Ensuring Product Quality in Agile
In his seminal book “Out of Crisis”, Edward Deming, the Quality Guru, summarized the Quality Management philosophy in 14 points. One of which is below:
Talking about inspection, he says “Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place”.
The bottom line is, inspections / reviews are an act too late into the product lifecycle, since they are done after the product reaches certain maturity. Therefore at best they can be a catalyst, but not by themselves assure quality. Not so different in this new world of Agile Development as well where inspections, reviews or another mechanism are all considered extrinsic to product development and so cannot completely assure product quality. Product quality it appears is built into the product.
Product development teams take charge of product quality assurance by adopting certain core engineering practices, thereby delivering Outcomes, not merely Outputs. The understanding being the quality of a product is intrinsic and is built into the product. Extending the logic, therefore, built-in quality practices will alone be able to improve product quality.
Some of the key aspects of Product Quality in the Agile context and how they are achieved are discussed below.
1. Requirements Traceability: Requirements traceability is intrinsic to Agile framework. There is a natural and strong hierarchy if we may call so, of user needs from Epic, Feature to User Story. And from there to DoD and further traceability to acceptance tests.
2. Architectural Runway: In Agile, architecture is done incrementally starting with an emergent design, which can be improved as sprints progress. This incremental approach to architecture instead of big-bang results in a model that is robust, yet is flexible to future changes.
3. Verification , Validation: Backlog grooming, Release Planning, Sprint planning, Daily stand ups, Product demos, and retrospective meetings – all these key Agile ceremonies are done very frequently and iteratively in Agile and can be seen as Verification and Validation activities. Backlog grooming and sprint planning vigorously allow for debate on the needs, technical feasibility, prioritization, etc. The very fact that there is intense discussion around these topics and an AskàReviewàFollow-up loop ensures there is no ambiguity on the needs. Stand ups, retrospectives, and the level of communication among team members ensures the solutions, approach, plans etc. are continuously discussed & verified, and adapted. Product Demo ensures validation happens.
4. TDD and Refactoring: Only so much of code is written as to pass the written test case. This test-first approach guarantees the code has fewer bugs, is relatively clean, and most importantly, results in a code that is easy to maintain, flexible and can be easily extended
5. Pair programming: makes sure that there is live critique – reflect, correct, and progress on the code. This leads to increased code discipline, better code and collective code ownership, all of which benefits team cohesiveness.
6. Continuous Integration: Continuous integration ensures build and integration errors are detected early, easy to find and fix bugs, accelerates the build process, and results in full code visibility.
7. Continuous Delivery: Ensures enhancements, bug fixes, are rapidly and reliably pushed to production for a seamless experience to customers.
8. Definition of Done: Definition being binary – either achieved or not achieved, clearly removes ambiguity of what has and has not been achieved at Story, Sprint, Release levels.
9. Acceptance Criteria: Similar to DoD, Acceptance Criteria unambiguously gives the development team clarity on what it would take for the user story to be accepted as complete. Moreover, acceptance criteria can be easily translated to manual or automated test cases.
10. Continuous Improvement: Sprint on Sprint, Agile teams reflect and adapt their practices to suit and better their performance. Agile retrospectives in this sense, by design, allow and promote continuous improvement.
Product quality in Agile is a combined ownership, fostered by collaborative and proactive behaviors of team members.
In his seminal book “Out of Crisis”, Edward Deming, the Quality Guru, summarized the Quality Management philosophy in 14 points. One of which is below:
Talking about inspection, he says “Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place”.
The bottom line is, inspections / reviews are an act too late into the product lifecycle, since they are done after the product reaches certain maturity. Therefore at best they can be a catalyst, but not by themselves assure quality. Not so different in this new world of Agile Development as well where inspections, reviews or another mechanism are all considered extrinsic to product development and so cannot completely assure product quality. Product quality it appears is built into the product.
Product development teams take charge of product quality assurance by adopting certain core engineering practices, thereby delivering Outcomes, not merely Outputs. The understanding being the quality of a product is intrinsic and is built into the product. Extending the logic, therefore, built-in quality practices will alone be able to improve product quality.
Some of the key aspects of Product Quality in the Agile context and how they are achieved are discussed below.
1. Requirements Traceability: Requirements traceability is intrinsic to Agile framework. There is a natural and strong hierarchy if we may call so, of user needs from Epic, Feature to User Story. And from there to DoD and further traceability to acceptance tests.
2. Architectural Runway: In Agile, architecture is done incrementally starting with an emergent design, which can be improved as sprints progress. This incremental approach to architecture instead of big-bang results in a model that is robust, yet is flexible to future changes.
3. Verification , Validation: Backlog grooming, Release Planning, Sprint planning, Daily stand ups, Product demos, and retrospective meetings – all these key Agile ceremonies are done very frequently and iteratively in Agile and can be seen as Verification and Validation activities. Backlog grooming and sprint planning vigorously allow for debate on the needs, technical feasibility, prioritization, etc. The very fact that there is intense discussion around these topics and an AskàReviewàFollow-up loop ensures there is no ambiguity on the needs. Stand ups, retrospectives, and the level of communication among team members ensures the solutions, approach, plans etc. are continuously discussed & verified, and adapted. Product Demo ensures validation happens.
4. TDD and Refactoring: Only so much of code is written as to pass the written test case. This test-first approach guarantees the code has fewer bugs, is relatively clean, and most importantly, results in a code that is easy to maintain, flexible and can be easily extended
5. Pair programming: makes sure that there is live critique – reflect, correct, and progress on the code. This leads to increased code discipline, better code and collective code ownership, all of which benefits team cohesiveness.
6. Continuous Integration: Continuous integration ensures build and integration errors are detected early, easy to find and fix bugs, accelerates the build process, and results in full code visibility.
7. Continuous Delivery: Ensures enhancements, bug fixes, are rapidly and reliably pushed to production for a seamless experience to customers.
8. Definition of Done: Definition being binary – either achieved or not achieved, clearly removes ambiguity of what has and has not been achieved at Story, Sprint, Release levels.
9. Acceptance Criteria: Similar to DoD, Acceptance Criteria unambiguously gives the development team clarity on what it would take for the user story to be accepted as complete. Moreover, acceptance criteria can be easily translated to manual or automated test cases.
10. Continuous Improvement: Sprint on Sprint, Agile teams reflect and adapt their practices to suit and better their performance. Agile retrospectives in this sense, by design, allow and promote continuous improvement.
Product quality in Agile is a combined ownership, fostered by collaborative and proactive behaviors of team members.
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