The Software Delivery Experts

Agile, DevOps & QA Conference

A Tester’s Guide to Collaborating with Product

Owners

The Software Delivery Experts

Bob Galen Director of Agile Practices

Introduction

1.  Bridge stories

2.  Help write Acceptance Tests

3.  DoD accountability

4.  Be the customer

5.  Ask questions

6.  Cost of quality

7.  Cost of testing

8.  Backlog as a plan

9.  Take the PO to lunch

Outline – Myths & Realities

Who owns the Backlog?

Simple pattern:

The Product Owner Owns the Product

Backlog

Essential pattern

It Takes a Village to Own the Backlog

1.  Product Manager

•  Product Roadmap, Collateral, Business Case / ROI

•  Driving customer value

2. Project Manager

•  Product Backlog (WBS)

•  Grooming & look-ahead

•  Velocity-based, Release Planning

•  Goal setting, Budget

3. Leader

•  Trade-offs, product balance

•  Stakeholder “management”

•  Member of the team; partner with the ScrumMaster

4. Business Analyst

•  Story Writing

•  Acceptance

•  Emergence; Spikes

4 Quadrants of Product Ownership

Ø  The key here is guiding the translation and execution of the user story

•  Pull the Product Owner into the sprint

•  Show incremental code

•  Shepherd sign-off

Ø  3 Amigos-based interactions

Ø Nail the Demo

1. Bridge stories from Team to the Product Owner

Ø  Coined by George Dinwiddie

Ø  Swarming around the User Story by:

•  Developer(s)

•  Tester(s)

•  Product Owner

Ø  During “Grooming, Sprint Execution, Until…“Done”

Ø  Similar to Ken Pugh’s Triad

1. Bridge stories from Team to the Product Owner

Ø  Consider them

•  As “mini-contracts” or “mini-UAT”

Ø  3-5 minimal per story

Ø  Business constraints

Ø  Functional and non-functional

Ø  Edge and error cases

Ø  Provide hints:

•  Design & Tests

2. Help Write Solid Acceptance Tests

2. Help Write Solid Acceptance Tests

Ø  It all starts in the Grooming, thinking of the work cross-functionality and with DoD in mind

Ø  Continue it in Sprint Planning

Ø  Execute consistently; no exceptions

Ø  Deliver to “Done”

3. Hold everyone “accountable” to Definition of Done

4-Levels of Criteria

ü The story is well-written: and has a minimum of 5 Acceptance Tests defined

ü The story has been sized to fit the teams velocity & sprint length: 1-13 points

ü The team has vetted the story in several grooming sessions-it’s scope & nature is well understood

ü The story is not “too complete,” around ~70% complete

ü The team understands how to approach the testing of the stories’ functional and non-functional aspects

ü Any dependencies to other stories and/or teams have been “connected” so that the story is synchronized and deliverable

ü The story aligns with the Sprints’ Goal and is end-to-end demonstrable

ü  If a “Technical Story” the story has a “Technical PO” to provide guidance and sign-off

Ready-Ready

Prevents teams from taking on

stories that are ill

groomed or defined

Increases

sprint success

Ø  Don’t solve “requirements”…solve “customer problems”

Ø  Consider usage

Ø  KISS

Ø  Deliver value; highest impact & priority

Ø  End-to-end solutions

4. Represent the Customer

Ø  The power of a Minimal Marketable Feature

Ø  The power of the Persona

Ø  Observe the Customer

Ø  Nordstrom Innovation Lab: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szr0ezLyQHY

4. Represent the Customer

Ø  Ask questions

•  Relentlessly, Constantly, Courageously

Ø  5 – Whys

Ø  Business value?

Ø  Lean investment

•  Just enough and just-in-time

Ø  Trust your instincts, craft

Ø  Does it make sense?

5. Ask questions? Be inquisitive, be curious, explore!

5. Ask questions? Be inquisitive?

Ø  Meta-requirements

•  Security, Performance, Maintainability

Ø  Automation investments

•  Agile Automation Triangle

Ø  Inspections – pairing

Ø  DoD maturity

Ø  Avoid rework?

•  Yes for product, no for experiments

6. What about the Cost of Quality?

Quality is a TEAM responsibility!

Things to do…

•  Features

•  Value increments

•  Architecture

•  Design

•  Process

•  Quality

•  Testing

In a Context-Based fashion…

A Tapestry that Includes Threads for...

•  Deployment

•  Regulatory

•  Dependency

•  Risk

•  Feedback

•  Customer timing

•  Tempo

…Guiding us towards customer value

•  Risk-based

•  Always test what’s available

•  Don’t track coverage or time

•  Slack time for thinking & creativity

•  Balanced across the quadrants

7. What about the Cost of Testing?

Development & Test Automation

•  Pyramid-based Strategy: (Unit + Cucumber + Selenium)

•  Continuous Integration

•  Attack technical infrastructure in the Backlog

•  Visual Feedback – Dashboards

•  Actively practice ATDD and BDD

3 Pillars of Agile Quality

Software Testing

•  Risk-based testing: Functional & Non-Functional

•  Test planning @ Release & Sprint levels

•  Exploratory Testing

•  Visual Feedback – Dashboards

•  Standards – Checklists, templates, repositories

•  Balance across manual, exploratory & automation

Cross-Functional Team Practices

•  Team-based Pairing

•  Stop-the-Line Mindset

•  Code Reviews & Standards

•  Active Done-Ness

•  Aggressive Refactoring of Technical Debt

•  User Stories, “3 Amigo” based Conversations

•  Whole Team Ownership of “Quality” •  Building it ‘Right’; Building the ‘Right’ Thing •  Healthy – Agile Centric Metrics

•  Center of Excellence or Community of Practice •  Strategic balance across 3 Pillars: Assessments,

Recalibration, and Continuous Improvement

•  Ask for and define a Release Train

•  Encourage Planning

•  Establish “hardening” activities

•  Integration milestones – working code

8. The Backlog is a “Plan” help focus it towards Release!

Ø  Iterative model with a release target

•  Product centric •  Focused on a production push/release

Ø  Synchronized Sprints across teams

•  Some teams are unsynchronized, but leads to less efficient cross-team (product) interactions

Ø  Continuous Integration is the glue

•  Including automated unit and feature tests; partial regression

Ø  Notion of a “Hardening Sprint”

•  Focused more on integration & Regression testing

•  Assumption that it’s mostly automated

•  Environment promotion

Ø  Define a final Hardening Sprint where the product is readied for release

•  Documentation, Support, Compliance, UAT, Training

Release Train Management

• Have lunch

• Discuss the competitive landscape, the Market

•  Customer challenges

• MoSCoW in operation

•  Commitments & Pressure

•  Vision & Mission; what does “success” look like?

9. Get to know your Product Owner

Helping the Product Owner to build the “Right Thing”

And

Helping the Team to build “Things Right”

10. Wrapping up...

Ø  Final questions or discussion?

Thank you!

Questions?

Zenergy Technologies | 336.245.4729 | Zenergytechnologies.com | contact@zenergytechnologies.com

Bob Galen bob@zenergytechnologies.com

@bobgalen

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