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Home > IT Services > Independent Software Testing > Distributed Agile Case Study
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Overview
Our customer is the producer of many online gaming applications used by millions of gamers across the world. The customer had been looking for a partner for end-to-end testing of one of its applications in a distributed environment. Tavant partnered with the customer for testing of the application in a best shore model. The distributed agile environment posed certain unique challenges for testing of the application, which were overcome through adoption of testing best practices. |
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| Business Context |
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The customer's gaming application had been developed by teams located in different parts of the world, following the Agile methodology. Tavant had also played a significant role in development of the application.. Application development in a distributed agile environment implied:
| > | A highly distributed group of stakeholders spread across several geographies. |
| > | Several independent teams, working out of different locations and time zones, developing various "pieces" of the application that were integrated at regular intervals.
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To save costs and time, and to achieve an almost perfect application, the customer was looking for a partner to handle all aspects of testing in the distributed environment |
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| Solution |
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Tavant partnered with the customer for testing of the application in a best shore model. Soon, it discovered that testing in a distributed agile environment involved certain unique challenges, such as:
Ambiguous Requirements
Independent stakeholders and development teams had their own requirements / priorities that were not always aligned with those of the other teams in other locations. These ambiguities resulted in disparate, and sometimes contradictory, testing requirements. Development of acceptance test cases was, therefore, a challenge.
Delayed Communication
As people worked in different locations and time zones, communication among them was often broken and delayed. The Testing group, however, had to ensure timely delivery of approved builds, unaffected by such delayed communication.
Cross-Shore Integration, Testing, and Sign-Off
In the distributed agile framework, with parallel cross-location development, testing efforts too had to be distributed across various teams and locations to ensure smooth testing and sign-off before integration into the production environment.
Project Management Challenges
From the project management perspective, monitoring the activities of all teams, ensuring timely delivery and integration of code, and maintaining control over the quality of code, were some of the other challenges that had to be addressed by the Testing team in close collaboration with the customer.
Tavant's team put the following Testing best practices to good use to overcome the challenges mentioned above:
Testing Team - The Proxy to the Producers
Tavant's Testing team not only took up the responsibility to test the product effectively, but also took ownership of identifying precise requirements and defining unambiguous acceptance test cases. In the distributed agile environment, Tavant:
| > | developed a common repository of test cases after detailed discussions with all stakeholders to ensure comprehensive coverage of user stories. |
| > | broke down each use case scenario into smaller use cases to enable testing of the application in increments through shorter test cycles.
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Over-Communicate, But Do Not Under-Communicate
This practice was the underlying principle that guided all Tavant's communication efforts with the customer. In the distributed agile framework, the following practices helped bridge the gap in communication as stakeholders from different locations, time zones, and working cultures worked together for a common cause:
| > | Global daily standup tracker listing daily accomplishments of all teams. |
| > | Daily standup update to ensure communication at multiple levels across the board. |
| > | Onshore-offshore rotation of team members to overcome cultural barriers and promote face-to-face communication among team members. |
| > | Coordinator at each location to act as the single / first point of contact for all communication with a specific team.
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Early Testing, Continuous Integration, and Nightly Builds
Team Tavant undertook a proactive approach to testing as laid out by this testing best practice. While Tavant's pre-testing activities handled testing of logical builds before completion of development, its stringent gate criteria ensured high release acceptance in multiple test environments. In the distributed agile environment:
| > | The concept of collective code ownership was promoted to improve accountability and, hence, the quality of code. |
| > | Nightly builds from all teams ensured continuous integration and incremental progress; this also helped early detection of bugs / errors. |
| > | Tavant's automated smoke test suite was used to conduct regression testing of each nightly build and undertake basic testing of the functionality of the application on completion of each build.
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Open Kitchen Policy
Honest, upfront communication with stakeholders is the best way to effectively manage cross-shore agile projects. In the distributed agile framework:
| > | An exhaustive engagement model was developed that clearly identified roles, responsibilities, and accountability of all stakeholders right at the beginning of the project. |
| > | A common suite of tracking tools was used to track the progress of all teams globally. This ensured that all teams were aware of the progress being made by their peers and also provided a single platform for collaboration and communication across the globally distributed teams. |
| > | The daily hand-off report highlighted the accomplishments for the day, including the issues and blockers identified during the day's testing cycle. This helped all teams prioritize their testing efforts for the next day and also plan their next iterations accordingly.
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| Business Benefits |
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Tavant's innovative approach to testing helped the customer realize the following benefits:
> Almost 99% test efficiency.
> Early testing approach that ensured detection of more than 80% defects during the early phases, reducing the overall cost of development.
> Use of an automated, reusable framework, built on open source tools, which reduced the overall cost of testing.
> Shorter test cycles, improved productivity and quality across the board; this, in turn, had a favorable impact on our customer's ROI.
> Adoption of testing best practices that became the benchmark for all subsequent testing engagements.
> On schedule and zero-defect delivery of the application.
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