‘How a Great QA Team can make a Disproportionate Contribution to Project Success’

Paper Presented by Mark Ryland

Presentation Contents1. Introduction

2. Project Lifecycle & Team Constituents

3. Team Dynamics

4. Typical QA

5. Great QA

Mark Ryland’s Credentials

• Close on 20 years large project delivery experience in Wholesale Financial Services

• Banks, exchanges and brokers

• Variety of systems types

• Projects from $10M to $150M

• All of these projects required QA testing

• Involved in building 2 offshore testing centres

• Schooled in QA testing best practise

Off-shore

On-shore

‘Location QA’ - ‘end to end’ testing with location specific downstream systems

user acceptance testing ( executed by user representatives)

Test execution ( system, regression, new functionality)

Maintenance of regression test cases

Test automation development

Con

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Example Scope From Building QA Centre

Project Team v Lifecycle

Conception Initiation Development Test Implement

Project Sponsor

Project Manager

Business Analyst

Architect/Designer

Development Team

QA Team

Production Team

Team Dynamics

What Determines The Team’s Rate of Progress?

Pac

emak

er(s

)

‘Typical/Normal’ QA Experience

1. Doesn’t fully understand project objectives

2. Lacks detailed domain knowledge

3. Consumes lots of management & BA time

4. Is a bottleneck - test execution cycles take too long

5. Not flexible in dealing with unplanned change

6. Test coverage and quality is not good enough

7. QA team measure their success on how many test cases were executed (as

opposed to the value of them)

Attributes of a Great QA Team

1. The basics

2. Domain experts

3. Works out for itself what needs to be done

4. High calibre, motivated staff, stable team

5. Intelligent use of tools to speed up test execution/improve

6. Only raise genuine defects

7. A peer to other parts of the project team

Attributes of a Great QA Team Cont….

8. Energy and diligence

9. Flexible orientation of test effort

10. Responsive to changes in project priorities

11. Disciplined organisation of the test environment

12. Creative

13. Independent & Objective

Adds Up to Making a ‘Real’ Contribution to Quality & Hence Project Success

7. Test Case Quality

6. Test Process

Effectiveness

1. High Quality Staff

3. Level of Energy

Enthusiasm & Proactivity

4. Planning & Delivering Ability

2. Domain Knowledge

9. Bespoke Automation

Tools Available

8. Detailed Management of

Test Environment

5. Creativity & Flexibility in Problem

Solving

Measuring QA Team Effectiveness

Independence & Objectivity

Business Analyst Designer Devel –oper End

UsersBusiness Manager

1. Understanding of Requirement

2. Delivery of Solution

3A. Independent Measurement by

QA Team

3B. Independent Measurement by High Quality QA Team

Team Dynamics When the QA Team is Excellent

1. Developers try harder to get it right in the first place

2. Developers get rapid/timely feedback on what’s wrong

3. Developers are work harder to solve defects to keep the project on track

4. Project sponsors get clear visibility on quality level and progress

5. Project designers and analysts are have clear problem statements to work from

6. Have (justified) confidence in the system – that will feed through to the users

7. Fewer problems are going to found in live & hence the project will cost less

Conclusion

Gre

at Q

A T

eam

Questions & Answers

Thank You