Every cross functional Agile Team has a set of specialists who pitch in at various time to ensure a backlog is ready to be customer shippable sprint by sprint. These could be development specialists, test specialists, documentation specialists, operations specialists, business analysts and other specializations. As in mathematics the ratio of each of these is critical to the success of any sprint as their skills lend expertise and learning to others. In this session we explore if the number of devlopment specialist to test specialist within a cross functional agile team has a golden ratio? In this experience report what will be covered is learnings from scenarios where there is no test specialist in the team to a ratio where number of test specialists are more than development specialists. What will be covered are examples of sample ratios and the good and the bad of these ratios to an actual scenario. The implications of getting this ratio are discussed not just from product development but from a financial, people and type of company (startup, enterprise, service, product). In the end the session should help product owners, scrum masters and scrum team members get a insight into this crucial element of any agile project

1. Is there a Golden Ratio?
Test Specialist to Developer in
an Agile Team
- an experience report
Debashis Banerjee
deba_ban_2000@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: Please note all view and content expressed are those of the speaker only and do not represent those of any
of the speaker’s current or past employers

3. An Agile Scrum Team typically consists of
• Primarily
• Development Specialists
• Test Specialists (Manual + QA Automation)
• Scrum Master
• Product Owner
• Other cross functional roles
• Supported by
• Documentation Specialist (shared)
• Localization specialists (Shared)
• Deployment specialists (shared)
• Other stakeholders (People managers, business owners)

4. When might you use these ratios?

5. Some examples of actual use….
Greenfield work
Seeking additional
funding
A Product with Device
Heavy testing
Highly Automated
Product with higher
Agile Adoption
Technology infrastructure
movement Project

6. Observed Decision Factors in each case

7. Should the ratio even matter in Agile Teams?
• Role Agnostic Agile Teams
• Developers Test and Automate & Develop
• Testers Develop and Test and Automate
• Based on Phase of the product adjust Backlogs
• Results from a Sprint in a Consumer Product:
• The developers picked up functional testing , Ran automation, Tester pair tested for some
time
• The test engineer picked up defects
• Impact: Burndown and backlogs became faster. More velocity, Better Engagement
• To achieve this invested in:
• Training and Skill Development
• Expectation Management
• Management Support
• Creating a phased approach as per matrix earlier to gradually adjust ratio

8. Top Insights
• Ratios for developer to test specialists can be higher in Agile
development as compared to a non agile project.
• It is possible to have a cross functional team with specializations but
not role descriptions – thus no defined Dev : Test Ratio
• It is possible to move across the ratio back and forth much easier in
Agile projects from 1:1 or 2:1 it is possible to move from this to a
ratio such as 4:1 or 8:1
• Focusing on this aspect can help speeding up Scrum/Agile adoption.
• Solutions that emerge to allow this to ratio adapt such as Crowd
testing, Dog Fooding can help improve product development

9. Image Credits
• Image credit: http://web-profile.com.ua/web/web-design/golden-
ratio/
• http://health.mo.gov/training/epi/RatiosProportionsRates.html
• http://www.derailleurconsulting.com/agile-services
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio
• http://www.flashcardlearner.com/articles/the-learning-curve/
• http://www.tenthhouse.com.au/consumer-insights/
• http://www.slideshare.net/prasanthkhanna/ratio-analysis-34686453