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Value by Design

Have you noticed the shift in attitude towards Quality in Agile teams?

To set the stage: I’m a Quality Consultant and I don’t usually participate in an Agile development team. So, not being a member of the team I felt often perceived as ‘pig’ or less: irrelevant at best, a counterproductive nuisance at worst. The prevailing notion was: why waste time paying attention to Quality, when Agile – remember, everybody tests! – Inherently leads to Quality? Or, to better reflect the Agile mindset: Agile inherently leads to customer value!

Lately, I’ve come across more and more developers that value testers or ‘Quality guys’ in their team, acknowledge our valuable, different perspective. For sure, the aphorisms “Agile fosters Quality” or “Agile equals Customer Value” remain true, but we’ve all experienced that true, 100% Agile – if that exists at all... – is hardly ever accomplished and it’s commonplace that Agile practices need to be combined or synchronized with non-Agile, Linear practices. This can be induced by ‘the business’ through an annual portfolio or budgeting cycle or by ‘IT itself’ through a back-end release cycle that allows for no more than two major release a year. At any rate, Value doesn’t just happen by itself, especially not in an Agile transition that invariably sets off with a hybrid situation that carries both Agile and Linear characteristics. Value must be actively and purposely pursued by all involved. [...]

 

To read the whole post and interact, please visit the SogetiLabs blog: Value by Design

Ben Visser
Ben Visser
Experienced test manager and test consultant
+31 886 606 600