Gumtree underwent a transformation from late 2015 to early 2018 to create a "one team" culture without separate dev and QA roles. They initially prepared by shifting mindsets to see quality as everyone's responsibility. They implemented a Gumtree Code Quality Academy to teach developers testing skills. By late 2017, there was no longer a separate "in testing" phase and engineers did both development and testing. As of early 2018, some teams no longer had dedicated QEs and quality engineers took on some development tasks, moving toward true one team collaboration.

1. 1
Take away “Dev” or “QA” from an engineer’s
job title to build a true “one team” culture
– The Gumtree bidirectional transformation journey
Cindy Xin, QE Manager at Gumtree Australia

2. Transformation Journey Overview
Gumtree Bidirectional Transformation Journey
PREPARATION
End of 2015
• Releases: 1-3/week
• Detecting bugs
IMPLEMENTATION
Mid of 2016
ONE Team
Early 2018
• Releases: ~30/week
• Preventing bugs

3. Gumtree Team State – as of late 2015
- Clear Dev, QA Role in agile team
- Handover culture
I’m a QA, I do manual
testing and implement
automation tests.
I’m a developer, I only
focus on development.

4. Motivation – Delivery Quality at Speed (?)
Shift Left Shift RightTesting

5. Motivation – Commitment!
SAY/DO RATIO

6. Stage 1 – Preparation (Late 2015)

7. Mindset – Find what’s in it for Developer
- Some Developer act as THE “VOICE” of QUALITY in the team
- VERIFIED New Process
I’m a developer, I’m happy to do testing because I can make
more accurate estimation, learn more about testing also
automation testing is cool!

8. Testing plan/results ReviewTest Plan Mind Map
Coaching and tools – Build skillset and confidence

10. Testing plan/results ReviewTest Plan Mind Map
Coaching and tools – Build skillset and confidence

11. Still…
What will we do if Dev
does testing?
What will QA do if we do
testing?

12. Stage 2 – Implementation (Mid-2016)

13. Roll out Gumtree Code Quality Academy to whole team
• A PROCESS to build quality code
• Change the way from DETECTING bugs to
PREVENTING bugs
• Create a culture of quality – quality is EVERYONE’s
responsibility
• A SCHOOL where we coach dev how to test!

14. • Vision: “We empower Developers to feel
confident when they make changes”
• Scope
• Services
• Tools / Framework
• Non-functional testing
Rebrand as QE and Rescope responsibility

15. Upskill existing employee OR Release/Replace them?
Upskill existing employee in
stead of hiring
Retention
pays
Foster
learning
culture
Cost of
recruitment
Almost half (48%) of Australian businesses would
rather hire talent than train existing employees.
Ironically, 70% of businesses are finding it difficult to
hire workers with the specific skills needed.
According to a new study from TAFE May 2018

16. Quality getting worse?
Quality ambition of DevOps deployments must be targeted at the level "good-enough".
Pre-requisite is an agreed and commonly shared vision on risks that are acceptable
and risks which cannot be taken with a deployment.
- Capgemini DevOps with Quality Report 2017

17. Stage 2 achievement – by the end of 2017
- NO more ”In Testing” phase!
I’m a (developer)
engineer, I do
development and
testing.
I’m a quality engineer, I
provide service, (automation)
tools and non-functional
testing support.

18. Stage 3 – One Team (Early 2018)

19. Work Smart – Automation
Code Quality
Unit
Testing
Integration
Testing
Speed
Testing
End-to-end
Testing
Spock
Pact
Jersey
Security
Testing

20. Work Smart – Beyond Automation
- Leverage release strategy and
monitoring/alerting to MITIGATE RISK
- Leverage Automation to improve
PRODUCTIVITY and COMMUNICATION

21. QE taking Development tasks
• Peer programming & code review from Developer
• Start with bug fixes, A/B testing clean up and now features
Pull Request Review:
I haven’t seen such old
style code in 10 years!
Pull Request Review:
Looks GOOD!

22. Stage 3 achievement (in progress) – as of now
I’m a (developer)
engineer, I do
development, testing and
automation.
- Some teams don’t have QE, some teams have QE 50 / 50 on testing / development
tasks.
I’m a (quality) engineer, I
provide service, build tools to
help developer do better
testing, also do development.

23. Three ways & continuous experimentation & learning…
Continuous
Learning
Flow
Feedback
COMMONLY shared vision on RISK and QUALITY
EMPOWER rather than ENFORCE
TRULY believe in people’s potential
Work SMART

24. Cindy Xin
QE Manager at Gumtree Australia
Email: cxin@ebay.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cindy-xin/