Agile Quality Management Training
Plan
During the work as Scrum coaches we were very often faced with questions of QA people and Project Manager how the quality will be managed in agile projects. This led us to the idea for a new training. The goal of this training is that the participants understand that quality management is an inherent part of agile software development and not a separate discipline like in a traditional environment. We’ve planned that the training follows the 4 phases of the Deming Cycle: Plan, Do, Check and Act. In our opinion the Deming Cycle describes the heart of Agile which drives the inherent quality management at best.
Do
On February 14th Andreas Schliep and I ran the first Agile Quality Management (AQM) Training in Vienna with 14 participants. 4 had a QA or PM background. 10 were developers with different skill levels. The training was a mix of exercises and lectures including a live demonstration of a pair programming and TDD session.
Check
The last exercise of the training was a retrospective about the training. On the one hand the participant experienced in this exercise that a retrospective after each iteration is a very important act to assure quality. On the other hand Andreas and I could gather their feedback about the training. Necessary for the last phase in the Deming Cycle for this training:
Act
The feedback in the retrospective shows us that the participant understand now the inherent quality management concept of Agile. Otherwise some participant expect a more detailed answer to how maturity model like CMMI fits into Scrum and Agile. However, they understand that a certain CMMI level can be reached with Agile but Agile don’t and won’t guarantee this. For future training we will stick more to this issue.
The energy curve in the middle of the time line (see picture) shows us that we have to improve the part after the lunch. A concrete feedback to this phenomenon was, that the training day was too long. Therefore we will tighten the training for the next time. However, the lunch was obviously very good :-).
At this point I would like to thank Andreas that I could contribute to the training. He had the initial idea. Without his knowledge and creativity this training would never have been realized.
