This document discusses tactics to improve software quality as part of the first step in a Kanban recipe for success. It recommends focusing on quality through tactics like professional testing, developer unit testing, specification by example, code inspections, collaborative analysis and design, design patterns, and static analysis tools. Readers are prompted to consider how they could learn more about, try, and measure the effectiveness of these tactics.

1. Focus on Quality
Kanban Recipe for Success: Step One
Jason Yip
j.c.yip@computer.org
jcyip@thoughtworks.com
@jchyip
http://jchyip.blogspot.com

2. KANBAN RECIPE FOR
SUCCESS

5. The Recipe for Success
1. Focus on Quality
2. Reduce WIP
3. Deliver Often
4. Balance Demand Against Throughput
5. Prioritise
6. Attack Variability to Improve Predictability

6. FOCUS ON QUALITY

8. “Focus on quality is easiest
because it is a technical
discipline that can be directed
by a function manager.”
David Anderson

10. How would you make quality
problems visible?

11. Imagine that your team / group
had a long history of delivering
high quality, regularly.

12. What would you feel
comfortable proposing that you
don’t now?

14. WHAT ARE TACTICS TO IMPROVE
QUALITY?

15. Professional testers
1. The value of any practice depends on its context.
2. There are good practices in context, but there are no best
practices.
3. People, working together, are the most important part of any
project’s context.
4. Projects unfold over time in ways that are often not predictable.
5. The product is a solution. If the problem isn’t solved, the product
doesn’t work.
6. Good software testing is a challenging intellectual process.
7. Only through judgment and skill, exercised cooperatively
throughout the entire project, are we able to do the right things at
the right times to effectively test our products.
http://context-driven-testing.com

16. Developer unit testing
• Automated regression unit tests
• Test Driven Development:
– You are not allowed to write any production code
unless it is to make a failing unit test pass.
– You are not allowed to write any more of a unit
test than is sufficient to fail; and compilation
failures are failures.
– You are not allowed to write any more production
code than is sufficient to pass the one failing unit
test.
http://butunclebob.com/ArticleS.UncleBob.TheThreeRulesOfTdd

17. Specification by Example
• http://martinfowler.com/bliki/SpecificationB
yExample.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specification_b
y_example

18. Code inspections
• Pair
programming, http://www.jamesshore.com/Agile-
Book/pair_programming.html
• Code reviews
• Fagan
inspections, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fagan_ins
pection
• Tool supported code
review, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tools_fo
r_code_review

19. Collaborative analysis and
design
• Inception,
http://agilewarrior.wordpress.com/2010/11/06/
the-agile-inception-deck/
• Collaborative design,
http://jasonfurnell.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/
facilitating-collaborative-design-workshops-a-
step-by-step-guide-for-rapidly-creating-a-
shared-vision-for-execution

20. Design patterns
“Each pattern is a three-part rule, which
expresses a relation between a certain
context, a problem, and a solution.”
Christopher Alexander
http://hillside.net/patterns/patterns-catalog

21. Static analysis tools
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tools_fo
r_static_code_analysis

22. How might you…
• Learn more about the tactic?
• Try the tactic?
• Measure whether the tactic was effective?

23. HOMEWORK

25. What is the smallest step you
could take to move 1 level up
(or more)?

26. What is your plan to start that
step tomorrow?