Project Management and Testing in an Agile Environment, 7-23-03

7/30/2019 Project Management and Testing in an Agile Environment, 7-23-03

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Project Management and Testing in an Agile Environment

2003 Johanna Rothman www.jrothman.com

781-641-4046 [email protected] 2

2003 Johanna Rothman www.jrothman.com [email protected] 3

What Do Project Managers Do? From the PMBOK:

Initiate

Plan

Execute

Control

Close

Agile Project Managers:

Initiate

Plan an iteration

Plan daily work

Execute

Steer/Guide (help the teamorganize and manage their work)

Close the iteration

Review effort expended andprogress made

Until enough iterations are done

Close


What Do Testers Do?

In traditional projects

Read documentation

Develop tests based onrequirements

Develop tests based ondocumentation

Develop tests based on API

Report problems

Report on state of software

Frequently, after code is available

In agile projects

Develop tests with customer

Develop requirements for productdocumentation

Develop tests based on API

Report problems

Report on state of software

Before development


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Agile Projects Make

Traditional PM Problems Obvious We cant fully plan before we start, because we dont know where

were going

We can plan a little and continue to iterate the planning

When we execute, things will happen

Risk management is essential

During the control phase, we need to measure whatshappening, so we have a chance of guiding the project

What do you measure, so you know where you are and can move to where

you want to be? If we knew when we were done, wed close

So if were ready to release at a moments notice, we can close any time


Agile Projects Change the Nature of

Testing

So far, agile testers look a lot like developers

Their perspective is different

Test-first development means the developers wait on the testersfor the requirements

But not very long. Hours, maybe a day

Build is always available

Cycles of testing have to complete quickly (less than a day)

Changes the nature of how we plan to test and how we developtests


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What Agile Project Managers Do Guide projects

Negotiate each iterations content

But cant you fit in one more user story?

Track iterations progress

Facilitate 15-minute daily standup meetings to expose progress and obstacles Heres what I finished. Heres what Im working on today. Heres what would

prevent me from completing it.

Facilitate customer/team working together

Agitate for customer involvement

Use previous iterations completion to plan next iteration

Use velocity (number of user stories/iteration completed) and prioritized userstories left to predict the next iteration

Agile project managers require more of the soft skills to be effective

Negotiation, oral communication, influence


Project Initiation

Question:

How many of you write project charters?

How many of you jump directly to the project schedule?

Project charters can be invaluable

Why we want this project, return for the project, risks, people

Especially needed when

One customer cant represent the entire customer set

The customer cant/wont sit with the team Youre a pilot project trying out agile methods


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Project Planning Question:

How many of you plan the whole project at the beginning?

How many of you plan to replan?

Agile projects practice schedule and planning iteration, as well asdevelopment iteration

About planning:

Planning is not the holy grail of a successful project

However, without a plan, you cant be successful

Plan what you need to plan, and dont bother with the rest


Steer/Guide an Agile Project

Daily 15-minute standup meetings

Measure each iterations velocity

Earned value at its best

How many people, how many user stories completed, in how much time

Monitor fault feedback ratio

High FFR implies not enough refactoring

Refactoring is updating the code, not the design

Tells you whether you need to change pairs or institute other peer reviewtechniques


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Close an Iteration Iteration close criteria

Did we accomplish all the user stories we thought we could do?

Is it time to complete an iteration?

Can the customer use whats in this iteration?

Can perform a quick retrospective


Test Planning

How many of you develop test strategy documents?

Release criteria, what you will and will not test

Which configurations

How many of you plan for X iterations of testing?

How many of you plan for test automation?

Agile projects practice testing iteration, as well as developmentiteration


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Testing in an Agile Project Develop automated tests at the top level

Developers develop unit tests

Develop automated tests at the integration level (it depends)

Refactor the tests

Agile projects demand automated tests (as the main driver fortests)


Completing Testing for an Agile Project

If youve been testing with the user all along, you dont need useracceptance testing

Some projects plan for a short iteration with exploratory testingto run through all the system tests and fix problems they missed

Measure code coverage to see if large holes


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Example of an Agile Project Please arrange yourselves into groups of 10:

Well debrief together: Observers (PM, Customer/tester, developer): What did you see and hear?

Project staff (PM, Developers, Customer/testers):

What stood out for you?

Where were you challenged? surprised?

Whats one thing you learned about agile projects?

Whats one thing youre going to apply when you go back to work?

1 customer/tester observer1 customer and 1 tester

1 developer observer3 developers

1 PM observer1 Project manager

Observers (3 people)Project staff (7 people)


Define Project Quality to Determine

Which Agile Techniques to Use

Define quality: Value to someone

You have many someones, which someones do you care about the most?

Do you have multiple users, each with their own agenda?

Make sure you have one customer from each user set assigned to theproject

Facilitate their discussions

Why should you care about what quality means for your project

You wont have time to do everything. Defining quality means you can

make appropriate choices

Rank user stories

You can use agile project management and techniques no matter whatyour customers want


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Assess Your Projects

Requirements and Constraints Every project has requirements and

constraints

What do your customers care aboutthe most?

Time to market

Feature set

Defect levels

Internal perspectives or constraints:Your customers dont care about these.You do.

Cost to market People and their capabilities

Work environment

Peop

leandth

eirc

ap

abiliti

es

Cost to market

Work

environm

ent

TimetoMarket

Feature

set

LowD

efects


Different Projects Have Different Customer Focus

Technology

Enthusiasts

BowlingAlley

Early Market

MainstreamMarket

TheChasm

Tornado

Main Street

End of Life

Visionaries

Pragmatists

Conservatives

Skeptics

Introduction Early Adopters Mainstream Late Majority Skeptics1. Time to Market 1. Time to Market 1. Low Defects 1. Low Defects 1. Low Defects2. Feature Set 2. Feature Set 2. Time to Market 2. Feature Set 2. Feature Set3. Low Defects 3. Low Defects 3. Feature Set 3. Time to Market 3. Time to Market


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About Iterations Two-six weeks long (2-3 weeks is better)

An iteration should be as long/short as you are willing to throw theiterations work away

Team decides what they can accomplish within an iteration

Team monitors its velocity: number user stories/iteration

Customer and team develop user story cards (not a formalrequirements document)

Customer and team work together to understand each user story

Testers and customer write acceptance tests

All code is developed test-first (unit tests)

Use some sort of peer review technique (pair programming,informal review)


Choose What to Measure

Dont be afraid to apply YAGNI to measurement also

EQF (Estimation Quality Factor)

FFR (Fault Feedback Ratio)

Cost to fix a defect

When people work on the project vs. when they are assigned


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Summary Using agile techniques can help your project management and

testing

The project staff have to be ready, as well as your management

Agile project management requires much more monitoringthroughout the project (and less upfront planning)

Test first means reporting is easy

Inch-pebbles and earned value are your friends

Choose iteration durations so that if you have to throw out anentire iterations work, its ok

Move from project control to project steering

Have fun!


References and Reading

Beck, Kent, Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change, Addison-Wesley,Reading, MA. 2000.

Beck, Kent and Martin Fowler, Planning Extreme Programming, Addison-Wesley,Reading, MA. 2001.

Highsmith, Jim, Adaptive Software Development, Dorset House, New York, 2000.

Highsmith, Jim. Agile Software Development Ecosystems, Addison-Wesley, Reading,MA. 2002.

Martin, Robert C. Agile Software Development:Principles, Patterns, Practices, PrenticeHall, Upper Saddle River, NJ. 2003.

Schwaber, Ken et al. Agile Software Development with Scrum, Prentice Hall, UpperSaddle River, NJ. 2001.

I have a variety of articles on my website, and in my Managing Product Developmentblog:

www.jrothman.com/papers.htmlwww.jrothman.com/weblog/blogger.html

Agile Alliance is at www.agilealliance.org


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Questions? If you have questions later, email me, [email protected]

Project Management and Testing in an Agile Environment, 7-23-03

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