Open vs Fully Closed cubicles and its impact

Open vs Fully Closed cubicles and its impact on Team QA in Agile Ragavan Ambighananthan, London, UK, +44 -7595512264

Agenda � How environment impacts communication ? � How communication or the lack of it affects QA ? � Why QA is affected more than other team members ? Ragavan Ambighananthan, London, UK, +447595512264

Environments and SDLC models I have worked Cubicle Type SDLC Model Flexi Time 1 Semi-Open Water Fall Yes 2 Fully Closed Water Fall Yes 3 Fully Closed Agile Yes 4 Fully Open ‘super fast’ Agile No Ragavan Ambighananthan, London, UK, +44 -7595512264

Semi-Open Cubicle Ragavan Ambighananthan, London, UK, +447595512264

Fully Closed Cubicle Ragavan Ambighananthan, London, UK, +447595512264

Fully Open or Open Space Ragavan Ambighananthan, London, UK, +447595512264

Agile, Environment and Communication � The type of environment affects the way we (QA) communicate in Agile � Where you don’t have a PRD and a func spec, the frequency of communication between QA Engineers and team members will be very high. � Not just the communication but minute by minute communication within team members plays an important role in making Agile a “super fast” development model Ragavan Ambighananthan, London, UK, +447595512264

QA communicate a lot than others Fully Open Cubicle: Communication occurs in terms of minutes QA Team Dev Team CM Team Product Owner SM SM Ragavan Ambighananthan, London, UK, +44 -7595512264

Why traffic is high from QA Team � QA Engineers work on more than one story at a time � Needs to communicate with more than one developer �A defect every half an hour involves communication with development engineer and product owner � Build deployment involves communication with CM � Communication with other QA peers Ragavan Ambighananthan, London, UK, +44 -7595512264

Use Case 1: Open Cubicle and Agile � Face � You to face communication is instant and fast are always seeing the team � Occupy � End less space per engineer to end communication is in terms of minutes � Easy to move desk space to create logical teams Ragavan Ambighananthan, London, UK, +447595512264

Delay in Communication caused by environment Fully Closed Cubicle: Communication occurs in terms of hours QA Team Dev Team CM Team Product Owner SM SM Ragavan Ambighananthan, London, UK, +447595512264

Use Case 2: Closed Cubicle and Agile � Face to face communication is difficult if not impossible � Nobody can see if a person is inside or not � Occupy more space per engineer, teams span across multiple floors � This combines with flexi time, will be a disaster � End to end communication takes hours to closure Ragavan Ambighananthan, London, UK, +44 -7595512264

Other Environmental impact – Flexi Time � Agile needs whole team to be working together � Flexi time with Agile impacts agility � This can be work-around by having team specific in and out time within a company Ragavan Ambighananthan, London, UK, +447595512264

Other Environmental impact – Resources � Giving QA team bigger (in terms of memory, hard disk) and faster (in terms of CPU) boxes, will increase productivity � It’s a good ROI to give QA engineers more powerful boxes � More “visual paths” with selected different OS Ragavan Ambighananthan, London, UK, +44 -7595512264

Questions ? Ragavan Ambighananthan, London, UK, +44 -7595512264