Today we had to change a large process that wasn’t working.

The State.

A web development being built hasn’t got automated tests written for it and requires an office member to go through and MANUALLY test every item. Basically what Behat or DalekJS should be doing…

Anyway, the tests were all written in 1 document. “When I create a module, it should appear in a student’s list”, “When I select 3 modules, it calculates the student’s points correctly”, etc…

My process to solving a process.

Sometimes improving it can feel a bit daunting, however, as you talk through it with the team, record small sticking points and pains, then the you should start to see a bigger picture.
Always remember, you probably just need an evolution not a total revolution.

Steps…

1. Remind the team, that they own this process so they will want to find solutions to save themselves time
2. Talk through the whole process, record EVERY sticking point
3. Look through the sticking points for the worst offenders
4. Think of simple ideas to fix them
5. Repeat 4 until happy 🙂
6. Talk it through with all the team
7. Go!
8. Re-look at it again soon!

Our Biggest Problems were…

• Testing document, who has the latest copy and where?
• TheTesting document is really fiddly for comments
• TheTesting document doesn’t really handle versions very well
• It’s difficult to discuss the comments inside theTesting document
• What should the developer work on next?

Some solutions…

• Testing document has been moved to a Shared OneDrive for all the project Team.
• Re-named testing document “Testing Document v1” to “Testing Document”, losing the version number indicated its “alive” state
• All Passes are still recorded in the Testing document with the word “Pass”
• All Fails are recorded int he Testing document as “Fail”, but no comment
• All Fails with comments are created as tickets in a Trello board with the unique test id and a description of the fail
• All Fails are re-ordered in the list by the Product Owner to show importance
• A Trello list was created for the Product Owner to rack up no more than 5 tickets which the need the developer to work on next