Sunday, October 25, 2009

#2 Running Out Of Time For Testing In An Iteration

Symptom: Testing is the last thing in an iteration which usually results in running out of time to perform adequate testing.

Probable Cause: The team is still in a silo approach, where all dev is done at the sprint and then left up to testing at the end of the sprint. Can also be attributable to coarse grained user stories that require a lot of dev work followed by a lot of test work to complete them resulting in a rush at the end of the sprint.

Suggested Resolution: Try to derive finer grained user stories or finer grained tasks that require less dev and less test effort that can be done rapidly. A little work and often will help to provide everyone in the team with something to do rather than some team members waiting on others to finish their piece, as with large work packages. If everyone in the team is fully utilized during the iteration, then there should be a constant stream of completed items and the "test rush" at the end of the sprint is distributed throughout the sprint.

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