YDS: Where Does Quality Assurance (QA) Fit on a Scrum Team?

We get this question pretty often, especially when speaking at conferences: I'm a tester or quality assurance (QA) specialist at a company that just adopted Scrum, am I now out of a job? The quick answer is: Of course not, but there are likely some changes coming your way. Quality isn't optional in Scrum. Software testing is a much-needed skill on a Scrum Team.

Ryan and Todd take the question head-on in today's video.

This is one of those Scrum Master interview questions about the Scrum Events that can throw you off. Do you understand how a Scrum Team makes sure that they deliver high-quality products? These Scrum Master day in the life questions can be tricky. The backlog refinement meeting is important. Perhaps some Scrum Master training could help? Want to learn more about Scrum?

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[Dima]

When I was a developer in an agile team, QA was another member of the team. At some point we had 3 QAs for 4 developers. Nothing was considered done unless it went through them and fully tested. We had WIP limits and if we reached it, developers were expected to join the QAs and help get stories tested. I learned to be a better developer because of that.

[crjones]

Recently we had the QA on our team have to be out for a couple Sprints. The cross-functional learning that happened as a result was a great by-product. Not having someone you may rely too much on can be a great opportunity for us to grow. Now QA is transitioning to a team responsibility; lead/championed by our QA Engineer.

[toyinoluwatoyinangel]

You guys are cool. You have really hepled solve lot of challenges. Am so excited watching and listening to both of you. keep up the good work. You both make a great team.

[AvenueCrew]

Thank you for your gems of videos. Absolute gold

[chieduagain]

Nice video.

you made it easy to follow by not interjecting too much side talk

[manueldinis]

I could not agree more! our best solution in the current project was when we had a QA and Developers next to our customers and product owner, we all worked together collaboratively and delivered great value. Same can not be said about the next solution where Management decided to fire the QA, have the customer(s) do QA...Can not even tell how bad did it go and still paying the consequences of that!...BTW what is your opinion of having DBAs being also added to the the team?

[toyinoluwatoyinangel]

Hello
You are great Mentors. Kindly answer this question
How can you apply using some metrics in appointment of Patients across hospitals.
As a scrum master how best can one use agile methodology in hopsital environment
Thanks
Angel

[derekwright]

Ryan and Todd - What is your advise on bring QA to the Daily Scrum meeting. Thank you.

[astormtrooperbilges]

Have a meeting with the CTO and the BA manager today to advocate to get a QA member added to each scrum team. It’s like Pat Mcafee says “having Tom Brady in the locker room makes everyone better, from the equipment manager to the people on the team”. Now take Tom Brady and put QA into that analogy!

[nicolinevandermerwe]

Ryan, you mentioned pair programming between QA and the Developer, but what does that actually look like? Does that mean both sit in front of the same screen? How do we make pair programming work from home?

[orestisnalmpantis]

Can you do scrum if your scrum team are only QA engineers? The product is really big and it needs 2 scrums teams, one for developing and one for qa, and we are in sync with each other. Is this scrum ?

[tahirbutts]

Can we just add Dev and QA story points? I would like to know when team is estimating story points what is correct approach, If Dev estimate on a story is 8 days and QA estimate is 5 does this mean story will have 13 story points if so how do we manage that in the sprint, Thanks

[chinedufelix]

Do you include QA in your capacity planning?

[jasoncourtney]

Possible Twitter handles for Todd - @Scumbubbles, @scrumdogg, @brewingscrum, or @scrumbrewer

[kensaiyeahyeah]

Tod's new Twitter handle: its(Todd)MillerTime