5 Reasons Why Agile Testing Governance is Critical for Success

Agile Testing and Development teams are powered by ideas that encourage collaboration, flexibility, transparency, and simplicity to ensure responsiveness and frequent feedback. This holds throughout the software development or application development cycle. Nevertheless, Agile cannot function as a set of principles that operate independently once set into motion. It is a process that needs holistic environment management, and the reasons could be pretty compelling to know. Why is it business-critical for you as an Agile-based organization to consider Agile Testing Governance?

Usage of the Agile Approach

According to Gartner Analysts Thomas E. Murphy, Mike West, and Keith James Mann, enterprise agile planning tools enable organizations to use agile practices at scale to achieve enterprise-class agile development (EAD). This is done with practices that are business-outcome-driven, customer-centric, collaborative, and cooperative.

There is no doubt that Software Development is getting complex, and an agile approach enables transparency and better opportunities to track and check the test records. At the same time, it is essential to keep this process going for adequate adherence to the core ideology. Enterprises are increasingly adopting Agile Testing methodologies to ensure that they are able to develop applications and software as per the market standards.

However, things get challenging with constant changes in the brief and the business requirements. Governance or holistic management of the Agile environment is needed to keep the teams intact despite any changes.

5 Reasons Why Agile Testing Governance

1.     Ensure collaboration between co-located teams

Agile set-up needs a working code in 2-3 weeks, which requires constant collaboration with cross-functional teams. These teams could be located at different and distant locations, making collaboration almost impossible. Organizations are also pressured to keep up with budget constraints and bring the teams up to speed to respond to challenges and various business needs.

Test environment management is needed to ensure Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, Virtualization, and Automation. Hence, governance of the agile scenario helps to keep a check on the progress of various teams as designed and expected. Adherence to the agile protocols is essential to approach work for teams irrespective of location.

2.     Keep track of the strategy

The agile approach is a multi-dimensional methodology in the software delivery process. It needs constant validation, amendments, and operation under unstable environments. While this happens, teams might get shuffled, and roles might get interchanged. This makes it difficult for team leads and organizations to track the process.

A constant check is needed to keep the development and testing process on track and ensure no hiccups in delivering client briefs. A governance model helps track the people, processes, and strategy. The result must be returned as desired and briefed. There could be a challenge, particularly when teams move from a traditional model to an Agile set-up. Governance is needed not only for mapping the strategy but also for keeping the team glued to it.

3.     Establishing a Unified Team model

Agile set-up for any testing or development activity needs an on-demand environment with the required configurations that could change. It is essential to manage various components within this environment to make further iterations and track them. Hence, you need a unified Test Environment Management model that can enable smooth coordination between testing and all stakeholders.

It helps to create a single point of contact to ensure adherence and monitoring of the processes and the environment. Agile Testing Governance is needed to undertake all essential activities such as Test Infrastructure Management, Test Data Management, deployment management, and anything related to the environment. It helps create a Unified Team model to manage the environmental assets, resources, and operations.

4.     Ensure Continuous Automation for Continuous Delivery

Agile has been hailed for bringing automation and speed to the delivery process. While monitoring the automation process is critical, keeping track of the automated test frameworks and test cases is essential. This can be a resource and an important activity check on the software delivery process. Agile testing involves shorter test cycles and quicker releases. Automation forms a critical element in the process.

Governance is needed to ensure that automation is implemented for quicker turnaround and ultimately serves the larger purpose. Likewise, it helps bring more efficiency and faster resolution of issues in the test environment, such as scheduling, provisioning, or automation.

5.     Deriving Value from the process

The ultimate question, ‘Are we getting value?’ comes down to questioning the approach’s effectiveness. Agile Governance is essential to gauge the effectiveness of the investments made and the effort that went into deriving the scope, task completion, expenditure, and probability of gaining accuracy. Mature best practices are needed to deliver on the Agile Manifesto, but governance must validate that all the efforts help provide the ultimate cause.

It further helps to build the short-term and long-term strategy for testing based on the earlier outcomes. It can also be a great way to review the Governance mechanism for the future. Cost optimization and Time Rationalization are vital factors to measure within the governance process, which can even empower teams to shift paradigms within the testing sphere.

In Conclusion

Governance must be an enabler for the Agile approach, implying that it cannot delay the testing cycle. A process has to be defined for collecting the data in the testing cycle that doesn’t obstruct the ongoing activities. Agile Governance bridges the gap between Management and IT to foster creativity and innovation in software development.

Flexibility and speed are at the core of agile, and any governance activity implemented must boost it further. What’s your word on this topic?

Connect with Cigniti’s experts to build the best governance and Agile strategy for supporting your QA and Testing efforts.