Better Software - November 2008 - (Page 20)

Management Chronicles Keep Non-developers in the Loop by Melanie Tayler “What the heck is this?” Corey, senior developer on the WCH project, said as he charged into Lynn’s office. His face was as red as his Ottawa Senators home jersey. “I can’t believe this,” he said, slamming down a sheaf of bug reports from our tracking system that he had wasted trees printing out. “All of these bugs were reported by Alison.” “Let’s have some coffee and talk about it,” Lynn said, watching the pulsing vein on Corey’s forehead. “On second thought, maybe you’ve had enough coffee.” Corey sat, but his knee still bobbed rhythmically. “I don’t have time for this.” “What’s the problem?” Lynn asked, looking at the bug reports. “QA is the problem. None of these are bugs—and now guess who gets to deal with them?” “If they aren’t bugs, why did Alison report them?” Corey’s knee started to bounce double time. “I don’t know. Her probation isn’t up yet, is it?” Lynn ignored that comment. “There’s a problem here, and we’re going to solve it.” Not trusting Corey to play nice in his caffeinated state, Lynn IMed Alison, a new hire in the QA department. “Alison,” she typed, “it seems that the bugs you reported on Corey’s recent patch aren’t bugs.” “I don’t understand,” Alison replied. “I based the test cases on the spec I was given last month.” “The spec?” Corey rolled his eyes when Lynn told him Alison’s response. “We’re agile.” “It seems our communication plan isn’t so agile. The spec changed and QA doesn’t know?” Lynn asked Corey. “Our milestone is next week. We don’t have time to update the spec. The new functionality was decided from a problem exposed by Bob during last Monday’s scrum meeting.” 20 BETTER SOFTWARE NOVEMBER 2008 “And QA doesn’t go to the scrum.” Lynn had seen the five-minute daily update meetings in the lounge, and there was no one from QA in sight. “So how are they supposed to write an up-to-date test plan? How can we encourage developers to update the specs?” Corey shrugged. “I guess we could put it on the wiki instead of in a Word doc. That would make it easier for the spec to be more of a living document.” “That’s great. That way anyone can see a delta of the changes at any time, plus the QA team members can ‘watch’ the page so that they get an email when it changes. Is QA on the project mailing list?” Corey nodded. Originally, the lists had been set up for code review purposes, but they’d evolved so that a lot of the team communication went through them. “Why don’t the QA people just update the spec themselves?” Corey huffed. Lynn paused. Why don’t they? It would ensure that QA was in the loop, and the specs might be kept more up to date. Would the QA team be willing to take on that responsibility? “That’s a good idea. I’ll talk to Olivia about it.” Lynn jotted a quick reminder to schedule a meeting with the www.StickyMinds.com QA project leader. “One thing, though, if they don’t know the functionality’s changed, how can they update the spec? Why don’t QA team members come to the scrums?” Corey wriggled in his chair like he couldn’t quite get comfortable. “It’s too technical. They wouldn’t get anything out of it.” “Hey, we make an effort to hire pretty technical QA people around here.” It was a lesson they’d learned some time ago. “I think they might be able to identify a functionality change when they hear one. Besides, it could help the QA team develop more technical expertise over time and maybe even to write better test plans. Let’s try it.” A month later, Lynn met with Olivia and Corey to see how the new system was working. “Not bad,” Olivia said, sipping her green tea. “But it could be better.” Corey seemed a lot calmer than the last time Lynn had met with him. “There are still some problems. They miss stuff.” “That’s one way of putting it,” Olivia said. “Another way is that it’s hard for us to capture changes that we don’t know about. We aren’t always kept in the loop.” “What do you mean?” Lynn asked. ISTOCKPHOTO http://www.StickyMinds.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Better Software - November 2008

Better Software - November 2008 Contents Mark Your Calendar Contributors eLightenment Technically Speaking Code Craft Test Connection Management Chronicles Getting Agile with User-Centered Design Google Web Toolkit Simple Summaries of Complex Projects Product Announcements 10 Things You Might Not Know About … The Last Word Ad Index

Better Software - November 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.