This continues a series of columns from practitioners I respect. The category "Real Deal" describes them well.
This time it is Damon Auer, Partner at Tribridge and Bob Glynn, co-founder of Affinity Inc, two high-class boutique consulting/systems integration firms. I have worked with Damon on a number of technology strategy projects and it’s always a joy to see his creative mind solving unsolvable problems - like the seeming oxymoron of Agile development in a world of Rigid methodologies.
“Nothing like starting a story with an oxymoron. But this one’s appropriate.
Our firms partnered 2 years ago to help a global Healthcare and Life Sciences company implement a new system to better support Configuring, Pricing, Quoting, and Processing Orders around the world. The software to enable this functionality had already been determined to be Siebel (now part of Oracle).
The initial plan was to build, validate, and deploy the system to about 7,000 users over a 24-month period using a very rigid Waterfall methodology. This Waterfall methodology had been refined over a period of years at the company and was deeply integrated with Quality processes to insure that any system that goes live meets strict FDA systems validation guidelines.
It was a good plan but . . .
3 months into the project things changed. A lingering lawsuit took a turn for the worse and the company had only 12 months to get the new system live or face tens of millions of dollars of legal penalties.
We huddled with company Program Leadership and realized our current (tested but rigid) waterfall method would never get us across the goal line in time. So we decided to immediately chuck the Program Plan, break our team into “Scrums”, enlist “Product Owners”, and “Sprint” as hard and fast as we could to meet the new time challenge.
This approach created a whole new set of challenges including immediate skepticism about our ability to execute an Agile project while dependent on 26 other teams (in 14 countries) still executing the classic Waterfall method. And this was a packaged system (Siebel) not a custom development project – how was that going to work? And how would we ever get the system documented thoroughly enough to meet FDA validation requirements? And what the hell is a Scrum and a Sprint and a Product Backlog? Oh yeah, and how will we take the consultant’s (us) Fixed Fee contract for implementing the system and fit it into a new schedule with a different set of requirements?
All great questions but we decided we didn’t possibly have time to answer them to everyone’s satisfaction – so we started the first Sprint.
We learned as we went. Our skeptics continued their skepticism. Until we went live with a system designed to meet businesses requirements 12 months later. Then we were heroes.
What we learned was: (1) the value of Agile methods in driving User ownership delivered systems; (2) the granular accountability (and empowerment) that Agile creates; (3) you can Sprint until the system is functioning then retrospectively validate the system to meet documentation and regulatory requirements; (4) Agile works with packaged systems! (this was a real aha for us).
What we already knew but had reinforced by this experience is: (5) there is no substitute for smart, flexible, committed Program Leadership – you can accomplish just about anything with the right people; (6) every transformational project has skeptics until you deliver.
So, oxymoron it may be, but Agile concepts (if not strict adherence to every nuance) can work in the most Rigid of Waterfall regulatory environments to produce great product.
Take that from these two hands-on consultants. There you go - we ended this post with another oxymoron :)”
They can be reached at Damon DOT Auer AT tribridge DOT com and rglynn AT affinityinc DOT net
Interview with Sal Allegra on IT Quality Assurance
With offshore firms offering testing teams in the thousands, I was intrigued what customers thought of Questcon’s test center right here in N. Carolina.
So I asked to interview Sal Allegra, IT manager at ISO, a member of the Verisk Analytics family of companies, about the work Questcon has done for them. Sal manages their quality assurance, change, and software configuration management activities.
Describe the business and application environment you are responsible for quality around.
ISO provides its customers a wide range of actuarial, underwriting, and claims information around property/casualty insurance. As is common in this industry, we have lots of custom-built solutions on a mixed bag of hardware platforms. We are in the process of transitioning many to Java on a Z Linux environment.
While the application complexity and data volumes are not out of the ordinary, with Verisk having recently gone public, we obviously will have an additional responsibility for hygiene related to our applications.
How mature would you say your QA environment is?
In flux is probably a good way to describe it. We have decided to take advantage of an enterprise license around IBM’s Rational Suite. The hope is it will provide some level of consistency and common repository across regression testing, performance benchmarking, and defect tracking steps.
One of the reasons to engage Questcon was to do an assessment of our current state and the maturity of our regression environment. Questcon reported our level of automation in that area was somewhat below industry benchmarks and proceeded to help us create a framework to significantly increase the automation.
Can you describe the test automation framework?
To me, a well designed framework makes you less testing-tool dependent and greatly insulates you from human vagaries of testing. Questcon did a quick assessment on our environment using 28 variables, and then conducted a proof of concept using a series of regression test cases.
They created a keyword-driven framework that helped standardize the code creation process and allowed us to leverage common utilities and function libraries. We anticipate we are now creating our regression scripts much faster. One of the added benefits was they helped reconcile separate scripts, one for acceptance and one for production to allow for shared efficiencies.
Were you hesitant to utilize Questcon’s remote center in Greensboro, NC?
They did the assessment and framework development on-site. That was really high-quality work. Once that was done they could have done the detailed development just about anywhere. The beauty of a well-defined framework is you can use junior resources right here in the U.S. and get competitive pricing without needing to look for offshore economies.
The big “aha” for me was Questcon did not just jump in and execute, but helped us rethink. Also, they have a vendor-neutral approach to testing tools, so their mindset is not rote or skewed towards a certain solution set.
November 12, 2009 in Industry Commentary | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)