Speaker: Sumeet Gupta The webinar takes a look at the key quality contamination issues faced by agile scrum teams. We go through a host of actionable steps that you can follow, to resolve these challenges and ensure a smooth QA process throughout your project.

1. Quality Contamination in
Agile Scrum Teams & the
Remedies
The QA Strategy
Sumeet Gupta
@sumeetgupta1982

2. @srijan #SrijanWW
Learning Outcome
● How to perform QA on Agile Scrum
Projects
● Defining efficient QA strategies for Agile
Projects
● Agile/QA best practices

3. @srijan #SrijanWW
Quality Contaminations in Scrum Teams
● No QA strategy/Plan, checklist and milestones defined for Project
● No Gates/Checkpoints defined
● No Metrics defined, measured and tracked
● No guidelines for Defect severity/priority clearly defined
● No Defect Root Cause Analysis(RCA) and Quality Improvement Plan
(QIP) prepared.
● Not able to fit QA in same sprint as Development
● Don’t think before Test- No upfront test planning or
defining/understanding of Test cases/scenarios
● QA not part of Development Team- QA efforts not estimated, QA
resources/Testers considered separate hanging entity in scrum team only
responsible for QA
● No Technical Debt assessment and Reduction Plan

4. @srijan #SrijanWW
The Remedies and recommendations
⦿ Do Occurrence/Impact analysis for respective
Projects using the matrix and plan to address the
Issues/challenges progressively in order or
effective retrospectives. Don’t try to fix
everything together.
⦿ Keep on continuously refining and improving.
⦿ Inspect and Adapt alternatives/solutions
proposed in coming slides for each of the Quality
contaminations/challenges based on project
specific applicability and suitability.
Impact (low -> high)
Occurrence(low->high)

5. @srijan #SrijanWW
No QA strategy/Plan or checklist or milestones
defined for Project
⦿ Define QA strategy/Plan, checklist to address the below categories as per
Deployment strategy and Project constraints.
⦿ Define milestones (like Feature complete, Code Freeze, UAT …) and add
placeholder user stories into the backlog/Sprints, if not possible to meet DONE
every User Story/Sprint(ideal case with CI/CD)

6. @srijan #SrijanWW
No QA strategy/Plan or checklist or milestones
defined for Project
⦿ Review the checklist against status (Meeting, On-track, Off-track, Not started,
exception) at regular cadence(ideally every sprint), Highlight the Risk to Ship
if any, to the stakeholders and take corresponding resolutions based on Risk
assessment.
Code Quality Functional Testing System and Solution
Testing
Release Requirement
Code Review Feature testing Load Testing Documentation
Unit/Component testing Regression testing Longevity Testing Automation
Static and complexity Analysis Gorilla Testing Solution/Integration Testing EFT/Alpha/Beta
Performance Testing Training
Security

7. No Gates/Checkpoints defined
⦿ Define strict Definition of Done(DOD) checklist or Workflows for
UserStory/Sprint/Release and review before acceptance (sample Sprint DOD as
below)
⦿ Define 360 Quality review feedback forums and review projects at regular cadence
⦿ Raise Flag based on Project QA checklist defined in previous slide
@srijan #SrijanWW

8. Can’t Fit it all in Story or Sprint Done?
@srijan #SrijanWW
⦿ Mix in Release Done along the way so you don't build up a huge
debt to complete in the final Release Done

9. No Metrics defined, measured and tracked
Metrics
Defect count grouped by severity/priority
Defect Incoming vs Outgoing trend
Defect Resolution Time
Defect Density
Code coverage
@srijan #SrijanWW
⦿ Measure and Track various QA metrics/trends (few mentioned
below)
⦿ Review Metrics in QA review forums, raise flag incase of metrics
going beyond Project defined thresholds or degrades and take
corrective actions based on RCA. For e.g. Increase in Defect
Density per module/Function point might require module
refactoring

10. No guidelines for Defect severity/priority clearly defined
⦿ Define clear Defect guidelines for severity and Priority
⦿ Ensure Team raises bugs/Defects following guidelines by
timely auditing projects or Bug scrubbing at regular
intervals
⦿ Do regular bug scrubbing in respective projects based on
Severity/Priority, Product Roadmap and track defect
metrics For e.g. Linking duplicate defects, de-prioritizing or
closing defects related to Feature de-prioritized or moved
out of the Backlog scope.
@srijan #SrijanWW

11. No Defect RCA and Quality Improvement Plan (QIP) prepared
⦿ Identify and update component or EPIC while raising defect
⦿ Do Defect RCA at regular cadence(may be for high defect density components) to
identify focus areas or collaterals or source of defect
⦿ Based on RCA, define action plan and Quality improvement Plan like
enhancing/improving test suites, improving story quality, some re-factoring or
re-designing etc. … and add respective stories into the backlog. Based on the
Return on Investment(ROI), we can get them prioritized accordingly
@srijan #SrijanWW

12. Not able to fit QA in same sprint as Development
⦿ Don’t follow out-of-cycle testing or mini waterfall within sprint, with QA
related work getting accumulated towards end of the sprint
⦿ As QA estimates are not done or out-of-cycle testing, there is always a
backlog of QA work coming from previous sprint or DONE not being met
every sprint, which initiates chain reaction of Spills every sprint and low
velocity of the team
⦿ During the initial phase of the sprint QA resource is busy clearing backlog
of previous sprint and during end again new items have accumulated from
the current sprint items leading to no time for defining acceptance test or
Test Planning – inefficient and optimal utilization of QA resources.
⦿ Meet DONE every sprint, by completing User-Stories end-to-end, instead
of doing multiple half-done Issues
⦿ Test Automation should be
focused for in-cycle QA
@srijan #SrijanWW

13. Don’t think before Test- No upfront test planning or
defining/understanding of Test cases/scenarios
⦿ Estimate and groom stories efficiently so that acceptance test and test planning can be done
upfront or techniques like ATDD/TDD can be applied
⦿ Define and identify various Use cases/scenarios upfront, which might also help in clearing
scope of User Story or defining more clear Acceptance Criteria
⦿ Target maximum test coverage defining both positive and negative use-cases/test-cases and
tracking the coverage metrics
@srijan #SrijanWW

14. QA not part of Development Team- QA efforts not
estimated, QA resource considered separate hanging
entity in scrum team only responsible for QA
⦿ Estimate QA effort while estimating for User Stories and Tasks
⦿ Involve QA team members during User Story grooming and estimations for
better understanding of User Stories and refining Acceptance
⦿ QA is not designated person’s responsibility, it collective team responsibility
(necessary for self-organizing and cross-functional)
⦿ Team should review Test-cases/use cases defined by QA resource for better
understanding of requirements and identifying gaps/refining scope of User
Stories or adding additional tests.
@srijan #SrijanWW

15. No Technical Debt assessment and Reduction Plan
⦿ Assess Debt and develop plan to reduce over weeks,
months, releases, etc. based on Return of
Investment(ROI) and get Stories added to backlog
⦿ Build a practice that manages and reviews all debt
and gets it to zero over “n” weeks, months or
releases.
⦿ Funding Technical Debt Reduction
▪ Use interns or new joinees bandwidth
▪ Reserve capacity each sprint or Release (may be
10-20%) in agreement with Product Owner
▪ Show the ROI to Product Owner like ability to
deliver new features faster (refactor example) or
as an Opportunity asking for additional capacity
⦿ Review the Technical Debt Plan regularly (may be at
Quality review )
Debt Examples
▪ Defect Backlog
▪ Automation—manual tests
▪ Code Complexity mgmt.
▪ Static Analysis Violations
▪ Refactoring not part of
practice
▪ Limited/inaccurate test use
case
▪ Low unit coverage with high
complexity & defect density
▪ Lack of or out of date
Documentation
▪ Poor architecture, usability,
reliability
▪ Build issues—slow or
breaks
@srijan #SrijanWW

16. No Technical Debt assessment and Reduction Plan
@srijan #SrijanWW

17. “Software testing proves
the existence of bugs not
their absence.” – Edsger W.
Dijkstra
“Quality is not an act, it is a
habit” – Aristotle
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18. Thank You!
Take this conversation online by tweeting using the hashtag #SrijanWW
Sumeet Gupta
Agile Coach