1. 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

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

3. 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, 

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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?

7. 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

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

9. Team Breakdown

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. Quality Experience [2/2]

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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

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

19. 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, 
Strauss, A. L., & Corbin, J. M. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques. Newbury Park: Sage Publications.