Laurent Bossavit
Laurent Bossavit

Devtest: using Lean and Devops practices to bring QA and coders together

Sometimes it feels like a fact of life, like death and taxes, that software developers are ever cursed to write code full of bugs, then take them out one by one, with the patient assistance of testers (also known as “quality assurance”). At times we could believe that programming is special, that the Lean ideal of “right first time” cannot apply there, and developers and testers are doomed to the current uneasy (and sometimes adversarial) relationship.

Here is a real story, not a fairy tale, to shine a hopeful light for those walking the Lean path in software organizations. A story of developers and testers growing together as problem-solvers, through the catalyzing application of some Lean principles, a few key ideas and shiny new tools from the Devops movement to the wisdom of the gemba.

Biography

Laurent Bossavit is mainly known as an Agilist and was a recipient of the 2006 Gordon Pask award from that community. He is, however, a firm believer in belonging to many tribes and traveling far and wide (intellectually and physically) to engage in the trade of that most precious commodity: useful ideas. He still likes to code though no longer doing so full-time, dividing his attentions between assisting Agile teams on technical and organizational matters, and the Institut Agile project which collects empirical evidence on the benefits and limitations of Agile practices. His hobbies include slaying software engineering Leprechauns and debugging his own brain.