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WARZONE – Daily update meetings (Best Practice)
Production Testing
May, 2012
Presented by: Akhil Tewatia
About
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This presentation represent a 'best practice', being followed in Production Testing, inline with conducting daily team meetings with an intention of bringing Leadership, Situational Monitoring, Mutual Support and Communication within team members.
The can be the part of Process Assets Library (PAL) repository where documents and tools that can be made available to all project teams to facilitate project performance and other adherence.
Team Overview
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Production Testing is a centralized team that support multiple testing projects that are in production.
Production Testing come into picture following the transition of project from Implementation to Production (Support and Maintenance contract signed off).
Currently Testing Team supporting following Testing projects, IRIS (Customer Upgrades Projects) Brokasure Enterprise Brokasure Desktop UI Projects (Ariel Re and TMR) Genius Web Services
Challenges
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Since team support multiple projects it is very important that people should have visibility about the tasks being done in other project area’s.
There should be way to assess who all resources are running low on work and who are overloaded. If a resources is running low on work in the project he\she working as a primary resource, he\she can contribute in other project having high volumes with minimum mind shift.
Since team support production projects and knowledge on the product and customer specific issues is gained by experience, it is very important that attrition in the team should be low and people should be self-motivated.
It is important to bring the innovation within the team to keep the motivation level up.
People should have a sense of ownership for the tasks allocated to them.
There should be a mind shift from ‘individual’ to ‘team’.
There should be constant learning for the individuals, not restricted by their designation and tasks they are doing.
Solution
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To overcome various challenges, Team Members should be driven towards 4 key attributes: Leadership Situational Monitoring Mutual Support Communication
These attributes also contribute to testing skills and professional development backed up by their Performance Knowledge Attitude
SKILLS
PERFORMANCE
ATTITUDEKNOWLEDGE
Leadership
Situational Monitoring
Mutual Support
Communication
SKILLS
Methodology
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Driven by the popular ‘Agile Methodology’, Team started with a scrum like meeting on daily basis known popularly as ‘WARZONE’ within the team.
Key Features of the ‘WARZONE’ To bring forth the visibility within a team, meeting agenda was prepared and updated on the
whiteboard placed within the team area. Will be conducted daily within Team area for 15-20 minutes. High level Weekly Plan is put by the individual team members every Monday following
discussions with Leads and individual visibility. If any deviation, plan is updated as and when. In terms of tasks, following is discussed,
What tasks were done by individual members yesterday What tasks will be done by individual members today What challenges, if any, are foreseen in achieving the plan for the day
Every individual is given an opportunity to lead the meeting on rotation basis. Other agenda items includes,
Individual Moral Fine penalty (in case of any indiscipline) Leave Plan Milestones Actions Recognitions (weekly) Any Fun Activity ( for 3-5 minutes)
The WARZONE | Images
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Agenda | Images
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In Action | Images
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Output Achieved
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One of the best indicator of the impact of the WARZONE is focus shift of individual team members from ‘I’ to ‘WE’, following are output achieved.
From (INDIVIDUAL)
Single Focus
Individual performance
Under-informed decision-making
Loose concept of teamwork
Unbalanced workload
Having information
Self-advocacy
Self-improvement
Individual efficiency
To (TEAM)
Dual focus
Team performance
Informed decision-making
Clear understanding of team work
Managed workload
Sharing information
Mutual Support
Team improvement
Team efficiency
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