How can you align testing with stakeholder priorities in agile project management?

1 Understand your stakeholders

The first step to aligning testing with stakeholder priorities is to understand who your stakeholders are, what they care about, and how they measure success. Stakeholders can include customers, users, sponsors, managers, developers, testers, and other parties who have a stake in the outcome of the project. You should identify and engage with your stakeholders early and often, and seek to understand their expectations, preferences, feedback, and concerns. You should also establish clear and frequent communication channels, and use tools such as stakeholder maps, personas, user stories, and acceptance criteria to capture and prioritize their needs and wants.

2 Define your testing strategy

The next step to aligning testing with stakeholder priorities is to define your testing strategy, which outlines how you will plan, execute, and report on testing activities throughout the project. This strategy should be consistent with agile principles and values like delivering working software frequently, responding to change, and collaborating with stakeholders. Additionally, you should take into account the scope and complexity of the project and its features, the level of quality and reliability required by stakeholders and users, the risks and uncertainties associated with the project and its environment, as well as the resources and constraints available for testing. Other factors to consider include the types and levels of testing to be performed, such as unit, integration, system, usability, performance, security, and regression testing; the roles and responsibilities of the testing team; the testing processes and practices to be followed; and the metrics and indicators to be collected.

3 Involve your stakeholders

The third step to aligning testing with stakeholder priorities is to involve your stakeholders in the testing activities and make them part of the testing team. Doing so can help to build trust, transparency, and collaboration among the project team and the stakeholders, while also ensuring that the testing outcomes meet expectations. Invite stakeholders to participate in planning sessions such as sprint planning, backlog refinement, and test case design. Ask for their input and feedback on the testing scope, criteria, and scenarios. Additionally, encourage them to review and approve testing deliverables such as test plans, test cases, test data, and test reports. Furthermore, solicit them to perform or observe some of the testing activities such as user acceptance testing, usability testing, and beta testing. Informing them of the progress, results, and issues will help gain their support and guidance for resolving any problems.

5 Deliver value

The final step to aligning testing with stakeholder priorities is to deliver value, and to demonstrate that your testing activities contribute to the achievement of the project goals and the stakeholder satisfaction. Value can be defined as the benefit or worth that the stakeholders and the users perceive from the software product and its features, relative to the cost and effort involved in developing and testing them. To maximize value, focus on testing activities that are critical, complex, and high-priority, as well as those that affect user experience. Additionally, optimize testing activities by eliminating redundant or low-value tests, and automating repetitive tasks. Furthermore, validate and verify tests to ensure accuracy, completeness, consistency, and traceability. Lastly, showcase and celebrate testing achievements to highlight the value of the testing team and outcomes. Presenting challenges and learnings while acknowledging contributions can help demonstrate the impact of testing.

6 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?