Tag: agile

My experience as a Panel speaker @LeadDev webinar

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

I was invited by @LeadDev organisation to be a part of a webinar where we had a panel discussion on “Building a better testing culture“. I was elated to be a part of this great group pf panelists alongside Thayse Onofrio from Thoughtworks and Marcus Merrell from Saucelabs. We had a spirited and interesting discussion and shared some meaningful ideas on the topic. I would also like to thank our host Amanda Sopkin for her really on-the-nail questions and for directing the conversation, and our organiser Olivia Christian for inviting me and for her support throughout the event!

The webinar panel was live, lasted for 45 minutes and then we had some time for Q&A. There were some great questions and discussions over the LeadDev slack channel as well.

Here is a bit more insight into the event-

The world of software testing is changing under the pressure of ‘speed to market’. The pressure to quickly get products to market means we are starting to see a significant shift towards automated tests during development. This will likely cause socio-technical complexities for orgs and teams currently involved in testing.

In order to be successful through these changes, orgs will need to have a clear strategy and processes in place that will ensure testing is a vital part of the delivery process. In this new age of testing, how can engineering leaders prevent pitfalls such as friction between teams, a culture of blame, and outdated processes?

In this panel, we examined how shift affects traditional testing set-ups, covering what a healthy testing culture looks like and how to avoid the anti-patterns that lead to uncommunicative teams and project bottlenecks. We explored how engineering teams can best work together and how to encourage a shared vision of quality and the importance of efficient and effective tests.

Key takeaways

  • Define clear roles and responsibilities for quality and testing in your org 
  • Encourage QA to be seen as necessary, rather than inhibiting release times 
  • Understand which tests to automate, and which to not

About LeadDev

LeadDev is a community of software engineering leaders that come together to learn and get inspired on all things team, tech, process, and personal development. 

LeadDev has become an essential destination for anyone in tech and engineering who wants to scale themselves and create impact. They provide a range of content that includes articles, thematic content series, video talks and panel discussions, written and delivered by the best voices in engineering.You can register a free LeadDev.com account to gain access to our free engineering leadership content, free online events and our weekly email newsletter. 

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I am Speaking @ LeadDev Webinar Panel – Dec 14th

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

I am super glad to announce that I have been invited by the LeadDev team as a Panel speaker in the upcoming Webinar on “Building a better Testing culture”

The webinar will be held on 14th December at 10.15 PM IST. Details for registration can be found here https://leaddev.com/events/building-better-testing-culture

I am thrilled to be a part of this amazing group of panelists and chat about building amazing teams and a great team culture in this new age of testing. We will be covering what a healthy testing culture looks like and how to avoid the anti-patterns that lead to uncommunicative teams and project bottlenecks!

To top it all, this is a free event!! So, you can register a free LeadDev.com account to secure your place. Not only this, your account will give you access to our free engineering leadership content, free online events and our weekly email newsletter. 

Register here now to attend this awesome event and become a part of this amazing LeadDev Community!

See you there!

Back to work feelings…

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

I have been away for a while, and for the best reason ever!

The last month has been just me getting back to work, finding a rhythm raising my little humans along with working from home, navigating the changed professional environment and catching up on loads of work!

The days are filled with building routines, meal times and naps, work hours and playtime evenings, the nights are filled with meetings & calls with the US team and then struggling to wake for the midnight cries. There is a constant fight with the eternal mom guilt and lack of sleep but then there is a drive to do more each day.

There are days where I get a lot done, have meaningful conversations and make work happen, but miss snuggling the babies to bed. But there are days when they need me more and I have to hold, nurse and comfort along with managing work deadlines.

Yes, it is challenging. And Yes, I am enjoying every bit of it! The things life teaches us trickle down into our work as well – things like patience, perseverance, discipline, time management and so much more! Every day is a blessing and I am excited, engaged and ever so energised with this transition.

The aim now is to get back to my blog and get back into writing, speaking and all the community things that I love!

So, yes! I am back with a bang! And ready for a lot more in 2023 🙂

Cheers!

How To Compliment Software Outsourcing With Agile Development? 

Nishi Grover Garg1 Comment

As technology advances at a breakneck pace, speed and adaptability have become critical for fulfilling client requirements. While traditional project management systems such as the waterfall approach are incredibly precise and controlled, they do not foster adaptation or feedback.

However, firms across a variety of sectors have succeeded in transforming the way their projects are managed through the use of the Agile development technique. Businesses whose primary business is software development have profited the most from the Agile methodology. 

Today, the value of agile methods in software development is well recognized. Not to mention, the benefits are only brought to those who are clear on what precisely to expect from a software development service provider. Agile improves your development team’s effectiveness and results in a more coordinated project management strategy. Therefore, thorough research before hiring makes a lot of sense in order to work on your expectations.

Along with the increasing popularity of Agile software development, another trend is picking up quickly, and with good reason is software outsourcing. Outsourcing software development has overtaken in-house development as the second most popular trend in the industry. 

Indeed, several businesses have begun to include agile methodologies into their offshore development processes as well. Their purpose is to combine the cost savings associated with outsourcing with the adaptability associated with agile development procedures. However, this begs the following question:

Is it possible for software outsourcing and agile development to coexist?

IT  Outsourcing is a widely used method of accelerating corporate operations and making them more efficient and competitive. Outsourcing enables organizations or independent software vendors to accelerate project delivery. Given the benefits that both Agile and Outsourcing provide to the software development cycle, collaborating on a project is undoubtedly a good option.

Coordination with an overseas team, on the other hand, might be challenging owing to a lack of face-to-face contact, cultural differences, and time zone differences, among other factors. Meanwhile, if a strategic strategy is used to integrate these masterstrokes for software development, the project delivery cycle may be accelerated and elevated.

To overcome the obstacles that collaboration between Agile and Outsourcing entails, both sides (companies and technology partners) must work together. The below section explores some effective strategies for establishing a successful Agile-Outsourcing relationship.

How To Compliment Software Outsourcing With Agile Development?

1. Choose A Trustworthy/Skilled Technology Partner

A technology partner is a business that comprehends the underlying concept of the program and assists in its execution. To begin, a comprehensive investigation of the organization should be conducted, determining whether their portfolio and prior expertise are applicable to your project. Thus, a set of indicators may be reviewed to determine whether the technology partner has the capability to execute a project according to the needs and standards established in advance. 

2. Assess the Team as a Whole, Not Individuals

Finding excellent programmers with extraordinary talents is not a difficult task for customers wishing to outsource a software project. Agile development, on the other hand, necessitates a high level of team participation; it is all about collaboration, not individual perfection. Each team member is critical to the project’s success, and each member must feel at ease cooperating with others, whether in offshore locations or in their own nation. 

As a result, the programmers’ track record in a team context is more essential than their individual accomplishments. Consider utilizing behavioral interviewing techniques to pick team members in the same way that you would when employing staff for your business.

3. Interact

To flourish as an outsourced and Agile software firm, there is a need for adjustment, since these two concepts do not always mesh well. To be successful, it is necessary to carefully modify the Agile software development process as well as the communication channels between the customer and the outsourced provider.

4. Mitigation of Risk

Everybody will claim to be agile. Therefore, if you are otherwise satisfied with the provider, condition awarding the project on a successful iteration/sprint that results in the delivery of functioning software to you. Make Certain that your sprints are brief. Define the success criteria in detail, including acceptance tests and the delivery timetable, as well as any additional criteria that are critical to you and your business. Following each sprint, you’ll have the chance to evaluate the offshore team’s performance, make required improvements, and lead the project in the correct path.

After analyzing the team’s performance and working style, you should be able to determine whether you can accomplish your business objectives while collaborating with this offshore team.

Conclusion

Embedding agile practices throughout the IT department is a journey – a lengthy one. By enlisting a vendor as a partner on the journey, businesses may alter their IT development while retaining the benefits of outsourcing. This dispersed agile partnership necessitates collaboration on a variety of levels, as well as the ability to learn from and adapt to the outcomes. The incentives are substantial for those that do it right, including much cheaper costs, access to a big pool of technology-savvy labor, and the capacity to operate constantly and fast across different time zones.

<This is a guest post by Emily Cooper.>

Author Bio – Emily Cooper is a technical writer with a passion for writing on emerging technologies in the areas of software development, .NET and Dedicated Software Development. 

<Image Credits – Unsplash.com>

How to Decide if You Should Automate a Test Case

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

Test automation is imperative for the fast-paced agile projects of today. Testers need to continuously plan, design and execute automated tests to ensure the quality of the software. But the most important task is to decide what to automate first.

In my article published on the TestRail Quality Hub, I have compiled & shared a list of questions to help you prioritise what you should automate next and guide your test automation strategy.

Here is a checklist of questions to ask yourself as you decide on automating a Test Case–

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Is the test going to be repeated?

Is it a high-priority feature? 

Do you need to run the test with multiple datasets or paths? 

Is it a Regression or Smoke Test?

Does this automation lie within the feasibility of your chosen test automation tool?

Is the area of your app that this is testing prone to change?

Is it a Random Negative Test?

Can these tests be executed in parallel, or only in sequential order?

Are you doing it only for the reports?

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For the detailed explanation of each of these points, read the complete article here –>

Are your Test cases really effective?

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

Test teams are forever designing and adding new tests, running them, and reporting results. But is your test team creating tests that are effective at finding real problems?

How do you know if your tests are actually working, and not just adding to the ever-increasing test count?

In my article published on the Testrail blog site, I discuss some ways you can gauge the effectiveness of your tests — and improve them.

Defects Found

The top and most obvious indicator of the effectiveness of your test cases is the defects you find when executing them. As you and your team execute the designed test cases, constantly ask yourself these questions:

  • Are these tests guiding me toward defects?
  • Am I finding problems with the predefined test cases? Or do I have to do more exploration before even getting close to a problem?
  • Are these tests exercising unique flows or use paths?

Metrics

You can also look at your defect lists and find related test cases for the defect logged (if you have that ability in your defect management system). This interlinking helps the team understand what test cases led to the issues found.

You can then further analyze whether that test case was created during test design or later added to the list when the issue was found.

Exploration

If your test cases are not effective, you will not find any useful bugs in test execution. That will mean most of your time is spent in unplanned exploration or ad hoc testing. So, by looking at the time spent in actual test execution versus the time spent on ad hoc testing, you can figure out the effectiveness of the test cases you designed.

If your test cases are effective, you will find issues, explore more use paths, navigate through different integrations with other features, and test different aspects of the same functionality.

If at the end of your test execution, you feel that you have not done all of that, you can infer that is because your test cases might be too simplistic or obvious, and therefore not effective enough to find any useful bugs.

History

Continue Reading here–>

3 Ways Technical Debt Can Actually Help Improve your Sprints

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

“Debt” is not a pleasant term. It brings to mind a burden and generates a feeling of anxiety. The same may also be true for technical debt, or the extra work that we incur while developing our software in the form of missed quality targets, pending tasks, or skipped points from our exit criteria checklists. Like monetary debt, technical debt happens when we make a decision that is quicker in the short term but will hurt us in the long term.

Though we may try our best to limit this debt, it will still happen. And while we will need to pay back the debt one day, we can also use it as a lesson to help improve ourselves and our processes. If it ultimately helps our development, it doesn’t even always have to be a bad thing.

In my article published on the Ranorex blog site, I examine three ways technical debt can actually help us improve our sprints.

Better Estimation

Though the first time incurring technical debt due to an inability to complete an activity as planned may not be pleasant, it should consequently improve the team’s estimation and planning.

Let’s say we had defined developers’ tasks for all user stories with estimated hours, along with a mandate of peer reviews being performed for all code being written. But the end of the sprint saw that though the developers marked their development tasks as done, none of the code had been peer reviewed before check-in. It could have happened due to lack of time or ownership.

The next sprint, the team then decides to have a separate sub-task for peer reviews under the development tasks, each of which is assigned to a peer with an allotted time of 30 minutes. This helps the team plan, have clarity around what tasks are pending, and see how much effort is being spent on the tasks.

So, even though you may begin to accumulate technical debt early on in your sprints, understanding the cause and having a plan of action may improve the team’s overall performance.

Sequencing and Prioritizing

If you find yourself at a point where release is a couple of sprints away and you have a number of unresolved defects, even though they are lower severity, the team may decide to reduce open defect counts for a sprint rather than adding new features. The technical debt incurred in the form of defects can urge the team to refocus and shift priorities.

Or, let’s say your team agreed to 70% automation of regression testing in the beginning of the release cycle, but after four sprints, the scripts they created are showing signs of being unmaintainable or not scalable enough. This may affect delivery in the end, so some testers may take the call of focusing full time on reworking the scripts and adding new automated tests to them, while the other testers take up functional and regression tasks.

My team once found out at the end of our fifth sprint that our developers had not been performing static analysis of their code or creating the reports that were mandated for every sprint. Whatever may have been the reason, this meant that running those reports now was leading to hundreds of errors or warnings all pertaining to code formatting, naming conventions and comments. Even though these were minor issues, it required time to get them all corrected with thousands of lines of code.

Read More »

Achieving the Goal of In-Sprint Test Automation

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

Getting test automation done is a challenge, especially within the tight deadlines imposed by Scrum. As much as the thought of continuous in-sprint test automation sounds enticing, the practicality of it may elude most Scrum teams.

In my article published here– I look at some of the main things you need to consider in order to get your test automation done within the confines of your sprint.

Framework

The first thing to focus on is a framework that is useful, is easy to understand, and helps all stakeholders participate in test automation.

This is essential because you want to make test automation a continuous activity that is a part of daily work, not a once-a-sprint (or once-a-release) work item. For this to happen, the framework must make it equally comfortable for a businessperson, developer, functional tester or automation expert to add their contribution and see the results of their efforts.

There are many business-friendly frameworks and techniques, like behavior-driven development (BDD), as well as many tools that can create tests in a domain language and then translate them to script code.

All stakeholders must be trained on using the framework, and their area of contribution must be made clear to them, with practical hand-holding. The automation tester can then focus on maintaining the framework, generating test suites and editing failing scripts, while the creation of test automation will be a continuous task assigned to everyone involved.

Collaboration

The next thing to focus on is collaboration between the various stakeholders. A continuous automation framework can only survive when it is being fed and tended to by everyone on the team.

  • The business people, like a business analyst or a product owner, can help by adding user scenarios or defining the requirements in a framework-friendly format. This may require them to be trained on the preferred format based on the framework being used
  • The developers can help by creating reusable methods for steps of the script. They can also create and maintain an object repository for all elements they add to the UI while testers use the pseudo names of the elements in the test scripts. This means that the scripts can be created before (and independent of) the application UI, and such scripts won’t need editing when the UI changes, as long as the object repository is kept up to date
  • The testers can help by adding more scenarios, specifying and creating test data, and executing the scripts periodically

Strategy

How to strategize the development of test scripts is crucial to making in-sprint automation a reality. Using API-level automation whenever possible will reduce the time and effort.

Continue Reading –>

Read More »

10 Lessons When Moving from Waterfall to Agile

Nishi Grover Garg1 Comment

Many organizations take up the transition from waterfall to agile with the best intentions in mind. Like so many other companies, you might also be seeking to replace your traditional waterfall processes with agile in a quest to shorten the time-to-market and deliver high quality applications.

The road to agile, though, can be a rocky one! That’s why, in my latest refresh post for Ranorex blog, I have put together a few lessons and tips that will help you in succeeding in moving from waterfall to agile successfully!

The article was published at https://www.ranorex.com/blog/10-lessons-when-moving-from-waterfall-to-agile/

Here is a quick list of lessons we dive into-

1: Embrace the agile culture first

2: Adapt roles and responsibilities

3: Take a whole-team approach

4: Test early and often

5: Remember that agile is iterative

6: Encourage transparent communication

7: Make test automation your friend

8: Commit to early feedback and re-planning

9: Include the whole organization in the agile transformation

10: Adopt tools to enable team collaboration

Check out the complete article to read in detail about each of these learnings that can help you succeed in your agile transformation.

Cheers

Nishi

Taking a MasterClass with the Ministry of Testing!

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

I was invited to take a MasterClass by the wonderful people at the Ministry of Testing last month. They had a ‘Communities’ theme going on for the month of June 2021 and they loved my talk idea about Leveraging Tech Communities. So we worked around that theme to create a talk on “Grow your Career with Tech Communities”

I had an awesome time taking the #DojoMasterclass with Ministry of Testing . What a wonderful experience!

My talk focused on discussing-

  • How to leverage the power of communities in your personal and professional growth
  • How to contribute, volunteer and participate in communities
  • How user communities help in taking your company’s brand forward
  • How can companies create powerful and engaged user communities

I am grateful for the opportunity I got, the great feedback I received from the participants, and an awesome host Vernon Richards.

Thanks, Áine McGovern, Heather Reid, and Simon Tomes for arranging the session! 🙂

Check out the recording on the Pro Dojo https://lnkd.in/gy24FvW

How to Access the recording

  1. Click on this Link  
  2. If you have a PRO Account, click on the GREEN Button on top of the screen “Sign In to View this Content” and sign in with your PRO Acount
  3. If you do not have a PRO Account, click on ‘Go Pro to view this content’ Register for the Pro Account
  4. You can now Play the recording!