Is your agile up to speed? The top 5 challenges in agile
To quote Top Gun: “I feel the need … the need for speed!” This is what every business and IT leader should be thinking about when it comes to...
With the continued drive toward agile based methodologies over recent years, one of the key benefits it brings is the concept of little and often releases to production. This is at odds with the traditional waterfall methodology, and one stage in particular: User Acceptance Testing (UAT).
Whilst little and often is fairly easy to implement in businesses with a small number of products, I've worked at a number of client sites where they are grappling with scaled agile in order to cope with multiple teams all delivering parts of an enterprise level service. All have encountered problems and we have struggled to find examples of similar organisations that have cracked it! Below is a summary of the two different approaches to delivery, along with the pros and cons of each.
Waterfall
Key features:
What do we like?
What are we not so keen on?
Scaled Agile
Key features:
What do we like?
What are we not so keen on?
Conclusion
These are some of the pros and cons that I have experienced over the years. Although I have read articles regarding UAT still having a place within scaled agile, it is not something I can honestly say I have seen happen on the ground. I have been on sites where there are multiple scrum teams delivering shippable products that have undergone extensive siloed functional testing, but have not been given the time for what I would consider an adequate UAT equivalent phase. This has led to ticking time-bombs of dormant bugs that only kick in once user journeys have played out in real time on the live estate.
In order to gain the benefits of scaled agile we have had to be more pro-active in a number of areas so that we can build quality into the delivery process as early as possible. We need to instil the best parts of traditional requirements, design, build and testing roles into our agile engineers. This will help offset the reduced time for being set aside for manual testing at the end of the process. One such example is investing more in the skills of our teams than in the past. We need broader skill-sets and a greater ability to adapt. This is not just about formal training and qualifications either. This can also be achieved by setting aside time in each sprint for engineers to do their own research on latest tools and industry trends. Then if they find something of benefit, we need to allow them the time to get skilled up and create a proof of concept.
Another big challenge I've come across is changing the mindset of the leadership team. Sometimes they will want their teams to embrace new concepts without looking inward at their own behaviours. Often the most difficult conversations are with those who need to alter their command and control mindset (which they falsely believe to be empowering). Can a company change the way it manages budgets, constructs business cases, measures ROI, launches products, tracks staffing costs, etc.
I would love to hear from others who have encountered the good and the bad of both, and the subsequent efforts made to resolve them. Shared experiences of successes and failures will help us to be more likely to succeed in whatever approach we adopt in the future.
Alex Kaiser (Spike95 - Principal Test Automation Consultant) has enjoyed a wide ranging career in testing, spanning 20+ years. He has had experience of all the joys - private and public sector, huge programmes and small startups, every methodology and new wave of roles. Being part of some fantastic groundbreaking achievements and also some absolute stinkers that are best hidden at the end of his CV!
Spike95 is a technical testing consultancy. We make sure software is reliable, scalable and delivers the experience you and your customers expect.[vlt_social_share title="Like this post? Please share!"]
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