The developer sets to work and the QA begins creating their functional tests, as soon as the feature is code complete your QAs are ready to go!

So, my original concern was that our testers would have to continue to test over and over again. Yes, this is a risk, however, when would you rather be alerted to any issues… as the developer is adding finishing touches, lining up buttons and tidying Unit Tests, or six weeks after they’ve finished? I know which I’d prefer!

This is where the distinction between Functional Tests and Signoff Tests becomes important. Functional Tests are used to test every permutation of a feature, to verify it against the spec, and to perform regression testing after substantial change. Signoff Scripts are to protect your critical functionality. Use your Functional Tests early to ensure that the newly created feature behaves according to spec, use your Signoff Scripts to verify your functionality before a release.

Get your QAs involved in your spec documents, organise your Sprint so they create tests while the developer codes, and get timely feedback on your features while you’re still in a position to fix them.

Measuring Sprint Velocity is Useless Unless You Ship!

~ Adam ~ Leave a comment

I’ve recently been reading The Goal by Eli Goldratt, in it Alex Rogo (the Plant Manager) boasts to an old teacher of his that the new robots they’ve installed have greatly increased their efficiency. The Yodaesque Jonah then promptly proves his data worthless and sets Alex on the path to enlightenment.

What struck me however was how clearly this mirrors the software industry. The Goal has been the go-to book for managers for years but only with the relatively recent release of books like The Phoenix Projext have the applications to software industries been recognised.

It’s a well established idea to model a software development team like a factory. Time and money goes in, features and fixes come out. In the story Alex was delighted that his robots had given him an increased efficiency for making a particular part of the process, it was only when Jonah pointed out that the robots did not result in any increase in sales that he saw the problem in his logic.

So, let’s imagine that our software business is Alex’s factory. We’ve brought in a robot to do the work of the Development Team and Sprint Velocity has gone up from 100 Story Points to 300. As the Development Manager you get to pat yourself on the back, celebrate your success, and go home at the end of the day.

But what happens to your release at the end of your Sprint? Is your product stacked up on your factory floor awaiting the next machine (perhaps your deployment or infrastructure team)? Or have you sold it and added value to your business?

This may seem like false measurement, your numbers are telling you that you’re delivering but the reality is very different. The truth however is even worse, unshipped features are the software equivalent of Work in Progress, they’re the half finished products sat on your factory floor taking up time and space. Until your business can deliver them they’ll continue to come back and haunt you, injecting unplanned work into your Sprints and sucking time out of your Development Team.

So, If your Sprint Velocity measurements only take into account the work pushed through your Development Team then you’re not measuring the value you’re adding to the business, you’re making the same mistake as Rogo and only considering one part of the system. You may be getting great results, but are you helping achieve the goal!?

The Single Biggest Standup Mistake

~ Adam ~ 1 Comment

We all do them, Daily Standups are the quintessential activity of a Scrum Team. Each morning the group gathers, discusses what they did yesterday, and what they plan to do today. The tone is monotone and everyone sips away at their thick treacle-like coffee in an attempt to remain upright while a few of the younger developers attempt to conceal hangovers which would force anyone of your advancing years to cower under a desk.

For me the daily stand up is one of the easiest Scrum practices to implement and therefore is often forced upon a team so they can claim that they’re “agile”.

As with many Scrum components the value is not in the compulsory attendance but in the enlightenment when a member of team suddenly has a lightbulb moment and understands why a practice is of use to them.

For me that moment came when I realised that the Yesterday and Today section of a Team Member’s speech is simply window dressing. It’s interesting certainly, it may even help the Team Lead or Scrum Master measure burndown but the real value of a Daily Standup is in the often neglected Impediments section.

During our working day we encounter and resolve countless impediments, those which prove to be more troublesome are raised in the standup where (more often than not) time pressed colleagues mutter a few words of advice or encouragement before wandering back to their own tasks.

This way of raising issues actually dampens the team members’ enthusiasm for “Any Impediments”. After all why should they raise them in scrum when they could simply ask a more experienced colleague quietly, later in the day. I know I wouldn’t want to admit I was struggling to my Team Lead if there was no increased chance of getting help.

So what do I recommend?

I suggest that each Scrum Master take a pen and paper into the standup. As well as facilitating the meeting they need to capture the team’s issues and impediments. At the end of the meeting it is their job to resolve them. More often than not this will involve finding the correct people to lend assistance, be they infrastructure guys, senior developers or management.

The Daily Standup is not a progress meeting. It’s an opportunity for the entire team to come together and check that no one is struggling with an impediment which will impact the team’s ability to deliver at the end of the Sprint.

Remember that a Sprint is not about individual completion, it’s about the team and this is everyone’s opportunity to keep the group on target so they can meet their combined goals.