Quality mindset + Scrum team
How does a Scrum team that has a Quality mindset work together?
A kick-off meeting for a new feature has just completed. Everyone, Product Owner, Business Analyst, Designer, Quality crew and the Engineers came out from the meeting room (virtual or IRL).
Back to their desk and start the new sprint. Some are writing more details in the Dev tasks tickets while others are creating the remaining user stories. Some start with more research (in the code, visiting StackOverflow and/or asking a colleague for help).
When a scrum team that has Quality mindset, how do they work together?
Ready, Steady
During the kick-off meeting, this is usually the first time 90% of the team has only heard of the scope of the current sprint. While the Product Owner and the Lead Developer in that team has almost all the details before this meeting.
And it is also during the kick-off meeting, everyone ask questions. Let’s go.
Why do we build this? What problem are we solving?
Why do we need X and not consider Y?
How do we know if we solve the problem when we go live?
How do we track our KPIs?
What scenario are a must have to reduce risks? What do track for alerts?
What risks do we consider there?
More questions may arise from those questions raised. Some of those questions have obvious answers while others need more data/insights. The questions are clarified, prioritised or (rarely) discard. Make sure everyone is heard.
The team dispersed with a clear idea who is finding clarity for which question at the end of the kick-off meeting.
Some teams who had been working together for a long time, tend to do technical review to dig into the code to tweak out major scenario before the kick-off meeting.
During the kick-off meeting, it is also a great time to do risk assessment, listing all the test scenario from the user stories. This helps everyone to be aware of the risks and help mitigate them/track them.
Running
During the sprint, tests are written first. Then write the feature code that pass the tests. The backend code are ready to be consumed. Small commit are made to make sure deterministic diagnosis when an error happens.
Pair programming and/or pair testing are done with Developers and Quality crew. Hopefully explore more scenarios. Possibly consult Designer and Product Owner for a decision to reduce the scope in exchange of adding other high risk scenario.
Mock designs are now turned into hi-fi flows on the frontend. Designer and Product Owner can take a run with it.
Group test party is organised by the Quality crew, explore more scenarios!
All these activities, discussions, ad-hoc chats, slack messages produce a set of actions and decisions. Everyone aims to go for a set of conscious decisions to deliver value to the customers, solving the named problem stated at the beginning of the kick-off meeting.
This is only part 1, more parts are coming up! Hope to hear your views on possible behaviour observed for How a Scrum team that has a Quality mindset work together.
