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With the ongoing evolution of Agile and DevOps addressing the need to release more and release faster, quality assurance plays a vital role at every stage of the release cycle.
In the 14th Edition of the World Quality Report, we see quality in the agile and DevOps environment viewed like an orchestra. Every element of the software development process comes together in harmony to complete the finished piece, like a perfect musical performance where quality is assured.
This is referred to as quality orchestration whereby the teams, skillsets, provisioning, automation practices, service virtualization, and more are viewed – and managed – as a seamless end-to-end whole. Collaboration in this orchestrated agile environment is key. It’s how test and quality engineers ensure their activities deliver the two most important quality objectives for the agile enterprise – excellent customer experience and business outcomes.
Our latest World Quality Report survey found that agile and DevOps were delivering benefit in line with these two objectives at many levels. For example, when asked if they had seen ‘significant’ improvements (i.e., more than 20%) since adopting agile and DevOps, 64% of the survey respondents said they had seen improvement in the area of on-time delivery, 63% in predictability, 62% in reducing the cost of their quality activities, and 61% in customer experience.
Agile Adoption Continues to Grow
This chapter of the WQR also assesses the evolution of agile and DevOps and the tools/approaches used to assure quality. For example, we discover that although the agile implementation of packaged enterprise systems has been slow to take off, with waterfall being the predominant methodology for many years, agile adoption has started to grow. Indeed, 59% of the survey respondents now have a well-implemented agile methodology for quality and testing. Quality is being further assured by a number of different approaches, such as pre-built test case repositories for certifying sprints, which has been adopted by 63% of the survey respondents.
When it comes to enterprise systems, testing isn’t always carried out by quality engineers. Some 62% of surveyed organizations say it is carried out by business SMEs. Nonetheless the skills of quality engineers remain integral to agile teams with 32% of organizations saying quality engineers make up between 26% to 35% of their agile teams, and 28% of organizations saying their agile teams comprise even more quality engineers at between 36% to 45% of the team make-up.
Recommendations for Success
As quality orchestration increases within the software development lifecycle (SDLC), the WQR looks ahead to possible future developments, such as a need for much higher levels of automation and quality as the pace of continuous quality grows. It also makes several recommendations for ensuring agile and DevOps success across the SDLC, such as making quality engineers integral to agile development programs, and blending both technical and business skills within the broader quality engineering skillset.
Get in Touch
If you’d like to hear more about our findings relating to quality orchestration in agile and DevOps, please get in touch with:
Author
Bart Vanparys
Practice Lead, Quality Engineering & Testing, Sogeti
Bart has carried many titles in his 20 year career. He’s been an analyst, tester, quality assurance consultant, test manager, project manager, BI developer, quality manager, change manager, CoE lead, program quality lead.
A constant has been his search for ways to deliver value through IT solutions in a controlled and safe manner. He has gained experience in many domains including testing, quality management, service management, project management and architecture. He believes that a broad background combined with deep specialized expertise in selected domain is essential to be valuable in our industry.
Bart’s specialty is testing and quality engineering. His broad interest is in everything else. Bart graduated as Commercial Engineer (KU Leuven, Belgium) and has worked in IT consultancy since 2000. In 2011, he joined Capgemini Belgium where he took a lead role in building the Sogeti Testing & Quality Management practice. He has performed assignments in public sector (European Commission), finance and retail. He is currently supporting organizations in building testing & quality engineering capabilities.
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