Progress reporting – Derk-Jan de Grood

Webinar Agile Test Strategies

Yesterday I gave a webinar for EuroSTAR conferences. In this webinar I state that while many organisations are reducing their test managers and Test Competence Centres, testing is on the rebound. Quality is embedded in development and testing is responsibility of the team. So it may seem that test managers and test plans are obsolete. Still, in bigger projects and in enterprises an effective agile test strategy is vital to ensure that the team does the right testing, we focus on integration and we have insight in inter- team dependencies. In this webinar, I shared my experiences as an overall test manager in various projects and defines some key ingredients of an Agile Test Strategy.

You can view a recording of the webinar on the EuroSTAR website. The webinar had a 100+ viewers and some lively Q&A afterwards. Please find below the used slides.

Subway mapping in Tallinn

I am on my way now to Tallinn and the NTD that are being organised in this beautiful city. On Thursday I will give a workshop on progress reporting in an Agile context. We will be experimenting with making our own subway map. Subway mapping is a well-known graphical presentation, but funny enough it is hardly ever used to report project progress and the dependencies between various Agile Teams. After this week that might change!

Please, if you are at the Nordic testing days, join my session, and surprise your project manager, PO or stakeholders with an effective overview of the projects testing progress and quality. Since we have two hours I hope to have time to introduce a new variation of the subway map: the ambition map, used to manager improvements and align expectations.

Progress reporting in Agile context

Last week I hosted a workshop on the TestNet autumn event. The topic was progress reporting in an Agile context. Within Agile large PERT and GHANT charts do not work. But, the Sprint board or the burn-down chart, do not really provide information on progress related to the target release and dependencies between different teams/activities.

The subway map can provide a lot of information on a one-pager. It aims to involve stakeholders and management and it aims to engage interaction.

The slides of last weeks session are very much alike those I posted on slideshare earlier. Have a look, or see my other post on this topic.

Progres reporting in agile context from Derk-Jan de Grood

Personal invite: 45 min workshop on agile progress reporting

Test progress reporting can be cumbersome. There is a complex story to be told, but it needs to be done in such a way that the business and project stakeholders get the message. Sequential planning techniques such as critical path analysis won’t work in agile, but stakeholders keep asking for an indication of the progress so far, the work that remains, the bottlenecks and dependencies.

Last year there was an urgent need in my project for a clear status report. Therefor we introduced, the subway map. Subway map reports are derived from the London tube map.

On 3o October 2014 I will be giving a 45-minute interactive workshop, where I explain the idea behind subway mapping. But, don’t lean back to comfortably; I’ll put you to work as well. Based on a case, you’ll be invited to draw your own progress report.

Can’t wait to get started? Grab a pen and download the Quick Reference Card.

Business finally understood testing

Within my current project we solved this problem by introducing a visual progress report, the subway map. Subway map reports are derived from the London tube map and contain the following elements: 1) Stations: Activities are represented as a station; they have a description of the benefit for the stakeholder upon completion. 3) Date lines provide status information (the train is expected on time, or not) 3) Bridges: Where two or more lines merge, you can define have a quality gate. They provide extra control on the progress (and of course to celebrate success)

Progres reporting in agile context from Derk-Jan de Grood

I gave this presentation at the EXPO:QA in Madrid. It contains examples, a step plan how to make a subway map in Powerpoint. Within my organization it has been adopted quickly by various projects, due to its simplicity and clearness. Business finally understood testing.