Lessons Learned while Expanding Agility

Introducing agility across your team can be a daunting task. It is a huge endeavor to navigate and match agile testing methodology with the specific nuances of your team. Scaling or expanding agility across a department or an organization brings even more hurdles. This is the journey my testing team and I embarked on two years ago.

Formal training along with external coaching helped our team start strong, but our progress quickly stagnated and early success could not be scaled easily. We had multiple starts…and stops…and pauses across an uneven journey from waterfall to agile. We eventually learned that promoting agile methodology requires not only the right mindset and exceptional testing skills but also superior people skills.

Along our agile journey, we organized our takeaways and general observations to highlight the following learnings:

• Dual requirements – technical and emotional requirements

• Keep it small - drive agility without stakeholders

• Work from Home agility – making hybrid work for testers

• Custom made - agility is not a one-size-fits all solution, so make it fit

• Humans and machines – maneuver people bugs not only software bugs

My analogies and recommendations are practical and are loaded with personal testing experiences of leading an international testing team through a transformation to agile methodology. I share what worked, what didn’t work, and what is left to do. Let me help make agile testing work for you. Join me in Lessons Learned while Expanding Agility.