This blog of mine is about the role of QA in a transformation engagement. I have written the same through my own experience and the experienced shared by my colleagues and seniors. Please give your feedback, correct me wherever I am wrong.
Trigger for writing this blog has been the article shared by my brother. The article is titled “Yin & Yang in Testing”.
IT projects are majorly classified as Transformational projects or Upgrade projects. Transformational project means, transforming from the current systems/practices to a newer qualified system. A project could be taken by organization due to various number of reasons. Revenue generating department could demand for systems which aid them to generate more revenue or the management could decide to bring in better systems to overcome operational challenges or to reduce cost.
Revenue generating teams, which mainly will be the Business users could have a large say in the budget for the project and what they expect in the new system. Technology team could have a say in what technology/product to invest in. They could also influence in the decision of whether to for in-house development or to purchase a product and customize to meet the requirements.
Success of such implementations dependent on the collaboration of both the teams. During the course of the project, there could be lot of clash of views, as Business would try to get the maximum out of the systems, whereas the technology team will have their challenges in implementing all the business requirements.
QA team, which reports to the head of technology team plays a crucial role and has to do a balancing act in such implementations.
In the Middle East market, from where I gained my experience, majority of such transformation engagements still continue to follow the traditional waterfall model of delivery, with certain clients attempting more modern development model. QA team, whether it is the in-house team or outsourced have to be the bridge between the technology and business team. They have to liaise with the build team to understand the architecture of the implementation and on the other hand have to liaise with Business analyst, in their absence directly with business to understand the expectations.
The team, at least majority of them are not involved right from the conceptual stage of the project and have to rely on the documents made available to them. The team don’t have the luxury of time to ascertain whether these documents have captured the business expectations to the fullest. During the course of engagement, they have to remain unattached from the technology team and business team. However, they have to be mindful of what the technology team can deliver and how much of this meets the business expectation. The team has to bargain with IT team when they find gaps in the delivery, convince the business by explaining the limitations of the products.
Success of QA team lies in how they navigate the above challenges by continuously balancing both technology and business expectation. A successful QA team, will adhere to time tested processes, lay out clear objectives and should know to successfully YIN & YANG in the context of below points.
-Understanding a Software under test
-Designing Testing scenarios and cases
-Using the cases, to evaluate the software under test
Author of the article is titled “Yin & Yang in Testing” has clearly explained the YIN & YANG in the context of above points via a beautiful pictorial article. Please refer to the same.
Well written Adarsh! Especially about the Middle East Market. Hope to read more writtings of yours.
ReplyDeleteAll the best ☺️
Dear Meliston, thank you so much
DeleteAdarsh, Good job. Please provide the link to the "Yin & Yang" article. The reasons for transforming to a new application may also include better user experience, better scalable architecture, forced transformation due to lack of support from existing application vendor etc.
ReplyDeleteAs organizations are sceptical in following agile for transformation due to the size of Dev teams and complexities, but few forerunners are open to try the transformation with multiple scrum teams to have a phased replacement of legacy systems.
https://smartqa.org/blog/yin-yang-in-testing/
DeletePlease find the link
Interesting article Adarsh and a good read. The article clearly articulates the challenges faced by the QA team in a trasformation engagement. It clearly takes the Maveric view of the project and discuss the key points at different nodes from project stakeholders point of view i.e. Business, QA and Development. It establishes an idea of how systems work in trasformational projects and also sets the tone for modifying the geometry of Maveric methodology based on experimentations yielding optimism results or increased productivity. Thus the geometric parameters that should be put to test are primarily adjusting the communication bandwidth among the teams emphasizing on the importance of creating a poise in communication among the project stakeholders where transparency is maintained, early participation of QA team is encouraged thus making them more agile and effective, better cooperation and collaboration among the teams are enabled, continuous monitoring is adapted, efficiency is achieved, productivity is ensured. Thus in a nutshell, it is a transformation that applies to a democratic rule, in democracy we use equality and in tecchnology(mathematically) is it possible to use equilateral atleast in the given context? Also, I would like to understand more information on project upgrades, if possible. Overall, it is a fantastic article. Thank you..
ReplyDeleteDear sir, I will try attempting to write about it in coming time
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