WHITE PAPER. Agile Test Governance Framework For Delivering

Transcription

1 WHITE PAPER Agile Test Governance Framework For Delivering

2 Introduction Governance is defined as the alignment of initiatives (project/program) with organizational goals to create business value. Governance defines how the initiatives are set up, managed and controlled. A well-defined governance framework provides effective insights into projects or programs to enable better monitoring and control. It also leads to enterprise-wide clarity and transparency related to project performance. While governance in traditional set-up uses traditional project management approaches which focus on heavy documentation and formal processes, agile on the other hand leverages lean, lightweight processes that enable Quality@speed, and focuses more on facilitating change and creating value.

3 Establishing Lean Governance for Agile Practices Building Governance for agile practices is one of the key challenges most organizations face, as agile is mostly focused on delivering quick value and various teams perceive that governance can slow down the delivery. The Agile Test Governance model should be structured properly to provide a clear direction to your team, but at the same time need to be flexible enough to not to come into your agile way of working, or slow down your delivery pipeline. Existing New Cigniti provides an Agile Test Framework, which streamlines the testing and overall governance in agile projects. The Agile Test Framework is based on the LEAN and SAFe principles and helps in subtly embedding governance practices in the agile value stream. The Agile Test Governance Framework uses a 3-tier governance model, which helps to engage the right stakeholders at the various stages and map the business value with the actual delivery. Every level in the governance model has a number of stakeholders, who work together to achieve the collective objective and make the whole project life-cycle smooth and efficient. This 3-tier approach helps in decentralizing the decision-making process while still ensuring that the enterprise-level goal is met and the desired business value is achieved according to the plan. The framework also leverages key principles of SAFe framework where the creation of the product strategy is largely centralized while the execution of the solution strategy is de-centralized. For effective lean governance, the following levels of visibility and controls, represented by Figure 1, should be in place: Enterprise-level: This level is primarily formed to review the alignment of project portfolio with enterprise business strategy and goals. The visibility into individual projects is limited, but the need to know the general or overall direction in which the projects are moving is essential. At this level, the governance framework needs to ensure that the cumulative progress of various projects is reported through key metrics to the stakeholders so that they get good visibility into the overall status. The governance framework also exposes the risks related to process adherence, which enables them to take critical business decisions. Few key metrics that can provide insight into the enterprise level are Business Value Realized, Schedule Variance, Cost Variance, ROI, Defect Slippage to Production, etc. Team / SCRUM level: The governance at the team level is very fundamental since the Agile Teams are self- organized. They pick up their tasks, estimate the work and commit to specific scrum objectives. They are mostly cross-functional and have all the necessary skills needed to deliver the scrum objectives. They also are empowered to take all decisions needed to deliver the right business value. However, the need to gain insights into the release readiness, velocity of development, testing, and cost of quality have to be understood by decision makers so that any risk/impact can be effectively managed.

4 There is a light weight management control represented by Scum Masters, who act as servant-leaders and provide all necessary support to the teams in terms of escalating and removing impediments. They help in mapping the business value with the team s delivery and also guide the teams regarding various agile processes. Team / SCRUM level metrics which provide a good visibility into the progress are Team Velocity - Sprint Burnup / Burndown, Code Quality, Code and Requirement Coverage, Number of Features Released, Defects Leakage / Technical Debt, etc. These metrics should eventually roll up to program/portfolio level to provide the enterprise-level visibility. TEAM/SCRUM Empowered and self-organized teams, who deliver working product according to the team's velocity, in order to meet the sprint goals ENTERPRISE Defines business value and provides direction to the various projects across the organization. VENDORS Working according to defined SLAs/KPIs and quality standards of the deliverables Figure 1 Vendor-level: In most cases, Vendors or Suppliers are involved in the delivery process, and there is a need to have a good monitoring and control mechanism to ensure the quality of their delivery. A comprehensive Vendor-management framework should be in place to measure the quality of deliverables. This framework helps in standardizing different services from vendors, and measures using KPIs / SLAs, which provide high visibility, auditability and traceability into the key areas that might impact service quality, and in turn, create an impact on the flow of delivery pipeline. Metrics like SLA adherence, Service Request Turnaround Time, Customer Satisfaction Index, etc. can be used to create visibility into the vendor management layer.

5 Characteristics of Agile Test Governance Framework Following are the 6 characteristics of the Agile Test Governance Framework: 1. Rapid decision making: Since the decision-making is highly decentralized and involves very limited stakeholders, the decision making is quicker and more efficient. The focus is on empowering the teams enough to deliver the business value without issues. 2. Adaptive model: The Agile Test Governance Framework outlines the governance practices and helps the agile teams to achieve their goals. It is not a rigid and stringent model which controls teams, and productivity and creativity; instead, it provides enough flexibility for continuous improvement. 3. Responsive to change: Since the model maps the business value directly to the working products, it is easy for the product owners to showcase the deliverables to the business and get quick feedback to improve the product and ensure continuous delivery. Also, the mapping helps to prioritize the requirements better to derive the maximum business value. Key Metrics and Continuos Improvement Rapid decision-making, involving key stakeholders Good Visibility to the Stakeholders Agile Test Governance Framework Adaptive model; not stringent or rigid "Just enough" documentation, with minimal effort Responsive to Change and Real-time Feedback

6 4. 5. Minimal documentation: The documentation required in the Agile Test Governance Framework is very basic and to-the-point. However, it is important to document the critical elements related to the project progress. The documentation is just enough for teams to use as a future reference and also gives a fair idea to the management team about the current situation. Good visibility into the Value Stream: Due to shortened feedback cycles, the Agile Test Governance can help build insights into all the aspects and phases of SDLC. It provides clarity related to the key risks ensuring good visibility for different stakeholders at various levels of risk of missing a release, high defects and defect slippage to production, process inefficiencies, wastage / constraints, etc. The Agile Test Governance Framework advocates key agile practices like involving testers right from the inception of the project so that testing can be well integrated with the development cycle. This helps in the frequent delivery of work products, which in turn help to deliver and improve the enterprise business value. Also, regular retrospection meetings help the teams to understand what went wrong and improve the Governance model. 6. Key Metrics and Continuous Improvement: A robust metrics framework helps the Agile Test Governance implementation. It focuses on using very few but key metrics to measure the effectiveness of the processes and the progress of the project. These metrics help in defining the business value, identifying the wastages due to process inefficiencies, also provides a very good visibility to the senior management about the constraints and impediments which slow down the continuous delivery pipeline. The Agile Test Governance Framework enables the business to take informed decisions. The Agile Test Governance Framework helps in mapping the business value to the deliverables and also creates a very good visibility on the project progress. It provides a platform to integrate and tie-up all the elements involved in the CD pipeline, identify bottlenecks and remove them to ensure continuous process improvement. The framework enables the teams to improve the Quality@Speed in the continuous delivery ecosystem.

7 Benefits of LEAN Governance The Agile Test Governance Framework is beneficial for all agile organizations operating at any scale or domain. However, it becomes extremely crucial to establish the Governance model for enterprises that have a portfolio of programs and projects, since management at a large scale can become a pain. The Agile Test Governance Framework is easy to implement and it provides scale and sustainability for agile projects in a way that helps in effective management of multiple projects. The biggest benefit the governance framework offers is the visibility that it creates into the value chain. By using key processes and metrics, the Agile Test Governance Framework helps create visibility into the following 4 areas: Value: Helps in the correct prioritization of the business value in line with the strategy of an enterprise Finds out the value delivered by a scrum team easily Provides a way to measure the lost value Velocity: Measures the team s velocity effectively Helps to compare the actual delivery with the estimates Helps in identification of impediments and wastage, and eliminates them to improve the velocity Risk: Since the process guidance/flow is available, it is easy to identify process non-conformance leading to delivery failures Ceremonies like Retrospectives and Lessons Learnt help in understanding what went wrong, and uncovering risks and their potential impact Best practices are collated in a central database and act as a reference, which makes it easy to compare the current processes with the standards and identify gaps Resources: Enables identification of the resource needs for a project Streamlines the process of onboarding and off-boarding a resource Helps to do effective skill-mapping since there is clarity on the roles and responsibilities of all resources Helps in identifying the training needs and tracking the trainings About the White Paper: At Cigniti, research and development is an endeavor in pursuit of excellence in Software Testing. This white paper is an outcome of Cigniti s mission to build a better world by helping build better software. The content of this white paper is an incorporation of insights from the Advisory & Transformation Services team and consultant with extensive experience in Agile Transformations. For more details write to info@cigniti.com

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