2. XBOSoft Info
Founded in 2006
Dedicated to software quality
Software QA Consulting
Software Testing
Offices in San Francisco, Beijing, Oslo, and
Amsterdam
3. Housekeeping
• Everyone except the speakers are muted
• Questions via the gotowebinar control on the right side of your
screen
• Questions can be asked throughout the webinar, we’ll try to fit
them in when appropriate
• General Q & A at the end of the webinar
• You will receive info on recording and slides after the webinar
4. Speakers
Jan Princen, Board member XBOSoft,
Founder of Grip QA.
Pim Smeets, Project manager XBOSoft
manages remotes agile test teams in
China.
Sabrina Gasson, Marketing at XBOSoft.
7. Agile Manifesto:
• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan
Many Flavors
What is agile?
8.
9. Pim’s Project
• Financial Software
• Dutch UI / specifications
• Located in:
– 3 countries
– 2 times zones
– 3 mother tongues
– 6 scrum (-ish) teams
10. Hard to work with teams in different
locations?
China and the
Netherlands have a 6 hour
time difference
‘A day in the life of a tester in China’
• 09:00 Review ‘to do’ tasks on TFS
• 09:30 - 5 minutes - Internal standup: What
will you do? How long do you need? Need
help from colleagues?
• 13:00: pre-grooming, if needed
• 14:00-15:00 Netherlands gets to office
• 15:00-16:00 standup meetings (Weekly
Groomings / Bi Weekly retrospectives)
• - 18:00+ Discuss with developers in
Europe / wrap up.
11.
12. English is hard for everyone
Dutch specs:
• Dutch Lessons
• Translation software
• Pre groomings
Certain personality type does well
Commitment of both sides
Cultural / language differences
13. Communication
Person A Person B
Cultural framework of
reference
Language
Proficiency
Confidence
Factors influencing
communication
17. SITs
Self Improvement Teams
• Short optimization projects (5-10 hours total)
• Cross teams
• Both local (Beijing) and distributed
• One condition: provides future business value
Past SITs:
• POC CodedUI / Selenium
• SQL / Bash scripting
• Quality / code metrics
• Risk analysis
18. Automation
• Essential in Agile
• Daily automated regression
tests
• ‘Record and playback’ too
fragile: built our own
framework
• Using Selenium / C# /
Specflow
19. Keeping Remote Teams Involved
• How to keep remote teams involved?
• Visit once a year
• Involve everyone in all
meetings (even if that
can prove hard in
practice)
• Make jokes, build
personal relationships
• Three locations, one
team
Jan: Pim before we start tell me a bit how you got involved with agile?
Jan:
Why Agile? Pim tell me what you see here?
Why does waterfall not work?
Pim’s perspective
SCRUM, XP, Kanban many organization implements what works best for them and that is also agile.
Short iterations.
Poll: biggest hurdle
Poll: biggest hurdle
Poll: difficulties
Jan: will ask pim to comment on the items on the right side of the slide
Jan: will ask pim to comment on the items on the right side of the slide
Jan: How to effectively communicate with people in different countries
Jan: Issues you find in practice
Jan: Finding and hiring the right people. What makes someone suitable for Agile?
Agile Tools
Get overview
Work fast and effective
Geen middel om iemand af te rekenen
TFS / TM / Specflow / Selenium
Jan: transparency, not use to control ….
Poll: automation
Poll: time is an issue
Werkt Agile in de praktijk echt sneller?
Wordt de opleversnelheid verhoogd door het werken in meerdere tijdzones?
Hoe groot moet een bedrijf zijn om remote Agile te kunnen toepassen?
Hoe belangrijk is vertrouwen?
