Shifting focus from software testing and development to ensuring customer satisfaction

Action 1:

    Deliver a newly revised, fully working application with every new feature added. Time delay between features should be measured in a short span of time (days, not weeks) so the code and original purpose and details of the feature is fresh in everyone’s mind. Fully automated build, test and deployment is essential for this turnaround velocity.

Action 2:

     Replace the technical testing role with a single rotating member of the development team, called ‘Story Integrator’ thus bringing ownership of code quality issues into the development team The Story Integrator ensures the regular integration and deployment of stories produced by the team with a focus on keeping a usable build available for end users with the latest possible features at all times. The focus needs to be frequent increments of value-laden capability delivered for demonstration to the customer. Enable the customers to be the ‘testers’.  More on this in an upcoming post.

Action 3:

     Merge the roles of ‘Quality Analyst’ and ‘Business Analyst’ into that of ‘Story Maker’ . The purpose of the Story Maker is to ensure the right software gets built by the team according to the vision of the product owner and the needs and desires of all relevant end users. The person in this role acts as a liaison between the customer team and the dev team. He or she promotes clarity and hard-criteria-based definition of stories for ‘build-ability’ as well as availability of the newly built features to the customers thus increasing the ability of product owners to steer the product according to their stakeholder’s interests. More on this role as well in future posts.