December 15, 2024
In the rapidly evolving world of software development, effective collaboration between agile development teams and business testers is crucial. While this cooperation is essential for project success, it often brings various challenges. In this comprehensive blog post, we'll take a detailed look at the most common problems, present practical solutions, and illustrate these with concrete examples from practice.
Agile teams typically work in short sprints of one to four weeks, while business testers are often oriented towards longer test cycles that can span several months. This discrepancy can lead to delays and misunderstandings.
Example: A development team plans to implement a new feature for a banking software system within a two-week sprint. However, the business testers have a quarterly test cycle that takes into account compliance requirements. This results in the new feature potentially remaining untested for weeks, or the development team having to move on to the next feature without receiving feedback on the previous one.
The technical language of developers and the domain-specific language of business testers can lead to significant misunderstandings.
Example: A developer explains to a business tester that they have implemented an "asynchronous middleware component with microservices architecture." The business tester doesn't fully understand the technical details and therefore can't assess how this will affect the business processes they need to test.
Developers often focus on technical aspects such as code quality, performance, and scalability, while business testers focus on business requirements, user-friendliness, and compliance.
Example: When developing an e-commerce system, the development team prioritizes optimizing database queries to improve loading times. The business testers, on the other hand, see the highest priority in the correct calculation of taxes and shipping costs for different countries.
Developers may not fully understand the complexity of business processes, while business testers might underestimate the technical challenges.
Example: When developing a logistics system, the development team implements a simple route planning function. The business testers criticize that important factors such as traffic volume, vehicle capacities, and delivery time windows were not considered. The developers had underestimated the complexity of these business requirements.
Tight schedules and limited resources can lead to tensions between the teams and impair the quality of testing.
Example: A startup is developing a new mobile banking app and is under pressure to launch it before an important investor meeting. The development team works around the clock to implement features, while the business testers hardly have time to conduct thorough tests. This leads to frustration on both sides and increases the risk of errors in the final product.
Developers often work in local or staging environments, while business testers need to test in environments that are as close to production as possible.
Example: A development team tests a new feature for a CRM system in a local environment with test data. When the business testers test the same feature in a production-like environment with real customer data, problems suddenly occur that weren't visible before.
Example: A company introduces "test sprints" that start one week after the development sprints and overlap with them. Business testers participate in the last three days of each development sprint to provide early feedback and prepare test planning for the next sprint.
Example: A large software company introduces the role of "Business-Tech Liaison." This person has both technical understanding and knowledge of business processes and acts as a translator between developers and business testers. They participate in meetings of both groups and help to clarify misunderstandings.
Example: When developing a human resources management system, developers and business testers work together to define user stories. A story might read: "As a personnel manager, I want to create an automated report on employee utilization that takes into account both hours worked and project budgets." The acceptance criteria are jointly established and include both technical aspects (performance, database queries) and business requirements (compliance with working time laws, accuracy of budget calculations).
Example: A company introduces monthly "Tech-Biz Days." On these days, developers give short presentations on new technologies or technical concepts for the business testers, while the business testers offer workshops on business processes or regulatory requirements for the developers. Additionally, a program is introduced where developers spend one day per sprint with the business testers and vice versa.
Example: For a financial management system, a risk-based testing strategy is introduced. Together, developers and business testers identify the most critical functions (e.g., transaction processing, tax calculations) and focus manual tests on these areas. Automated tests are developed for less critical functions. This enables more efficient use of limited test resources and ensures that the most important business risks are covered.
Example: A company implements a cloud-based test environment that is updated daily with anonymized production data. Developers and business testers have access to this environment, which significantly improves the reproducibility of problems and the validation of fixes. Additionally, Docker containers are used to ensure that all team members work with identical environments.
Successful collaboration between agile development teams and business testers requires adaptability, open communication, and mutual understanding. By implementing the above solutions, companies can improve the quality of their software, shorten development cycles, and ultimately deliver better products to their customers.
By building bridges between these two important groups, we create not only more efficient workflows but also a culture of collaboration and innovation that is essential for success in the fast-paced world of software development.
It's important to recognize that implementing these solutions requires time, patience, and commitment from all involved. It is a continuous improvement process that requires regular retrospectives and adjustments.
Ultimately, bridging the gap between agile development teams and business testers leads to more robust, user-friendly, and business-valuable software solutions. In an era where digital transformation and technological innovation are crucial competitive advantages, effective collaboration between these teams can make the difference between market leadership and lagging behind.
Companies that invest in improving this collaboration will benefit in the long term from higher software quality, shorter time-to-market, and increased customer satisfaction. The challenges may be considerable, but the rewards for overcoming them are equally so.
