Kanban testing

Copyright 2015, cPrime Inc. 1
AGILE TESTING IN
KANBAN

Migrations, Add-Ons,
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AgileCraft, Innotas and more
Contract to Hire, Consulting,
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and more
ScrumMasters, Product
Owners, Scrum Coaches and
more
Transformations, Scaling,
Assessments, Planning,
Coaching, Training, Advisory
Services, Change
Management and more
WHO IS CPRIME?

Today’s Presenter
Joe Vallone, Agile Coach
• Over 20 years of Software Development and project
management experience. Agile experience since 2002
• Undergraduate Engineering, USF
• Graduate MBA, Cox School of Business, SMU
• Certified SCRUM Professional (CSP, CSM)
• Experience leading Agile Transformations at Nokia, AT&T,
American Airlines
• Previous Agile/Scrum opponent now proponent
• Certified SAFe Program Consultant Trainer (SPCT)
• Implemented multiple scaling frameworks: Less, SAFe, and
Nexus
3
Joe.Vallone@cprime.com
Twitter: @joejv

Agenda
• Introduction to Agile and Lean
• Intro to Kanban
• Kanban and ScrumBan
• How testers add value to cross-functional Agile Development
Teams
• How to test in an Agile Environment
• The Four Environments (Dev, Test, Stage, Production)
• Testing tools

Adaptive Spectrum Drives Process
Selection
Scope Uncertainty + Effort Uncertainty:
PREDICTIVE ADAPTIVE REACTIVE
Plan-Driven Scrum Kanban
Waterfall
The Agile Zone
• Emphasize adaptability
to rapid change
• Enable detailed short-
term planning
• Evolve longer-term
specs, plans over time
• Overhead of enabling
change is costly for
predictable work
• Emphasize continuous
re-prioritization, efficient
allocation of work to
people
• Do not require work to
be planned against
calendar
• Handle unpredictable
work well
• Emphasize efficiency
(minimum cost,
duration)
• Perform well when
work is well understood
• Perform poorly when
uncertainty is high
5

What is an Agile Process?
Any process that adheres to the principles of the
Agile Manifesto
We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and
helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on
the left more.
Manifesto for Agile Software Development, www.agilemanifesto.org
The concepts arose in software project management, BUT…
Change “software” to “products” or “deliverables” to apply more generally
6

Agile is Lean*
1. Optimize the whole (value of complete solution, product)
• Consider big-picture, long-term as well as parts, short term
2. Eliminate waste
• Maximize amount of work not done
 Minimize non-product effort (documents, sign-offs)
 Defer decisions, work: YAGNI
3. Build Quality In
• Definition of Done, XP practices
4. Learn Constantly
• Feedback loops (external, internal)
5. Deliver Fast
• Short cycles, incremental delivery
6. Engage Everyone
• Group expertise / Wisdom of Crowds**
7. Keep Getting Better
• Retrospectives *www.poppendieck.com
**© 2004 James Surowiecki, Anchor Books
7

What is Kanban?
• Kanban Japanese for Signal Card
• Pull system for work flow
• Originated from Toyota Manufacturing
 Signals up-stream to produce more
• Implemented as part of the Lean Software Movement
• An agreed upon system for capacity matching
• Visualization of work flow
• Less overhead than traditional Scrum
• Worked is pulled in as capacity is available

Kanban Terms
• Lead Time – Time from Feature Request to completion (i.e.
elapsed time)
• Cycle Time – Time to finish the task (i.e. time per unit)
• Throughput – Amount of work delivered in a time frame
• WIP – Work in Process
• Swarm – Collaboration to reduce bottlenecks

How does Kanban Work?
• Forces the team to visualize WIP (Work in Progress)
• Via Kanban board
• Constrained by WIP
• WIP limits cannot be exceeded
– No work is pulled unless a slot is available
• Flow of cards (work) through the system
• Identify the bottlenecks and optimize
• Based upon Little’s Law from Lean Manufacturing
• CT = WIP/Throughput
• Lower CT = Less Lead Time

Card Wall/Kanban Board

Walking the Kanban board
• Different color post-it notes can mean different things
• Priority, bugs, defects
• Class of Service – priorites, severity, due dates, etc.
• Left to right process flow
• Enables visualization of bottlenecks
• Post-it notes typically has:
• Description, assignment, <due date>
• Backlog is prioritized on demand by product owner

How does it work with Software and
IT Systems?
• The first virtual Kanban system for software engineering was
implemented at Microsoft
• In IT work we often use a virtual kanban system
• Tools e.g. JIRA, Lean Kit, etc.
• no actual physical card is passed around to define the limit to
work-in-progress
• Helps to implement incremental process improvement
• Kaizen

Differences from Traditional
Scrum/Agile
• Less Planning overhead
• If a card is available and it doesn’t exceed WIP, pull it.
• Planning on demand/as needed
• No estimating. WIP is the constraint
• Focus on the work and improving the system
• Still have daily standup which provides focus on work flow
through the system and resolving bottleknecks
• No time box!

ScrumBan?
• Kanban combined with Scrum process and structure
• Ideal for predictable planning and release periods
• Regular planning and grooming sessions
• Combination of metrics
• Burndown and CFD
• Regular Kiazen sessions
• Time boxed

Why use it?
• Trust is event driven and that small, frequent
gestures or events enhance trust more than larger
gestures
• Demand can be balanced against throughput with a
pull system
• Pull systems expose the bottlenecks and create
slack in non-bottlenecks
• Reduces system variability
• Reducing variability allows reduced Kanban tokens,
less WIP, and results in reduced average lead time
• Transparency on both work and process
• WIP Limits and class of service leads to
empowerment

Lean Metrics
• WIP (Work in Progress)
• How many cards can we handle?
• CFD (Cumulative Flow Diagram)
• Focus on how to reduce lead time
• leverage point for improving quality is to reduce the quantity of
work-in-
• Little’s Law
• Lead Time = Cycle Time * WIP
• Cycle Time = WIP/Throughput
• Focus on the work
• NOT the worker

How do Testers Add Value in Agile
and Lean?
• Who’s responsible for testing?
• EVERYONE! – Paradigm Shift
• Developers need to ensure their code is high quality, BEFORE
giving it to test
• XP – TDD, Pair Programming, etc.
• Testers are part of the Cross-Functional Development Team
• Participate in all ceremonies, including estimation
• Testers create test plans and scripts while developers code
• Map the testing states to the Kanban board

Sample QA Kanban Board
Source: blog.kanbanize.com

Environments and DevOps
•Unit Testing
•TDD
•CI
•Development Teams have
Content Authority
Dev
•ATDD
•Test case Execution
•Early NFR Testing
•QA has Content Authority
•Regression Testing
Test •Identical to Prod
•Final NFR Testing
•UAT
•Product Manager has Content
Authority
•Full Regression Testing
•Exploratory Testing
Stage
•Release to Customer
•Release Documentation
•Release Management has
Content Authority
Prod

Automation is Key!
• Continuous Integration
• Jenkins, Hudson, Cruise Control, etc.
• TDD
• xUnit,
• ATDD
• Cucumber
• Nightly builds
• Test Case Automation/Scripting
• Enables Great Exploratory Testing
Good News: Many testing tools and frameworks are free!

Defects
• Don’t have them!
• Not realistic
• Solid Definition of Done
• Will slow down the throughput of the system
• Stories/Tasks are not complete if tests are failed
• It is valuable to determine where defects are found
• Development, Test, Staging, and Production
• Establish Defect Feedback Loop
• Defects found should result in new automated tests
• Product Owner and teams work together to prioritize
• Which defects have to be fixed now and which can wait?

Agile Principle #7 – Working software is
the primary measure of progress
• Good coding practices
• Separation of Concerns
• SOLID, GRASP
• TDD – test first strategy
• ATDD - vetting and automating acceptance criteria
• Continuous Integration
• Hardening sprints
• Agile Requirements Modeling
• Agile testing metrics

Agile Testing Quadrants
Courtesy of lisaCrispin.com

Software Quality Metrics
• Defect Tracking System
• Number of defects
• Location/Identification
• Cyclomatic Complexity
• Number of unit tests
• % of unit test coverage
• Code Coverage
• Number and % of automated tests
• Number of refactors

IMPORTANCE OF TESTING IN AGILE
• Advocate for the End User
• Making sure the right thing is built
• Visibility to what, how, and why something was
tested
• Not testing is costly – 50% of software goes untested
costing US economy $60B / year*
*Source: http://www.codeguru.com/blog/category/programming/the-cost-of-bugs.html

Robust testing platform purpose-built for agile teams
QASYMPHONY
32

33
TESTING TOOLS HAVE
NOT EVOLVED
Legacy testing software was not built for agile
Hard to use Doesn’t fit agile
workflows
Lack of integrations
with agile tools
Not cross-platform or
cross-browser

34
OUR STRATEGY
QAS is the only software provider with integrated tools built for Agile
Elevate testing and QA from a cost center to a value provider by
delivering:
Efficiency for
the tester
Collaboration
for the team
Continuous
improvement
for the
enterprise

35
WHAT THIS MEANS TO YOU
Efficiency for Tester
40% ⇩ Manual Documentation time
20% ⇩ Defect Reproduction time
Increased traceability to ALM
Collaboration Between
Teams
⇩ Time from design to test
⇩ Time from test to fix to retest
Increased visibility to code, design, build
Continuous Improvement
Across Organizations
⇧ Frequency of team evaluation
⇧ Available comparison data
Increased visibility to analytics from
entire SDLC

36
A CORE PART OF THE AGILE TESTING
PROCESS
Agile Testing
Platform
BDD/TDD/ATDD
Reporting and
Insights
Automation
Integration with
Jenkins, Bamboo
and Selenium
ALM Integration
with Jira, Rally,
Version One
Exploratory
Testing

37
OUR SOLUTIONS
For Test Case
Management
qTest is a powerful, elegant,
scalable test management
solution that works with small
teams and allows large
enterprises to coordinate and
track hundreds of projects
across many locations.
For Exploratory
Testing
qTest eXplorer is a ground-
breaking test
documentation tool that
supports exploratory and
unscripted testing AND
saves time when
performing traditional
manual testing.
For Reporting &
Insights
qMap is a revolutionary new
way to view the results from
your agile testing process,
providing a high level
visualization of your test
results and allowing you to
quickly identify issues.

38
RICH, ACTIONABLE REPORTING
Application Quality
Heat Map
Customizable Graphical
Reporting
One-Click Traceability Matrices
Intuitive Custom
Query Builder

Questions?

Kanban testing

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