The Right People, Processes, and Tools For Agile Transformation

Before explaining what an agile transformation is, an understanding of what it means to be agile needs to be identified. Agile, loosely described, is the “ability to lead and think quickly and easily” or “to move in a quick, coordinated way. In the world of software development, one of the primary purposes of adopting and transforming to Agile is to begin working, quality software, in short, fast increments, also recognized as continuous delivery. This usually requires that teams can receive and implement fast, varying requirements.

As it compares to project management for software development, Agile is sometimes used as a synonym for Scrum, Kanban, or another type of framework. This is an inaccurate and misleading way to define what it means to be agile. Agile is a set of principles and values recorded formally in the Agile Manifesto, established in 2001.

Agile Transformation Definition

An agile transformation definition is an act of transforming an organization’s form or nature continuously to embrace and grow in flexible, collaborative, self-organizing, fast-changing circumstances. The Agile Manifesto values and principles can be taught and applied throughout any organization as it does not just apply to development teams.

The entire organization must understand the definition of an agile transformation and its value to profit from achieving accurate, healthy agility. The entire cultural and organizational mindset must shift to one that encompasses a culture of self-organization and collaboration. 

Agile Adoption

Agile adoption is “doing” agile. “Adoption” is the act of taking up or placing something into effect.

A common knee-jerk reaction is to choose Scrum, a popular framework because it designates a specific set of meetings (ceremonies) and example plans of what is to take place in those ceremonies. It is often easier to achieve an organizational change to something that matches a “process” because “processes” are what seems most comfortable and easiest.

Organizations often fail at agile transformation due to the incorrect assumption that because they are “doing,” – they have “become.” It could be early to “adopt” a practice before knowing “why” the practice was created.

For example, the first agile value declares that “Individuals and interactions are considered processes and tools moreover.” The simple act of having a face to face discussion versus using a computer to give an email or using a telephone would illustrate adopting an action or practice that shows an agile value.

This is a clear policy that can be adhered to, but for an organization to continue towards growing a successful agile organization, they require to understand the “why” to help create the “how”.

Leadership Characteristics Required in an Agile Transformation 

There are four key leadership characteristics that are required to drive a successful agile transformation in an organization:

• Openness to change
• Humility and approach of collaboration
• Leadership that does not micromanage
• Trust – cultivating that within your team and instilling trust in your leadership as well

You’ve got to be open-minded and ready to embrace change. It will give you an opportunity to work together as a team and deliver something with a common goal rather than traditional systems, which would have been some means that teams are working against each other at times.

You’ve got to have the capacity to listen to other people’s opinions and be willing to have your opinion questioned. You’ve got a collaborative mindset. You’ve got to be ready to work with other people and offer to work as a team. Learn to step back and enable your team to self-organize. Not only make but receive from their own mistakes without jumping in and micromanaging them. It takes a lot of strength and trust.

Role of Test Automation in Agile Transformation

Test automation benefits organizations to achieve effectiveness, performance, and coverage of software testing. And, with shorter sprints in Agile, test automation becomes the sole guardian of the quality aspects in any release.

Talking about the advantages of test automation, in addition to shorter time-to-market, If you perform automation accurately, it doesn’t just add another layer of testing. What, in theory, it should do is move obstructions out of your current test team’s way to allow them to do much more complex and exciting testing. You get your teams more involved because they’re doing the more exciting testing themselves manually. But then you give yourself this ability to expand the breadth of your automation coverage and your test coverage to cover various web browsers, cover multiple combinations of compatibility problems to cover security, to include a lot more functionality.

Identifying the Right Test Automation Tools 

While developing a test framework, you should consider it an augmented resource for your activities. Often, people want automation, but they don’t want to spend a lot of money on a tool for automation upfront. They need to know that it can work.  

To anybody out there looking to perform automation, we strongly recommend that you pick up proof of concept collectively first and prove its worth before attempting to get buy-in for funding.  

While identifying the right tools, you learn from attempting to overcomplicate an automation framework, and you learn what was important to the framework and continuously get to this point through those exercises where you learn what the important things are that you require to put in place and the tool becomes agnostic.

At this point, once you understand what it is that you’re working on completing with the automation tool, it really doesn’t matter which tool you use. 

Conclusion

While automating, people often end up seeking to automate too much too soon. If you just automate each test that you do, what you actually produce is a massive maintenance task, not a helpful automation framework. 

In such cases, partnering with a pure-play testing organization can help you navigate through easily as they bring the knowledge. 

TestUnity can bring experience with various applications. We can bring the solutions to all the difficulties that you will encounter if you try and develop your own frameworks. Connect with our testing experts at TestUnity to know more about Agile Transformation.

TestUnity

Testunity is a SaaS-based technology platform driven by a vast community of testers & QAs spread around the world, powered by technology & testing experts to create the dedicated testing hub. Which is capable of providing almost all kind of testing services for almost all the platforms exists in software word.