Mark Ryland - "How a Great QA Team Can Make a Disproportionate Contribution to Project Success" Mark Ryland, Financial Markets Technology Consultant

1. ‘How a Great QA Team can make
a Disproportionate Contribution to Project
Success’
Paper Presented by Mark Ryland

2. Presentation Contents
1. Introduction
2. Project Lifecycle & Team Constituents
3. Team Dynamics
4. Typical QA
5. Great QA

3. Mark Ryland’s Credentials
• Close on 20 years large project delivery experience in Wholesale Financial Services
• Banks, exchanges and brokers
• Variety of systems types
• Projects from $10M to $150M
• All of these projects required QA testing
• Involved in building 2 offshore testing centres
• Schooled in QA testing best practise

4. Example Scope From Building
QA Centre
 ‘Location QA’ - ‘end to end’ testing with location
specific downstream systems
On-shore  user acceptance testing ( executed by user
representatives)
 Test execution ( system, regression, new functionality)
Off-shore
 Maintenance of regression test cases
 Test automation development
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5. Project Team v Lifecycle
Conception Initiation Development Test Implement
Project Sponsor
Project Manager
Business Analyst
Architect/Designer
Development Team
QA Team
Production Team

6. Team Dynamics

7. What Determines The Team’s
Rate of Progress?
Pacemaker(s)

8. ‘Typical/Normal’ QA Experience
1. Doesn’t fully understand project objectives
2. Lacks detailed domain knowledge
3. Consumes lots of management & BA time
4. Is a bottleneck - test execution cycles take too long
5. Not flexible in dealing with unplanned change
6. Test coverage and quality is not good enough
7. QA team measure their success on how many test cases were executed (as
opposed to the value of them)

9. Attributes of a Great QA Team
1. The basics
2. Domain experts
3. Works out for itself what needs to be done
4. High calibre, motivated staff, stable team
5. Intelligent use of tools to speed up test execution/improve
6. Only raise genuine defects
7. A peer to other parts of the project team

10. Attributes of a Great QA Team
Cont….
8. Energy and diligence
9. Flexible orientation of test effort
10. Responsive to changes in project priorities
11. Disciplined organisation of the test environment
12. Creative
13. Independent & Objective
Adds Up to Making a ‘Real’ Contribution to Quality
& Hence Project Success

11. Measuring QA Team
Effectiveness
1. High
Quality Staff
9. Bespoke
Automation 2. Domain
Tools Available Knowledge
8. Detailed
Management of 3. Level of
Test Environment Energy
Enthusiasm &
Proactivity
7. Test Case
Quality 4. Planning &
Delivering Ability
6. Test 5. Creativity &
Process Flexibility in Problem
Effectiveness Solving

12. Independence & Objectivity
1. Understanding of Requirement
End
Business Manager Business Analyst Designer Devel –oper
Users
2. Delivery of Solution
3A. Independent
Measurement by
QA Team
3B. Independent Measurement by High Quality QA Team

13. Team Dynamics When the QA
Team is Excellent
1. Developers try harder to get it right in the first place
2. Developers get rapid/timely feedback on what’s wrong
3. Developers are work harder to solve defects to keep the project on track
4. Project sponsors get clear visibility on quality level and progress
5. Project designers and analysts are have clear problem statements to work from
6. Have (justified) confidence in the system – that will feed through to the users
7. Fewer problems are going to found in live & hence the project will cost less

14. Conclusion
Great QA Team

15. Questions & Answers
Thank You