In Progress vs. Dev, QA

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Pinterest
WhatsApp

When we build the team’s board for the first time there are many times the question of how to represent work in progress, how to show what’s going on between “Ready/Committed” (The backlog of the sprint, items ready to be developed) and “Done”.

There are usually two main options.

The first option is to have the below four columns:

  • Dev – WIP (Work On Progress)
  • Dev – Done
  • QA – WIP
  • QA – Done

For teams moving from the waterfall or practicing a variance of Scrum-But (we do scrum but …) this pattern is not too frightening and preserves a respectful barrier between Dev and QA.

The second option is to have just one column between “Committed” and “Done”: “In progress”.

As I’ve written before in another post, if stories are small enough we shouldn’t need to have the four columns. That’s a trick here, though.

The issue is similar to the chicken and egg question: what came first? If we move to just one column prematurely, while dev and QA work is quite separate, we will not see where things stand. Cards will be stuck for a long time in the “in progress” column, waiting for someone to do something.

On the other hand, not moving to one column preserves the separation between QA and Dev.

The solution I found for this is having an open discussion with the team (the entire team), laying out the options, and trying to get them to make a decision. My experience shows that in most cases the team will opt for one column. This will usually come near the end of a workshop in which we talk agile, scrum, etc. I explain that moving to one column will require a change in the way they work.

As long as the decision is made by the team it usually works. I’ve seen teams go through this change, starting to work closely together. There’s a lot of energy at the beginning and after some days issues start to surface and the team handles them.

If the team opts to stay in Dev, QA separation that’s fine. We can raise the issue again some weeks later, in a retrospective session, opening the issue for another discussion.

So, what is it for you? In Progress or Dev, QA?

Subscribe for Email Updates:

Categories:

Tags:

Quality Assurance
Professional Scrum Product Owner
Achieve Business Agility
Nexus
Advanced Roadmaps
Certified SAFe
Test Driven Development
Agile Development
ROI
Professional Scrum Master
Continuous Planning
agileisrael
Agile Mindset
Agile Games
Games and Exercises
LPM
Agile and DevOps Journey
AI Artificial Intelligence
Sprint Retrospectives
Agile Marketing
lean agile change management
Agile
Principles of Lean-Agile Leadership
Software Development
Manage Budget Creation
RTE
ART Success
Releases Using Lean
Engineering Practices
Rovo
Reading List
Certification
Program Increment
Scrum Master
Agile Project Management
speed at scale
Pomodoro Technique
LAB
Elastic Leadership
User stories
Webinar
Team Flow
ALM Tools
Atlassian
Perfection Game
An Appreciative Retrospective
Continuous Delivery
Agile India
System Integration Environments
Applying Agile Methodology
Scrum
Business Agility
QA
SAFe Release Planning
Jira admin
Hybrid Work
chatgpt
Tools
Jira Plans
Agile Basics
Agile Risk Management
DevOps
ATDD
Lean and Agile Techniques
Nexus and SAFe
Lean-Agile Budgeting
Enterprise DevOps
Scrum Values
Agile Release Management
Atlaassian
Agile Games and Exercises
AgileSparks
SA
EOS®
Agile Outsourcing
Keith Sawyer
Iterative Incremental Development
speed @ scale
Lean Agile
System Team
TDD
Risk-aware Product Development
Agile Techniques
Lean Software Development
Lean Startup
Accelerate Value Delivery At Scale
Scrum and XP
Artificial Intelligence
Value Streams
IT Operations
Lean Agile Basics
Risk Management in Kanban
Rapid RTC
Amdocs
Change Management
Agile Community
AI
Kaizen Workshop
Agile Assembly Architecture
Agile Release Planning
transformation
Kaizen
Scrum With Kanban
Agile Project
Kanban Basics
Acceptance Test-Driven Development
A Kanban System for Software Engineering
RTE Role
Legacy Code
Planning
Scrum.org
Daily Scrum
Agile Israel
SAFe DevOps
SPC
Jira
Agile Delivery
Release Train Engineer
Agile Contracts Best Practices
Continuous Deployment
Large Scale Scrum
POPM
Implementing SAFe
WIP
Kanban 101
Agile Testing Practices
Lean Agile Organization
Kanban Kickstart Example
ScrumMaster Tales
Agile Exercises
BDD
Entrepreneurial Operating System®
Scrum Guide
Effective Agile Retrospectives
Agile Product Development
Lean Risk Management
Scaled Agile Framework
Lean Agile Management
Process Improvement
RSA
Sprint Iteration
Product Management
Retrospectives
Software Development Estimation
Agile Product Ownership
Agile Program
Agile in the Enterprise
What Is Kanban
Nexus and Kanban
The Agile Coach
PI Objectives
Agile for Embedded Systems
Coaching Agile Teams
predictability
Operational Value Stream
SAFe
Development Value Streams
Confluence
Presentation
Code
Spotify
Kanban Game
Kanban
Agile Israel Events
Scrum Primer
Professional Scrum with Kanban
The Kanban Method
Portfolio for Jira
Slides
Lean Agile Leadership
Managing Projects
Nexus Integration Team
Product Ownership
Managing Risk on Agile Projects
Jira Cloud
Agility
System Archetypes
ARTs
Legacy Enterprise
Nexus vs SAFe
Scrum Master Role
Lean and Agile Principles and Practices
Tips
Covid19
Video
Introduction to Test Driven Development
Continuous Integration
Built-In Quality
Introduction to ATDD
PI Planning
Story Slicing
Self-organization
Lean-Agile Software Development
Lean Budgeting
Frameworks
Implementation of Lean and Agile
Systems Thinking
LeSS
GanttBan
ATDD vs. BDD
Limiting Work in Progress
Continuous Improvement
NIT
Sprint Planning
AgileSparks
Logo
Enable registration in settings - general

Contact Us

Request for additional information and prices

AgileSparks Newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter, and stay updated on the latest Agile news and events

This website uses Cookies to provide a better experience
Shopping cart