IT811: IT Project Management Case Study Stan Sakl March 16, 2017 Quality Experience: A Grounded Theory of Successful Agile Projects Without Dedicated Testers IT811: IT Project Management Case Study Stan Sakl March 16, 2017

Organization Resource Used Introduction and Paper Choice Grounded Theory Research Questions Domain Methodology Teams and Products Quality Experience by Team Conclusions

Resource used Prechelt, L., Schmeisky, H., & Zieris, F. (2016). Quality Experience: A Grounded Theory of Successful Agile Projects Without Dedicated Testers. 2016 IEEE/ACM 38th IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering, 1017-1027. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2884781.2884789

Introduction and Paper Choice International Conference on Software Engineering is the premier, most important international conference on software engineering Many new topics and discoveries in software engineering are presented there first Authors are from Freie Universität Berlin Internationally rated Grounded theory is intriguing Input from Professor Saiedian regarding two excellent papers about agile testing

Grounded Theory Research Method Uses Induction Researchers do not enter the research with an established hypothesis A theory is developed after determining the relationships between categories of data A lot of information is available in books and on YouTube

Research Questions How is quality assured in agile teams that do not employ separate testers? What are advantages and disadvantages of not employing separate testers?

Domain Web portal where the company makes money from direct payments of some users User count is in the millions Several large subgroups of user types Portal and its development are complex

Methodology Shadow developers from three agile teams Conduct interviews with team representatives Developers Product Owner Scrum Master Tester Team Lead Higher Level Manager

Team Breakdown

Team Pay (Sound Cloud) Sound Cloud is a music sharing service which started as a monolithic application called mothership but has now been modularized Team has only developers Team is responsible for the Buckster service that contains all payment-related functionality Team can deploy changes in one minute via rake Team follows a Kanban process without fixed iterations

Team OnM (IS24) ImmobilienScout24 (IS24) is a large real estate Web portal which also brokers financing, insurance, and many other services Team develops mostly back-end services Team consists of four developers, a product owner, and technical lead Team uses Kanban process without fixed iterations

Team OffProf (IS24) Another team within IS24 Develops some functional areas of Scout Manager, used for creating ads Scout Manager is large and does not have a modular architecture Has separate tester role Weak quality experience Included only for contrast to teams without testers

Quality Experience [1/2] Team feels fully responsible Team receives feedback that is quick, direct, and realistic Team rapidly repairs deficiencies Quality is holistic Functional defects Deployability Scalability Monitorability

Quality Experience [2/2]

Strong Quality Experience (Teams Pay and OnM) Empowered to deploy continuously Feel responsible Co-define requirements Repair defects rapidly due to quick feedback Motivated to automate

Weak Quality Experience (Team OffProf) Cannot deploy continuously Defect repairs take two weeks to get into production Code is not modularized, so every deployment must be carefully considered

Conclusions [1/2] Quality Experience is a desirable work mode Hand-overs slow down the improvement cycle Automation enables small changes to be deployed quickly and often Feeling of responsibility is strong Teams are motivated and focused Development effort goes down

Conclusions [2/2] Modular architecture is required The team must be empowered to deploy Integration testing beyond the team becomes harder

References Prechelt, L., Schmeisky, H., & Zieris, F. (2016). Quality Experience: A Grounded Theory of Successful Agile Projects Without Dedicated Testers. 2016 IEEE/ACM 38th IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering, 1017-1027. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2884781.2884789 Strauss, A. L., & Corbin, J. M. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques. Newbury Park: Sage Publications.