Seite - 120 - in The Future of Software Quality Assurance

120 Z.Nikolova of people on this team to invest in preventing bugs rather than discovering them late? In addition to goals, roles and responsibilities in the teams might need to shift, also creating demand to people to extend their expertise into what we call the T-shaped profile (people with deep expertise in a specific topic, such as testingordevelopment,forexample,andcomplementaryskills inadjacent topics— development, UX, etc.). This will enable teams to be more flexible in handling the collective responsibility on quality and will strengthen the communication and understanding between team members. It is not a process that goes overnight, however. It requires some space for teams to experiment and for team members to learn (potentially by failing in a controlled way). Managers might need to step backandlet teamsreshuffletasks,andindividualscross thebordersof their specific function,so that theycan learn. This last point leads us to the individual perspective as well. In most orga- nizations, people are hired to fit a certain job description with clearly defined expectations and responsibilities. With the concept of self-organizing teams and quality as common responsibility, the role of a tester or even quality engineer might alter significantly or even become obsolete. Naturally, this creates fear and uncertainty and leads to additional resistance to change. The role of managers in such an environment is to balance these fears, provide support and guidance, so that team members who need to refocus will be able to do it, see opportunities for personal growth, and continue adding value to the team. Managers need to ensure thoseindividualshavetheresourcesandenvironmentto learnnewskillsandcansee howtheir rolecanchangetofit thealteringneedsof the teamaswell. It is important to note that quality engineers often have a unique view on the product that enables them to play a very important role in activities related to product discovery, user journeymapping,acceptancecriteriadefinition, identifyingscopeofprototypesand simulations,and test automation,ofcourse. Looking at the topic from a broader perspective, how we ensure quality in an Agile context is a very significant part of doing Agile and being Agile. It involves theentire teamandrequiresappropriatethinking,skills, andfocus.Pickingtheright strategy would depend on the maturity level of the organization, and the will of people inside to replace traditional approaches with new ones—and it is related to thevalue thatweexpect toget fromthechangeona teamand individual level. 6 Conclusion In this chapter, I have offered a broad view on Agile testing and quality as a process thatunderlies thesuccessof theproductfrombothbusinessand technology perspectives. I believe the main value of Agile approaches comes from the fact that they do not put a strong demarcation line between technical and nontechnical roles and responsibilities in the team. On the contrary, Agile thinking involves developmentofcustomer-centricmindsetandunderstandingof thebusinessdomain