QA Introduction

How I introduced myself to my new team

Posted By Wayne on November 4, 2018

So I have just joined a new company and I wanted to introduce myself and what I think testing is. So I arranged a meeting and got the scrum team and the DevOps guys in a room and started to explain where for me testing belongs.

Hopefully this isn't a surprise to you guys but I believe testing belongs everywhere. I explained this saying that it starts from the beginning and never ends.

So from the initial idea or the initial start of a new phase of work testing should be present. This does not mean that a tester should be present but questions should be asked. Is it the right idea? Is it the right phase of work? Is it really what the customer is after? Once that has been completed we then have to put the idea or phase of work into the backlog. This Could be done as either a User Story or as a requirement I personally have no hang up on this as long as it is a team choice.

The backlog while it belongs to the PO should be a collaborative process with discussions with the team to make sure we have clear descriptions and clear acceptance criteria so that the scrum engineers know exactly what they should be producing. I discussed the idea of a definition of ready so that as a team we know that a story/requirement can't go into a sprint until it has all the elements in our definition of ready.

After discussing these areas and possibly insulting some Agile hardcore's by accidently calling agile a myth I mean't method but oh well. I then started to discuss testing while the story/requirement is being worked on. While discussing this I introduced two images / concepts.

First the Agile Testing Quadrants:

Secondly the Test Automation Triangle:

I discussed these ideas alongside putting the automation side of it within a CI/CD pipeline to help with catching defects early. its important to note here that I think testing is a collaborative sport and while there may be individuals who wear the testing hat for most of their time within the sprint everyone is responsible for making sure their own little areas are completed like unit testing.

We then discussed UX, UAT and exploratory testing as well as Security and Load testing. I also discussed the idea of a definition of done so that we know when all activities are completed we can truly say that story is done.

So the work is done and gets pushed into production thats it right we can go for tea and biscuits. No not in my world this is where we see what is really happening with monitoring and fetching statistics. Listening to service desk and any customer complaints or feedback. We can then take this information into the next cycle and see where we can improve our processes see if we have missed anything.

So I spent an hour discussing this and I feel I have achieved what I set out to do. Why am I discussing this with you well it occurred to me that I should maybe model my thinking of what I think Agile Testing is and that is Continuous Testing. It is a big circle that just keeps going so that we continue to improve our processes and the way we develop and test. With that I created the below model.

Continuous Testing Model:

I hope I haven't stepped on anybodies toes with this model I don't think I have seen a similar model but if I have please let me know. The model describes in my mind the circle in which we travel in continuously testing with each cycle informing the next and each segment being able to inform not only the next one but also the previous ones.

I hope you have enjoyed the first blog of my knew series it is a short one which covers a lot of topics and if you would like to discuss any areas further please get in touch.