Course structure
Chapter 1 Quality Assistance
Chapter 1 introduces quality assistance as an approach to quality management that is crucial to developing and sustaining a value-driven enterprise. It covers how quality assistance as an approach fits with known software testing concepts such as test management, quality control, and quality assurance. Agile Test Leadership at Scale focuses on enabling others in the enterprise to perform quality and testing responsibilities in order to foster a quality mindset and culture on an organizational level. Chapter 1 emphasizes four important skills to build competencies and scale quality and testing in an enterprise.
Chapter 2 Improve Quality and Flow in a Value-Driven enterprise
Chapter 2 establishes methods to facilitate the identification and optimization of development and operational value streams. It also describes what a Value Stream is, the notation used to create a Value Stream Map and why it is essential to understand the concepts and thinking behind this Lean methodology. The chapter continues with how to analyze a Value stream from a quality and testing perspective including suggestions for key metrics. Lastly, it highlights the importance of eliminating waste as a means to improving Quality and Flow in a Value-Driven enterprise.
Chapter 3 Continuous Improvement of Quality and Testing
Chapter 3 builds on the improvement methods established in chapter 2 but also expands on techniques to support the consistent and sustainable solving of problems. It explores approaches like the PDCA cycle to achieve these objectives and instils an improvement culture in an enterprise. The chapter introduces systems thinking and root cause analysis as approaches to identify causes of quality and testing issues in value streams. It also covers the technique causal loop diagram. Lastly, chapter 3 expands on understanding problem solving techniques and their consistent application across an enterprise.
Chapter 4 Organizational Test Strategy in a Value-Driven enterprise
Chapter 4 establishes an Organizational Test Strategy and introduces practices supporting DevOps and explains the importance of incorporating them into the organizational test strategy. At its core, it aims to provide guidance on how a value-driven enterprise may create and implement an organizational test strategy, and also how to validate if the testing aligns to the core business and technical needs by using assessment techniques.
It also explores how an Agile Test Leadership fits into a value-driven enterprise while highlighting a different set of responsibilities that come into play.
Chapter 5 Test Processes in a Value-Driven enterprise
This chapter is devoted to the analysis of test processes in a Value-Driven enterprise and enables the participant to analyze challenges specific to testing in the context of agile at scale product development. Chapter 5 also covers agile at scale practices that help coordinate test efforts across agile and non-agile teams. It also defines related test and flow metrics establishing transparency for stakeholders. Part of the chapter is also focused on the analysis of test activities and test processes that are important to fit business agility using a quality assistance approach. Lastly, chapter 5 introduces and expands on which test activities should be performed by stream-aligned teams and which should be performed by specialized service teams.