Skip to main content
 
au

  • Increase Speed to Market
    Deliver quality quicker by optimising your delivery pipeline, removing bottlenecks, getting faster feedback from customers and iterating quickly.

  • Enhance Customer Experience
    Delight your customers in every digital interaction by optimising system quality and performance to provide a smooth, speedy and seamless user experience.

  • Maximise Your Investment
    Realise a positive ROI sooner and maximise your investment by focusing your energy on high-value features, reducing waste, and finding and fixing defects early.
  • The Wellington City Council (WCC) wanted to deliver quality outcomes without breaking the bank. Find out how Planit’s fast and flexible resources helped WCC achieve this goal.

this is a test Who We Are Landing Page


INSIGHTS / Articles

5 Ways to Accelerate Quality

 18 Jun 2020 
5 Ways to Accelerate Quality 5 Ways to Accelerate Quality
5 Ways to Accelerate Quality
INSIGHTS / Articles

5 Ways to Accelerate Quality

 18 Jun 2020 

It is important to accelerate delivery, but not at the expense of product quality. We have all seen some very public examples in the recent weeks where organisations have not invested appropriately in their cost of quality models, which has caused disastrous brand damage.

All of us in IT need to understand the “4 Rights” – the right product, right quality, right time, and right cost. After all, customers want value and will “vote with their feet” by going to a competitor if they do not get what they need.

As I highlighted in a recent webinar, the best way to accelerate quality is to build it in from the start. Here are five ways to do it:

1. Create testable requirements

If they contain words such as easily or quickly, then it is likely that they are not testable.

Static reviews are a great way to work with your Product Owners to support them in articulating their requirements in a way that the whole team understands what is needed. It also helps to remove ambiguities, which will cause rework in the form of test maintenance (waste) and may mean you build the wrong product.

A requirement should also be just that and not a solution. Too often requirements contain functional specifications which constrain the team and do not allow them to do what they do best, which is to design creative and innovative solutions.

2. Work closer with developers

Making the whole team responsible for quality is critical. Testers are no longer the “quality police” but should adopt ways to become quality coaches within the team. Or move to a Quality Assistance role, whereby they facilitate the quality activities with the rest of the team.

Duplicate testing is wasted effort, so testers can pair with developers to understand what unit testing they are doing. They then work with them so that they understand what levels of quality is expected from them.

Two rules, according to Extreme Programming, that I recommend you implement in your teams are:

Tests and their results should be visible to the whole team. Code should not be released without the associated unit tests preferably automated, otherwise it is not complete.

3. Adopt test-first approaches

Test-driven development (TDD) and behaviour-driven development (BDD) are two examples, that allow teams to discuss, at the design stage, how they are going to build quality in. If you cannot test it, then how do you provide confidence that you have built the right product to the right level of quality?

The value of TDD is that it that encourages a very short and repeatable development cycle. Automated unit tests are written before the code is, and once run, they will provide quick confirmation of whether the code behaves as it should or not.

The benefit of BDD is that it encourages closer collaboration between developers, testers, project managers, and the business. The focus then becomes on communicating with stakeholders to gain a clear understanding of the development goals, which enables the developers to focus on why the code should be created and not be distracted by the technical details.

4. Replace test cases with session-based testing

Traditional test cases are time consuming to write. They also often require additional time to maintain.

By replacing these with session-based exploratory tests (SBET), you get the same levels of traceability, auditability, and coverage, but at a fraction of the cost in test preparation. They also allow flexibility in exploring the product whilst still recording what you have tested.

How does SBET achieve this? The answer lies in testing sessions that are time-boxed, uninterrupted, and focus on a module, feature, or scenario. Therefore, instead of time being used to create detailed/scripted test cases, there is an opportunity to be creative within the boundaries of the goal of the session and gain quick feedback.

5. Automate testing where practical

Automate where there is a return on investment. Not all tests are candidates for automation, however the team should be practising automation and have these skills within the team.

Up front discussions should happen on what can be automated, as early as the iteration planning stage. Why write a manual test when it can be automated?

Automation needs to happen within the current iteration and not be lagging in subsequent ones. Focus on the bottom of the automation pyramid on automated unit tests; API tests and services tests, and not on the UI tests where we will know they are harder and more costly to create and maintain.

Quality at the forefront

Today’s world is more connected and reliant on technology than ever before. This means product quality remains of paramount importance and should continue to be prioritised to ensure that customers, either internal or external, get the experience that they want and need.

However, getting quality right is not easy or something that can be achieved overnight. But with the right preparation or guidance from Agile quality coaches, it is possible to speed up delivery while also maintaining - or improving - quality.

Leanne Howard

Business Agility Practice Director

Embed Quality in your Agile Delivery

No matter where you are on your Agile transformation journey, we offer a broad range of consultation, assessment, training, and coaching services that enable your teams to deliver better outcomes faster, embed quality in every iteration, and adopt 'shift left' practices.
 
Find out how our Agile Quality experts can help you understand your Agile maturity and fast-track your journey to Agile success with quality embedded throughout. .

 

Find out more

Get updates

Get the latest articles, reports, and job alerts.