Redefining the Role of Testers in Organisational Transition to Agile Methodologies

Many challenges confront companies when they change their current software development process to an agile development methodology. Those challenges could be rather difficult but one that requires considerable attention is the integration of testing with development. This is because in heavyweight processes, as in the traditional waterfall approach, testing is a phase often conducted by testers as part of a quality assurance team towards the end of the development cycle whereas in the agile methodology testing is part of a continuous development activity with no specific “tester” role defined. In this paper we consider several options for testers when an organisation transit to agile methodology, and propose a new project mentor role for them. This role aims to utilize the knowledge that testers already have in both the business domain and the development technology together with their expertise in quality practices. This role will enhance the stature of testers as well as enable the company to effectively deploy the testers in the new environment. Motivations and benefits for this role are presented in this paper together with our plan for evaluation of this proposal

Una novedosa propuesta de implementación de metodologías Agile en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de una asignatura de Ingeniería en sistemas informáticos

Durante los últimos años las metodologías Agile aparecieron como reacción a los métodos tradicionales de desarrollo de software, reconociendo además la necesidad de documentación alternativa en el desarrollo. En la actualidad, en la carrera de Ingeniería en Sistemas, se siguen utilizando metodologías tradicionales para la enseñanza de desarrollo de software, creando una brecha entre el campo universitario y campo profesional. Este trabajo presenta una novedosa propuesta de aplicación de metodologías ágiles (Agile) en la enseñanza enfocada en el desarrollo de software. La aplicación de este enfoque es potencialmente viable y provechoso para las asignaturas de desarrollo de software de la carrera de Ingeniería en Sistemas Informáticos. El presente artículo describe la propuesta de implementación de metodologías Agile dentro de una asignatura de este tipo. Asimismo, se realiza un relevamiento inicial en docentes y alumnos acerca de la viabilidad de la aplicación de este tipo de metodologías en otras asignaturas de la carrera. Por último, se lleva a cabo una evaluación de los resultados preliminares de la primera experiencia de la aplicación de la propuesta, con la participación de un docente y un grupo de estudiantes, en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de una asignatura real.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativ

Una novedosa propuesta de implementación de metodologías Agile en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de una asignatura de Ingeniería en sistemas informáticos

Durante los últimos años las metodologías Agile aparecieron como reacción a los métodos tradicionales de desarrollo de software, reconociendo además la necesidad de documentación alternativa en el desarrollo. En la actualidad, en la carrera de Ingeniería en Sistemas, se siguen utilizando metodologías tradicionales para la enseñanza de desarrollo de software, creando una brecha entre el campo universitario y campo profesional. Este trabajo presenta una novedosa propuesta de aplicación de metodologías ágiles (Agile) en la enseñanza enfocada en el desarrollo de software. La aplicación de este enfoque es potencialmente viable y provechoso para las asignaturas de desarrollo de software de la carrera de Ingeniería en Sistemas Informáticos. El presente artículo describe la propuesta de implementación de metodologías Agile dentro de una asignatura de este tipo. Asimismo, se realiza un relevamiento inicial en docentes y alumnos acerca de la viabilidad de la aplicación de este tipo de metodologías en otras asignaturas de la carrera. Por último, se lleva a cabo una evaluación de los resultados preliminares de la primera experiencia de la aplicación de la propuesta, con la participación de un docente y un grupo de estudiantes, en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de una asignatura real.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativ

Scrum Abandonment in Distributed Teams: A Revelatory Case

The last decade has witnessed substantial growth in the adoption of both Agile and distributed software development. However, combining Agile practices, which emphasize regular informal communication, with geographically and temporally distributed sites, which hinder regular informal communication, presents numerous challenges. Proponents of Agile, especially the Scrum project management framework, have published several case studies of successful Scrum implementations in distributed environments. However, few empirical studies examine failed or abandoned Scrum implementations. Consequently, this paper presents a revelatory case study of a geographically and temporally distributed software development team that abandoned its attempted transition to Scrum. Two factors associated with the team’s decision to abandon Scrum are identified – degradation of Scrum practices due to distribution and the undermining of the ScrumMaster’s credibility. Based on this analysis the paper proposes that task/team familiarity, group cohesion and transactive memory may be combined to understand the relationship between geotemporal distribution, process and performance

Investigating the factors which influence the misalignment between developers and testers in agile organizations

The concept of alignment has been addressed in the context of various divisions within organizations but very little research investigates the alignment of the roles within specific sub-units in an organization. Research shows evidence of a misalignment between the role of the software tester and the software developer in software development teams specifically in organizations that adopt agile methodologies to manage their software development projects. It is this misalignment between these two roles and the lack of research on the factors that influence this phenomenon that prompted the study. The study aims to investigate the factors which influence misalignment between developers and testers in agile organizations with specific focus on the social dimension of alignment contrary to most studies that merely address the intellectual dimension of alignment. The research methodology followed a positivist, quantitative and deductive approach. An online questionnaire was designed and distributed to respondents in South Africa (SA) and United States of America (USA). The results show that there are four factors that have an overall influence on the misalignment between developers and testers in agile software development teams. These factors are (1) process non-compliance combined with lack of accountability, (2) conflicting interpersonal skills, (3) lack of shared domain knowledge, specifically lack of developers' knowledge about testing and (4) poor collaboration. Future research can proceed to identify the strategies that agile organizations can adopt alleviate this problem of misalignment

Investigating the factors which influence the misalignment between developers and testers in agile organizations

The concept of alignment has been addressed in the context of various divisions within organizations but very little research investigates the alignment of the roles within specific sub-units in an organization. Research shows evidence of a misalignment between the role of the software tester and the software developer in software development teams specifically in organizations that adopt agile methodologies to manage their software development projects. It is this misalignment between these two roles and the lack of research on the factors that influence this phenomenon that prompted the study. The study aims to investigate the factors which influence misalignment between developers and testers in agile organizations with specific focus on the social dimension of alignment contrary to most studies that merely address the intellectual dimension of alignment. The research methodology followed a positivist, quantitative and deductive approach. An online questionnaire was designed and distributed to respondents in South Africa (SA) and United States of America (USA). The results show that there are four factors that have an overall influence on the misalignment between developers and testers in agile software development teams. These factors are (1) process non-compliance combined with lack of accountability, (2) conflicting interpersonal skills, (3) lack of shared domain knowledge, specifically lack of developers' knowledge about testing and (4) poor collaboration. Future research can proceed to identify the strategies that agile organizations can adopt alleviate this problem of misalignment

An anti-malware product test orchestration solution for multiple pluggable environments

The term automation gets thrown around a lot these days in the software industry. However, the recent change in test automation in the software engineering process is driven by multiple factors such as environmental factors, both external and internal as well as industry-driven factors. Simply, what we all understand about automation is - the use of some technologies to operate a task. The choice of the right tools, be it in-house or any third-party software, can increase effectiveness, efficiency and coverage of the security product testing. Often, test environments are maintained at various stages in the testing process. Developer’s test, dedicated test, integration test and pre-production or business readiness test are some common phrases in software testing. On the other hand, abstraction is often included between different architectural layers, ever-changing providers of virtualization platforms such as VMWare, OpenStack, AWS as test execution environments and many others with a different state of maintainability. As there is an obvious mismatch in configuration between development, testing and production environment; software testing process is often slow and tedious for many organizations due to the lack of collaboration between IT Operations and Software Development teams. Because of this, identifying and addressing test environmentrelated compatibility becomes a major concern for QA teams. In this context, this thesis presents a DevOps approach and implementation method of an automated test execution solution named OneTA that can interact with multiple test environments including isolated malware test environments. The study was performed to identify a common way of preparing test environments in in-house and publicly available virtualization platforms where distributed tests can run on a regular basis. The current solution allows security product testing in multiple pluggable environments in a single setup utilizing the modern DevOps practice to result minimum efforts. This thesis project was carried out in collaboration with F-Secure, a leading cyber security company in Finland. The project deals with the company’s internal environments for test execution. It explores the available infrastructures so that software development team can use this solution as a test execution tool

Lean and agile software development : a case study

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2008."February 2008."Includes bibliographical references (p. 89-90).This paper looks at agile and lean development transitions for organizations that formerly used the waterfall style of development. There has been lots written about the positive aspects of agile software development and the anticipated benefits are widely touted. Through my research I became aware of significant obstacles that organizations can encounter when adopting an agile development method. The obstacles seem to be more applicable to organizations that use the waterfall development method and are compounded when legacy products exist. The intent of this thesis is to identify positive and challenging aspects for organizations that undertake a transition from waterfall development to agile development.by Collin Murray.S.M