QualiTest hosted an exciting Meetup in San Diego about managing Distributed Test teams in Scrum. We cover some of the main challenges, like Team Construction, Communication within teams, Time and Cultural differences, etc and how QualiTest has tackled and addressed the various challenges. We hope if you're in the San Diego area, that you'll stop in for our next Meetup, and remember, Think Testing! Hosted by: Neri Lavi Hosted on: 12/9/2015 QualiTest is the world’s second largest pure play software testing and QA company. Testing and QA is all that we do! visit us at: www.QualiTestGroup.com

2. QA management within a
distributed SCRUM team

3. About
QualiTest
QA and testing is
all that we do!
World’s 2nd
largest pure play
Testing
Company
Over 2,700 testing
professionals
world wide
Business
Assurance
QA &
Testing
Focus
Results
Based
Testing
(RBT)
Contractual guarantees for
quality improvement &
cost reduction
Managed
Testing
Solutions
(MTS)
Long term, SLA-based testing
outsourcing
Industry & Technology Expert
Global
Service
Delivery
Model
Onshore, Near-Shore,
Offshore and Crowd
Testing

4. What do you know about Scrum?
• How many of you are part of an agile SDLC?
• For how long?
• Are you working with offshore teams?

5. Scrum Basics in 5 minutes
• What is Scrum?
• What is a Scrum team?
• What are sprints?
• Roles – PO / Scrum master
• Ceremonies – Daily meeting / Sprint planning / Sprint review /
retrospective.
• Artifacts – Backlog / Scrum board / burndown chart

6. Case study description
• QA department with ~30 engineers
• 3 locations across the globe (USA, China, Ukraine).
• QA tested 4 different products (4 backlogs)
• Many common functional areas.
• 5 Scrum teams (Team formation, ~once a year).

7. Main challenges
Team construction (Geographically?
Capabilities?)
Communication within the teams
Time & cultural differences
Information management
Managing the transition to Scrum
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8. Our solution - I
Team construction (Geographically? Capabilities?)
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• Our solution was to go according to capabilities,
but with a catch…
• No Scrum team should have engineers from more
than 2 different locations.

9. Our solutions - II
Communication within the teams
• Direct online communication is a must (less emails,
more chat, Skype, phone calls).
• Meeting summaries go out to everyone to reduce
misunderstandings.
13

10. Our solutions - III
Time & cultural differences
• Cultural workshop for both sides.
• No more than 2 different locations for each team to
allow some way of mutual time.
• Understand that the few hours overlapping are critical,
not just a bonus.
13

11. Our solutions - VI
Information management
• Online Scrum management software (VersionOne,
Rally, Jira Greenhopper)
• Scrum board – moving from excel sheets to online
13

12. Our solutions - V
Managing the transition to Scrum
• Transition means a period where QA is double
booked – needs management commitment.
• Move in small phases, don’t implement
EVERYTHING at once.
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13. www.QualiTestGroup.com