Maintaining Quality in Agile Dev Teams with a Testing Center of Excellence (TCoE)

In the fast-paced Agile development environment, testing can become disjointed. A testing center of excellence (TCoE) can help institute consistency and organization.

Testing Centers of Excellence (TCoEs) create a strong testing foundation for Agile teams. A quality TCoE builds the foundation for supporting and training the QA testing team by providing organized processes, standard procedures, training and support. A TCoE also builds leadership skills, supports innovation and strong team collaboration.

Many Agile teams work at a fast pace with ongoing testing and frequent code releases. Agile testing can become disjointed with different QAs working on various development teams. Each team may create its own testing processes from user story testing to test development and execution, and even how to enter defects. The problem is Agile teams change and testers move from team to team to support the development effort.

When testers change teams with different rules, tools and operating processes, it causes confusion, chaos and unnecessary stress. The quality of the application suffers because testers focus on following team processes or learning new tools rather than testing. Testers often become frustrated and overwhelmed. A TCoE can improve QA tester’s working situations through collaboration, organization and support.

This guide describes what a TCoE does, its purpose, benefits and value to Agile development teams and quality application providers.

What Is a Testing Center of Excellence (TCoE)?

A TCoE provides a working framework for testers that standardizes testing processes, techniques and manages tools for optimal testing quality and resource utilization. An effective TCoE fosters and supports testing innovation through continuous improvement and by ensuring ongoing skills training. The TCoE is an action-based center of an organization’s commitment to application quality.

Every application provider and Agile development team has a unique culture built on preferred processes and tools. The TCoE leads the quality effort by providing leadership and building a community of QA testing practices. When release quality is below specification, the TCoE delivers the news and manages the follow-up response. Many Agile teams refer to a TCoE as centralized testing management for dispersed testers on multiple Agile development teams.

An effective TCoE improves testing efficiency, focus and test coverage; builds QA skills; and reduces testing churn or chaos by providing direction and support. Some organizations use a TCoE to provide a shared service where the team supports deployment, manages test environments, and oversees test development and execution.

What’s the Purpose of a TCoE?

A TCoE aims to increase testing productivity and effectiveness by building skills, collaborating and communicating effectively. Software testing is highly competitive with teams based internally and externally. Each tester shares a goal of protecting application quality. Many teams, however, struggle with communication and effective collaboration.

Communication is vital to collaboration and the effectiveness of a testing team. Testers must work together and share new ideas, issues and ideas for improvement. Testers also need support for ongoing training to keep job skills current. Agile development teams pose a significant challenge to keeping team members connected. A TCoE often provides a central framework for developing testing standards across a distributed Agile testing team.

Think of a TCoE’s purpose as a gathering of knowledge, training, support, guidance and direction for accomplishing quality testing. A TCoE maintains standardization of QA processes and encourages ongoing innovation for improving quality.

Is creating a TCoE necessary? No, you can continue to manage QA testing with development team managers or numerous QA team leads and managers. Consider which is more efficient and consistent—a team that defines testing processes and manages tools or having each team develop its own processes and use different tools. When teams have significantly different methods, it often contributes to division, chaos and a lack of communication or collaboration.

Realizing the Value of Organized Testing

For some, having a TCoE sounds domineering or overly controlling. However, providing a centrally positioned and organized center for testing is anything but a source of complete control. A TCoE provides testing training, support and options to make testing’s voice heard and build new and innovative test processes and techniques. It’s a source of knowledge and understanding rather than an inflexible overseer.

Organized testing reduces costs, churn, chaos and burnout by providing standardized testing processes, tools and instruction. The TCoE is collaborative. All testers can voice concerns and submit ideas. A TCoE provides education and inspires creative testing solutions and ideas. A TCoE provides direction and supplemental services like documented processes, training and consistent organizational practices.

Consistent practices support Agile development by making it easy for testers to change teams without starting from scratch. Testers focus on testing rather than trying to learn a team’s specific operational procedures and processes.

TCoEs do not control all testing, but they are intended to standardize the following types of processes for increased testing effectiveness and efficiency:

• Defect entry
• Defect tracking tool procedures and training
• Manual testing processes
• Manual testing, test development and test management
• Manual testing tool designation and training
• Automated testing development procedures and coding standards
• Tool training and instructional support
• Defining QA roles and job descriptions
• Developing skills and training for testers
• Support for testers, be it personal or professional
• Developing innovation from tester’s ideas to improve test quality
• Measuring and monitoring KPIs for testing

With more organized testing, testing speed and effectiveness improves. Consistency improves when Agile development teams know what testers are doing. Testers develop improved testing skills with support rather than always running in circles trying to figure out how to test or learn an endless stream of new testing tools.

Benefits of Supporting a TCoE

Supporting a TCoE is not technically necessary, but TCoEs do provide distinct benefits.

Benefits of a TCoE providing centralized test organization and management include:

• Increased flexibility in moving QA testers to different teams without requiring training
• Improved business value with an experienced testing team that continues to develop skills
• Organized testing, which results in fuller testing coverage and depth
• Known procedures, which can eliminate churn, guesswork and rework
• Improved leadership, testing and training skills for TCoE members
• Improved consistency in meeting release deadlines
• Consistent tool use that reduces costs from using multiple tools
• Improved team collaboration and communication quality

Team collaboration and communication are vital to building a sense of testing community. The stronger a team, the better the timing and consistency of test execution and value. Every tester can build job skills and gain a wide variety of testing experience. As a team, skills improve through ongoing training and innovation. Test cases and automated test development follow consistent standards for easier test execution and maintenance.

Each tester becomes more agile and can quickly shift teams without losing time. Testing never misses a beat. Having a TCoE ensures the testing team is up to date on modern testing techniques and processes that provide opportunities to use new technology to improve testing quality and efficiency.

TCoE disadvantages and challenges include:

• Ineffective communication or poor collaboration can keep a team from working together with a TCoE
• A lack of consolidated processes can create an overly complex process that takes time to separate and support
• Leadership may need to enforce the presence and role of the TCoE so that teams cooperate in contributing to and using standardized processes.

Building a committed TCoE team takes time. Many QA teams are a blend of employees, contractors and external teams that typically have trouble communicating effectively. Start by bolstering the Agile development team’s commitment to providing high-quality applications. There will be challenging team members who have a bad attitude toward any improvements. Plan to manage potential negative attitudes by stocking the TCoE team with skilled and motivated testing professionals who can lift up and inspire others.

Agile development teams work more cohesively when testing processes are organized and standardized. Process consistency eliminates chaos, churn and burnout. Consistent testing also supports continuous improvement and innovation. Less work stress and a more engaged testing team come with communication, collaboration and organized testing processes. Consider supporting a centralized TCoE to help Agile teams effectively manage and provide high-quality application testing. Find more issues through organized testing throughout the SDLC and reduce testing costs while improving customer application quality.