How do you incorporate quality requirements into your agile retrospectives and feedback loops?

2 Align quality goals

The next step is to align your quality goals with your agile values and principles. Quality is not only the responsibility of the testing team, but of the whole team and the product owner. You should foster a culture of quality, where everyone is committed to delivering value and excellence to the customers and stakeholders. You should also communicate and collaborate with your customers and stakeholders regularly, to validate their expectations and feedback on quality. You can use techniques such as demos, reviews, surveys, and user testing to collect and analyze their input.

3 Implement quality practices

The third step is to implement quality practices throughout your agile process. Quality practices are the methods and tools that you use to ensure and improve the quality of your product or service. They can include, but are not limited to, coding standards, code reviews, unit testing, integration testing, regression testing, performance testing, security testing, usability testing, and defect management. You should select and apply the quality practices that are appropriate for your project context and goals, and integrate them into your agile workflow. You can use frameworks such as Scrum, Kanban, or XP to guide your quality practices.

4 Monitor quality metrics

The fourth step is to monitor quality metrics that indicate the status and progress of your quality requirements. Quality metrics are the quantitative and qualitative measures that you use to evaluate the quality of your product or service. They can include, but are not limited to, defect density, defect resolution time, test coverage, test execution time, customer satisfaction, user adoption, and business value. You should define and collect your quality metrics regularly, using tools such as dashboards, reports, or charts. You should also compare your quality metrics with your quality goals and benchmarks, to identify gaps and trends.

5 Conduct quality retrospectives

The fifth step is to conduct quality retrospectives at the end of each iteration or release. Quality retrospectives are the sessions where you reflect on your quality performance and practices, and identify what went well, what went wrong, and what can be improved. You should involve your team members, product owner, customers, and stakeholders in your quality retrospectives, to gather diverse perspectives and insights. You should also use a structured format, such as the STAR (situation, task, action, and result) model, or the KALI (keep, add, less, and improve) model, to organize and facilitate your quality retrospectives.

6 Implement quality actions

The final step is to implement quality actions that result from your quality retrospectives. Quality actions are the specific and actionable steps that you take to address the issues and opportunities that you identified in your quality retrospectives. You should prioritize and assign your quality actions, using a tool such as a backlog, a board, or a list. You should also track and review your quality actions regularly, using a tool such as a burndown chart, a burnup chart, or a status report. You should also measure and evaluate the impact of your quality actions on your quality metrics and goals.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?