Page 16 - QDigitz

Q!Digitz Vol 1
Agile @ Scale–
What does it
mean to Quality
professional?
Author–Vasanthi Veerappan
It was way back in 2010, when one of the US
banking client had started their Agile journey as
part of IT transformation program and my
organization was supporting them in this journey
as O shore software Vendors. It was my rst
association with an Agile project as a quality
analyst and to be frank; I was very apprehensive
about the way the entire process works in an agile
fashion. I was zapped by terms like sprint, poker than it did way back then for smaller programs
estimation, retrospection etc.. Everything sounded
new and I was constantly on my toes trying to
identify any problem, any alert or risks or any
slippage that will reassure me that traditional
waterfall development methods still works and IT
process world is still the same one that I am
comfortable with.
Needless to say, the project faced some delivery
issues related to quality and schedule but overall,
when a customer satisfaction survey was done 10
months later after 3 releases, it was a moment of
celebration for every stakeholder associated with
the project for the success they had experienced
through Agile life cycle.
DigitQ.in
Aug 2019
So, at that point in time, it struck evidently that
Agile is here to stay and now almost 9 years in that
line, it's seen that Agile has stayed and now Agility
has taken up predominant importance at next
levels as well i.e., Agile @ Scale.
In Agile world, almost every aspect of governance
and implementation including quality of
deliverables is a shared responsibility of the whole
Scrum team and there is always a question on
where does the independent role like QA t in to
the whole gamut. What is required to be noted
here is that it's not just about technical code
quality of deliverables is of importance, but how
do we sustain the quality in the longer run? This
needs to be achieved using the in-built quality
practices that ensure team agility.
As a Quality professional in this era, I strongly
believe that processes hold even more importance
and just like the Agile practices and principles are
extended to scale up to larger programs, our qa
processes also needs to be scaled up accordingly
to be integrated in the system.
There are some areas which I have learnt from the
engagements I have supported during the last few
years and I think these are some areas that every
QA professional should take in to account or take
up responsibility for when large Agile programs
are being supported by them.
Think Large