Traditional approaches to quality and risk management involve quality gates, change control boards, feature freeze and code freeze milestones, and independent QA or Test groups. These approaches stabilize quality at by sacrificing agility. Yet buggy fragile code is even more dangerous for Agile teams where so much is changing so often. Quality and risk management are critically important for agility. This leads to the inevitable question: if the traditional approaches to quality and risk management don't work in an Agile context, what does? Practices vary across organizations, but all successful teams emphasize the same underlying principles of fast feedback, high visibility, collaboration, and alignment. This talk examines various approaches Agile teams have taken to increase quality, mitigate risk, and ultimately ensure they are delivering the highest possible value for their stakeholders.

1. Agile Quality and
Risk Management
Elisabeth Hendrickson
Blog: testobsessed.com
Twitter: @testobsessed
Slides Last updated August 6, 2013
copyright © 2013 Elisabeth Hendrickson
Available from:
http://www.slideshare.net/ehendrickson/presentations

2. Who Am I?
Author
Recovering
Consultant
Director, Quality Engineering
ElisabethHendrickson@testobsessed

3. Quality Attributes (“…ilities”)
Internal
makes software
development more
predictable & efficient
Maintainability
Reusability
Portability
Integrity
Consistency
Testability
Modifiability
External
improves the value of the
software to an external
customer or user
Dependability
Reliability
Security
Usability
Accessibility
Scalability
Performance
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4. Risks Distilled
Costs too much time or money
Fails to deliver needed value
Causes loss
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5. Four Big Factors in Risk
Ambiguity
Dependencies
Assumptions
Capacity
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6. Agile?
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7. What Agility Looks Like
Frequent delivery of value
At a sustainable pace
While adapting to the
changing needs of the
business
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8. Recurring Themes
Feedback
Visibility
Alignment
Collaboration
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9. ElisabethHendrickson@testobsessed
Speculation BuildupSpeculation
Analyze Design Implement Stabilize
Big Bang
Release

10. Every. Single. Time.
Empirical
Evidence
speculation!
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11. Agile eliminates speculation buildup…
Speculation
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12. When “Done” isn’t Really Done
Speculation
Iterations…
Stabilize
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13. If You Can’t Do Continuous Delivery…
Rehearse Delivery

14. Practice: Automated Testing
Automatically check that all previously met
expectations are still met.
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15. GUI
Tests
Partial-Stack
Integration Tests
Unit (Micro)
Tests
The test automation
pyramid, first published by
Mike Cohn.
A Strategy for Cost-Effective Test Automation
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16. Practice: Test First
Test Driven
Development
(TDD)
Acceptance Test
Driven
Development
(ATDD)
Behavior Driven
Development
(BDD)
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17. Tests Express Expectations and Responsibilities
The HTML5
features don’t
work on IE 2
Urm, so . . . ?

18. It All Starts with the Story
As a
I want
So that
Acceptance Criteria
•
•
•
•

19. Quality, Capabilities, and Lack of Alignment
Implementation
Actual Need
Intentions
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???
???

20. Practice: Continuous Integration
Stop the line on red.
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21. Example Board

22. Radiators

23. Version All Technical Assets *WITH* the Code
Unit Tests
Production
Code
Source Control Repository
(Plus All
other
technical
assets)
Test
“Fixture”
Code
Acceptance
Tests
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24. Tested is Part of Done
Tested =
 +
Checked Explored
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25. Practice: Exploratory Testing
Simultaneously…
learning about the software
while designing tests
and executing them as micro-experiments
using observations from the last test to
inform the next
all in a session guided by a charter
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26. Exploratory Charters
Explore < feature, interaction, etc. >
With < resources, constraints, etc. >
To discover < information >
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27. Bugs
Requirements
Practice: Single Stream of Work
Backlog
Story
Story
Story
Story
Story
Story
Story
Story
Story
Story
THIS
NOT THIS
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28. Feedback Loops
Local Unit Tests Secs-
Mins
Mins
CI Build
Mins-
Hrs
System Regression
Hrs-
Days
Exploratory Testing
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29. Tighten Feedback Loops (Example)
Code
Review
Check in
on Private
Branch
Unit Test
Merge Unit Test
System
Test
System
Test in
Local Env
Check into
Master
Run local
tests
CI Runs All
Tests
Pair
BEFORE: days - weeks
AFTER: mins - hours
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30. Four Big Factors in Risk
Ambiguity
Dependencies
Assumptions
Capacity
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Define Acceptance Criteria for Stories. Test First.
Integrate Continuously. Tighten Feedback Loops.
Deliver Frequently. Create Visibility.
Collaborate. Have a Single Stream of Work. Work to Done.

31. Agile Mitigates Risks
Costs too much time or money
Fails to deliver needed value
Causes loss
Fail Fast.
Deliver Frequently.
Explore. Learn. Iterate.
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32. Further Reading