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How to make Agile Testing in an offshore context work
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The Smart Way To Do Business
Building a professional test unit offshore – Sri Lanka
&
Going Agile with your offshore team
Improve your testing capacity by expanding offshore
The Smart Way To Do Business
Jan Petter Hagberg
SuperOffice AS
QA Manager Processes/methods responsible and SCRUM master Offshore responsible in SuperOffice
Previous:Agresso – developerWM Data- developerSuperOffice – developer/Project Mgr/QA Mgr
The Smart Way To Do Business
Building a professional test unit offshore – Sri Lanka
Improve your testing capacity by expanding offshore
The Smart Way To Do Business
New way of working
Outsourcing
OffshoringNearsh
oring
Rightshoring
restructuring of an organization’s workforce to find the perfect mix of jobs that can be moved to foreign countries or be performed locally
The Smart Way To Do Business
SuperOffice Offshoring Strategy
Access to resources• 4 million people is not that many to choose from• We needed test resources
Learn about offshoring• To be able to evaluate SuperOffice in an offshoring
perspective we wanted to check it out and learn!
The price $• The price of labour in an offshoring context• Offshoring costs money, the price is important
The Smart Way To Do Business
Success Metrics
Assignment
• Build a professional offshore test team in Sri Lanka• We visited Colombo in December 2007 and started
interviewing candidates• Team ready 1st of January 2008
Success
• We have a good functional test team • Motivated team members• Highly skilled • Stability • Communication that works• Fully integrated into our production line and daily
work. Not easy to just end this commitment
The Smart Way To Do Business
How did we achieve this ?
The Smart Way To Do Business
The world is flat
A very good book
”In this world services can be delivered electronically over long distances with
little or no degradation in quality”
”In the future, it will be more important to
be good with people and communication
than with computers”Alan Blinder
The Smart Way To Do Business
Challenges – how did we overcome
Getting started
Culture
Communication
Distributed Teams
Training
Team Building
The Smart Way To Do Business
Getting started
3 levels to Nirvana
Level 1: • Project oriented approach• More like outsourcing
Level 2:• Same project, but work on separate tasks• Needs more coordination
Level 3• Work together on same tasks as a team on a daily
basis• Offshore location really is an integrated part of the
rest of RnD
The Smart Way To Do Business
Get started
What did we do
• Internally you should first talk about offshoring as an alternative.
• Get accept for trying this out • What happens if you scale down?
• Find out where to establish your offshore location• costs (price and travel expences)
• Using a professional partner makes it easier • Probably better to work with another small country to
get the attention you need
• Point of contact:• Don’t put your best technical person on this task, use
one with good communication skills and one who is interested in succeeding
• Have one contact person/team lead in each location• This person will use a lot of his/her time to
communicate with the offshore location
The Smart Way To Do Business
Get started
Interviews
• Do your own interviews• Used powerpoint for parts of the interview• Emphasize that this interview will be done in a norwegian style and
there will be no ”trick” questions• Interview many and pick the ones who also understand the cultural
differences and is interested in a long term commitment• His/her english has to be understandable
The Smart Way To Do Business
Culture
Differences in culture
• Used to a more hierarchical structure• ”Nordic management” is an asset
• Seem not to be used to say what they really think • The girls don’t talk too much• Used to being measured by KPI’s and work to
achieve those. This may not be what you want.
• May be used to failure leading to consequences. • Results in doing things in the safe way• You need to build trust that this is not the case
• Can be challenging to work in a country where:• You change jobs frequently to improve your living
conditions• CV shopping – collect certificates• “Climbing the ladder” is important (career)• Conflicts going on (war and piece and that stuff…)• Linecapacity is expensive / latency
The Smart Way To Do Business
Teambuilding
@ work
• We meet twice a year• When we meet we use workshops for:
• Working with communication, teambuilding and trust• Work to build a common understanding• Exchange experiences• Create a common ownership of what we implements
and our processes• Retrospectives and future plans• When in Sri Lanka, we try to work in their
environment• Bandwith slow – feel their pain(s)
• Allways prioritize feedback to offshore location• Easy to forget to also include/inform offshore location
about things happening on onshore location• Using a lot of effort on teambuilding is an
investment• We knows each other (QA and developers) and it is
easy to contact eachother• Easier to know who knows what and who is best in an
area• This is an investment for long term relationships
The Smart Way To Do Business
Teambuilding
After work
• Important to get to know each other outside a working environment
• Personal relationships creates trust
• Do activities together that requires cooperation – we love to cook together at someones house
• Show them your country • A walk in the woods• A boattrip on the fjord• Seasons• Silence• Norwegian food• …
The Smart Way To Do Business
Communication
No language barriers
• Rely on English or other conceivable language. • Specifications / User Stories• Test Procedures• Test Plans• Documentation• Bug database
• This is important as agile is all about communication.
The Smart Way To Do Business
Communication
Visualization• We needed an effective way of communication• Started off with reports etc• Have developed more visual ways to communicate
and work together over a distance
Automation• Automate communication that can be automated
• When specifications/documents are updated an e-mail is sent to everybody on the team
• When a build breaks, send an e-mail to notify • Automatically upload builds every night after build is
complete
Presence• Important with overlapping time zones• Quick feedback is vital, I always prioritize feedback
to SL• Use “Nick” on MSN to indicate what you are
working with
• The people in the two locations needs to get to know each other easier to make a call (skype)
The Smart Way To Do Business
Communication
The Smart Way To Do Business
Collocated vs Distributed Teams
Distributed• Distance is not a barrier to those who
want to communicate. • Instant messengers, wiki or forums provide
a quick and easy way to communicate even in a distributed environment.
• In the end it all comes down to how the team members communicate with each other.
• Not the same kind of disturbance in remote location (not that many meetings, bosses etc)
• Almost all communication is documented. Easy to go back and look up what we agreed upon
Collocated• Productivity of collocated teams is higher
• Collocated• Easy to communicate (face to face)• Fast
• More disturbance in the collocated workspace. This will impact productivity
• Almost all communication is not documented
The Smart Way To Do Business
Distributed Teams
Time Zones• Synchronize the offshore with the onsite business
hours.• A person that comes early at onsite location can help
offshore location if needed
• Builds and test runs can be scheduled to be ready by offshore mornings so that the analysis on any failures is complete and ready to be picked up by onsite mornings.
The Smart Way To Do Business
Going Agile with your offshore test team..(?)
The Smart Way To Do Business
Agile Testing
Definition of Agile Testing• Testers are an integrated part of the team• Participate in the sprint planning• Start testing activities from day 1• Collaborates with the customer to define the
acceptance test criteria• Test stories once they are complete• Focuses on test automation• Focuses more on exploratory testing• Practice pair testing• Collaborates with development team• Provides continuous feedback to the team
The Smart Way To Do Business
Agile Testing
Agile Testing principles• Provide continuous feedback• Deliver value to the customer• Enable face to face communication• Have courage• Keep it simple• Practice continuous improvement• Respond to change• Self organize• Focus on people• Enjoy
The Smart Way To Do Business
Bottom line
Agile Testing principles• Agile testing is all about applying agile values and
principles to testing• Testers provide information, feedback and suggestions
rather than being last phase of defense• Testing is no more a phase; it integrates closely with
Development• Continuous testing is the only way to ensure
continuous progress.
• The value of Agile testing lies in effective communication between developers, testers and the product owner
• If you manage to make teambuilding, work processes and communication work with your offshore location, then Agile Testing is within reach.
The Smart Way To Do Business
This means that QA in Sri Lanka...• Reviews specifications / user stories• Tests during the sprints• Communicates directly with the developers. This
works because they know each other• Knows our products and provides feedback if
they see things that can be improved or other improvements (process, infrastructure...)
• Are involved in as many planning activities as we can
• ...but they do not participate in Sprint plannings and daily stand-up’s
Going Agile with your offshore team
The Smart Way To Do Business
Challenges
Workarounds• We have QA persons in Norway that ”represents” the
QA team in Sri Lanka• Attends to Sprint planning, daily Stand-up’s• Pair tests with developers• The eyes and ears of the offsite location
Meetings• Today: Meetings with Webcams and Skype/WebEx/...
are difficult• Tomorrow: Just invested in Tandberg system
In a video meeting it should be possible to interrupt in a discussion
I still find it a bit odd and difficult to have a Stand-up with 7 norwegian speaking and two english speaking team members
The Smart Way To Do Business
What is hard – everything
How to get started• A new experience in the beginning, new culture, new
place
Culture• A lot of new things to learn, not least in the way you have
to attack problems at work and what is important
Teambuilding• Hard enough “onshore”. Important that the teambuilding
also continues after you have met. I.e by remembering to include everybody in the communication
Communication• Many tools can help you in all planned activities, but the
communication that happens in front of the coffe machine is harder to distribute – Google Wave
Collocated & Distributed Teams• Can exploit the difference in time zones and red letter
days• If all of the above works, then agile testing with
your offshore team is possible