Category Archives: being agile

QA Process in Agile: Avoiding Silos, Pro Whole-Team Approach

Who is Responsible for Software Quality in Agile? The QA process in agile differs greatly from QA in traditional testing, such as in Waterfall.Agilehas changed the way we think of software quality. In fact,I have read rumblings in the blogosphere that Agile has killed QA.I promise youQuality Assuranceis alive and well on agile teams.It just looks different than what most of us are used to. I think people who have promoted the “death” of QA in agile are not looking closely enough at...

Zombie Scrum Pitfalls & How to Avoid Them

What is Zombie Scrum? Example #1: Zombie Scrum Standup (Standup Led by the ScrumZombie) Example #2: Scrum Zombie and the Lack of Sprint Goals Example #3: Sprint Review and Retrospective Zombies That’s a Scrum Zombie Wrap! Once again, I have the pleasure of welcoming October. Soon it will be cooler and more colorful here in North Carolina. The holidays are coming, and many of my neighbors have already decorated for Halloween. I have been pondering what sort of ghoulish surprise I could...

Agile Project Management Methodologies

There is some confusion around whatagileis versus what agile methodologies are, and often people lump them together.Agile is a mindset (not a methodology) that encompasses a set ofvalues and principlesthat were compiled by a group of software gurus in 2001. These values focus on customer collaboration, flexibility, a short iterative cycle, value delivery, people centricity, sustainability and simplicity, among other things.These values and principles are not to be confused with the...

Quality in Testing: Everyone's Responsibility

Once upon a time, in the land of Waterfall, the business analysts wrote the requirements, the developers coded the requirements and the Testers tested the requirements. Each of these people sat in his/her ivory tower, um, silo and did that which they had always done since the beginning of time.Quality was thought to be synonymous with testing, and therefore was considered to exist solely in the Tester’s realm. Present Day Quality Fast forward to today, on an agile team and the...

Moving from doing agile to BEING agile

Are you an experienced tester who has recently joined an agile team? Maybe you have testing experience but until now it has only been on traditional waterfall projects. Are you going through the motions with this new way of doing things but don’t feel like you’re completely invested? Do you even feel like you’re adding value to your team? Often times, when a company begins their agile transformation they think they are BEING agile when in fact they are justdoing it. Being agile...