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I am a developer and have worked at this company 4~5 years by now.
We have been practicing scrum for about 2 years.

I think, I have been worked well with QAs.
I believe QAs/developers/technical writers are all one team.
We are also actively hiring new team members.
As a legacy member of the team, I have faced to assist new member(including developers and testers) with my business knowledge.

We work on 2 weeks base scrum.
I usually deliver my user story completely by the first date of second week and do some qa build with partial functionality of my user story so that QA has a good idea about my implementation and flow.

Recently, I have met some QAs.
In first week, the QAs do not talk... In stand up meeting, they say they are developing test cases regardless I deliver the user story or not.
In second week, I do not have a single defect till Thursday afternoon and suddenly I have a major defect with several minor UI defect, which I delivered one week ago.
Or I have one or two minor defects on second week however major defects on Thursday afternoon or Friday morning.

This eventually make the story rolls over to the next sprint.
Major defect takes time to fix and more importantly it would trigger the regression test for the story... Even if I worked Thursday evening and fixed it, the testing will not finish.

And this happens multiple times with certain QAs.

As a same team member, I talked to the QAs if they could test major defect with higher priority... Rejected... Because I do not understand QA process..

So I asked roughly how many major test cases are covered so far in the stand up meeting on 2nd week Wednesday.. The response is I should not ask this to the QA in the stand up meeting...

What do I do?

gnat
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exiter2000
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    This question would probably be more appropriate for: http://pm.stackexchange.com/ – Jim G. Sep 13 '12 at 20:01
  • It sounds like QA does a lengthy manual regression test for each story. Which seems dubious if you are doing agile. Also, are you getting story (acceptance) tests before you code? Do those pass? Is there a way you could have found those bugs prior to QA? – psr Sep 13 '12 at 20:11
  • What do you mean by "deliver my user story completely by the first date of second week". User stories should be properly defined before sprint even starts. I think this is the key problem. – Euphoric Sep 13 '12 at 20:12
  • @Euphoric, "deliver my user story" means "deliver the implementation of my user story", to be exact. – exiter2000 Sep 13 '12 at 20:57
  • @psr, No acceptance test will be the last and only 3~5 high level UAT would documented prior to the coding – exiter2000 Sep 13 '12 at 21:00
  • @exiter2000 - Sounds like your in trouble. I don't see how you can finish on time if your description is accurate. Maybe you can ask someone if you are doing things wrong, because it doesn't seem like the process as you understand it makes finishing on time something that is within your control to deliver. You can't code it if you don't know what they want. – psr Sep 13 '12 at 21:05
  • QA is NOT test. They are not doing QA. If you or they really think they are doing QA, best pack your bags and go home now. – mattnz Sep 13 '12 at 22:24

2 Answers2

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You need to ask the question why you are not finding these major defects yourself. Once you find that answer, you may find the answer to the question why they are finding them on Friday morning.

Are they finding defects in work you did (arguably unacceptable), or regression (Maybe tighten you UTs), or requirements defects?

mattnz
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  • Yep.. I am kind of asking myself now.. Obviously I might deliver major bug free code to QA, which I am thinking how I could do it.I asked the QAs enough and didn't get any constuctive conclution. – exiter2000 Sep 14 '12 at 14:59
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So I asked roughly how many major test cases are covered so far in the stand up meeting on 2nd week Wednesday.. The response is I should not ask this to the QA in the stand up meeting... What do I do?

Effective communication is a key. Speak with your QA's personally, not just in meetings. Try to set meetings or sent an email requesting the status of testing, if you don't hear back from your QA or if they work remotely.

This might be a common scenario when the scope of project is big and QAs have to make regression test without automated tools.

Or it might be the case with QA's that are less experienced. Who are testing UI things first and main functionality after that :(

Another approach would be spending time to understand how your story will be tested and writing down possible test scenarios that may be. Covering test cases in parallel with development is preferred way to go, but hard to accomplish. However, one you get used to this type of development then 99% your code will be safe.

Yusubov
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    Actually we do review test cases so that developer has some kinds of understanding about QA process and these QAs would have written only 10~15 high level test cases. I often ended up with suggesting more test cases to them.. And yes you are correct.. We do the regression test with manual. – exiter2000 Sep 13 '12 at 21:08
  • meeting with QA and BA in the first days of sprint, reviewing the use cases and potential testing scenarios is something that you may use, and it should help. – Yusubov Sep 13 '12 at 21:50