Test Team Integration in Large-Scale Scrum Implementations 
Shaun Bradshaw
Director of Quality Solutions
Questcon Technologies

Introduction:

Approximately two years ago, a major healthcare solutions provider made a strategic decision to move all software development to the Scrum methodology from the Waterfall SDLC. While some areas of the IT organization were able to make a relatively smooth migration to the new standards and procedures, the sheer size of the organization (over 1000 IT resources), created significant challenges in terms of team integration, especially for the test team. As a result, the test organization commenced a project to assess the best course of action for fully integrating its resources into the Scrum projects.

Prior to commencement of the assessment project, the healthcare provider had been operating Scrum on a large scale for a year and a half. While the fundamentals of this development methodology had taken hold and the teams generally worked well within the methodology, the test team clearly struggled with resource limits, skill gaps, and in truly integrating and balancing itself within Agility. The test team still did not quite grasp or achieve the requisite balance necessary to integrate and develop an Agile Testing Model that fit with the new development methodology.

Seeing this as an impediment to successfully incorporating their testing expertise in the ongoing Scrum projects—getting to the next level of team capabilities, true Agile integration and improving overall business support and project performance—management asked an outside consulting firm, Questcon Technologies, to perform an assessment of their team, tools, techniques, and processes and develop a plan to aid in fully migrating the testers into the Scrum projects.

Learning Objectives:

The assessment's objective was to identify practical recommendations that would complement existing practices and help the test team fully engage in the Scrum development sprints, enhance resource skill sets, and build upon early test modularization and automation efforts.

Successful implementation depended upon willing participants and a strong commitment by management to enforce the changes once they were implemented. The test team and company as a whole, were ready and anxious for such changes, which ensured that the investment by the healthcare solutions provider in the implementation of these recommendations would reap significant gains in test analyst confidence, product quality, and the test team's perceived value in the organization.

Finally, one of the primary lessons any large organization can learn from this company's experience is that moving to an Agile development methodology is relatively easier for the development team, but can be more difficult for other teams within the IT department. Successfully integrating supporting teams into the process may require alternative tactics prior to starting the Agile-based projects. Within Agile, team integration, collaboration, and self-direction are key. Without preparing the supporting teams, as in this healthcare solutions provider's case, the test team, for the transition to that type of development model can lead to unnecessary delays, push back on the part of supporting teams, and possibly the failure of the Agile implementation. To the company's credit, the test team management group recognized that the team was not integrating and they refused to accept failure by identifying and correcting the core issues causing the difficulty.

Biography:

Shaun Bradshaw joined Questcon Technologies, an IT firm specializing in Quality Assurance and software testing consulting in 1998. As the director of quality solutions, he works with dozens of clients in various industries, advising, teaching, and mentoring them on the use of effective testing and test management techniques such as modular test case design, test metrics, the S-Curve, and the Zero Bug Bounce. Shaun is the co-author and editor of the QuestAssured® Service Methodologies, as well as the primary creator of the methodology training classes offered by Questcon. He has been a featured speaker at local and national QA and Testing conferences including Software Testing Analysis & Review (STAREAST), Quality Assurance Institute (QAI), Software Test & Performance Conference and PSQT.

Shaun received his B.S. in Information Systems with a minor in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.