More about SCRUM:

Scrum is really a project management methodology to facilitate agile software development, and enable the creation of self-organizing agile teams. A ScrumMaster is like a traditional project manager in the sense that he/she oversees the centralization of team communication, requirements, schedules and progress.

But it is also very different because his/her main responsibility is to facilitate team communications and provide guidance and coaching, while removing impediments to the ability of the team to deliver its goals. Unlike a traditional project manager, the ScrumMaster doesn’t direct the team, because an agile team is based on the philosophy that a team member is committed to the other team members, not to a management authority.

Test closure activities : 

During test closure activities, we collect data from completed test activities to consolidate experience, including checking and filing testware, and analyzing facts and numbers. We may need to do this when software is delivered. We also might close testing for other reasons, such as when we have gathered the infor-mation needed from testing, when the project is cancelled, when a particular milestone is achieved, or when a maintenance release or update is done.

Test closure activities include the following major tasks:

1.)  Check which planned deliverables we actually delivered and ensure all incident reports have been resolved through defect repair or deferral.

2.)  Finalize and archive testware, such as scripts, the test environment, and any other test infrastructure, for later reuse.

3.)  Hand over testware to the maintenance organization who will support the software and make any bug fixes or maintenance changes, for use in con firmation testing and regression testing.

4.) Evaluate how the testing went and analyze lessons learned for future releases and projects.

Scrum : In rugby, ‘scrum’ (related to “scrimmage”) is the term for a huddled mass of players engaged with each other to get a job done. In software development, the job is to put out a release. Scrum for software development came out of the rapid prototyping community because prototypers wanted a methodology that would support an environment in which the requirements were not only incomplete at the start, but also could change rapidly during development. Unlike XP, Scrum methodology includes both managerial and development processes.

Two agile software development methodologies :

The most widely used methodologies based on the agile philosophy are XP and Scrum.

These differ in articulars but share the iterative approach described above.

XP :

XP stands for extreme programming. It concentrates on the development rather than managerial aspects of software projects. XP was designed so that organizations would be free to adopt all or part of the methodology.

XP development :

XP projects start with a release planning phase, followed by several iterations, each of which concludes with user acceptance testing. When the product has enough features to satisfy users, the team terminates iteration and releases the software.

Agile methodologies embrace iterations. Small teams work together with stakeholders to define quick prototypes, proof of concepts, or other visual means to describe the problem to be solved. The team defines the requirements for the iteration, develops the code, and defines and runs integrated test scripts, and the users verify the results.

Verification occurs much earlier in the development process than it would with waterfall, allowing stakeholders to fine-tune requirements while they’re still relatively easy to change.

WHAT IS AGILE?

Agile is about being open about what we’re capable of doing, and then doing it
– Kent Beck


Value System :
• People
• Collaboration
• Honesty
• Trust


Attitude :
Thinking guided by principles and reflected in behaviour


Simple Framework for dealing with change :
• Self-organisation
• Visibility
• Inspection
• Adaptation


Adaptive Ecosystem :
Tightly couples self-organising Team to a Product Owner

Test Management tool : Zephyr

Zephyr is a Next Generation Test Management tool and is based around the concept of Desktops & Dashboards.

Every role in a QA Department has a customized Desktop with relevant applications that allow them to do their jobs faster and better, as they all share data from a centralized repository and communicate via a collaborative backbone.

Dashboards are automated and live, keeping the whole company updated on every aspect of testing and product quality.