Situation
A leading software development firm known for excellence in DevOps began to experience an increase in defects in production software. Driven by its learning culture, this firm reached out to Daring Systems to identify the issues in the workflow and the DevOps pipeline, then guided the team to embrace quality-focused practices.
Actions
After several years of outstanding software delivery, extremely high team engagement and retention rates, and a track record of satisfied, repeat customers, this client had a strong workforce in its favor. Daring Systems approached this problem with respect for the people and sensitivity to their recent challenges. No high-performing team intentionally moves an increasing number of defects into the production environment. Spending time with the team, Daring got a sense of how they communicated, what they valued, and how the work experience felt. Leveraging the Daring Quality Engineering Maturity Assessment, we were able to compare the development firms’ practices and toolsets with the refined quality engineering practices necessary for DevOps test engineering.
Additionally, the Daring Systems Workforce Risk Assessment showed which roles were bottlenecks, which had capacity, and which were not as mature as they needed to be. Daring was able to take the learning and provide process recommendations that mapped directly into the software development firm’s established method. Adding controls, steps, and key deliverables helped the team find and resolve defects using their existing team and toolsets. In addition, the Daring team provided a series of Webinars to share quality engineering techniques that were not present in the team due to the emphasis on development practices. Daring recommended a couple of roles to add to the team when and if it was necessary.
Results
The client integrated the Daring quality engineering steps into their delivery lifecycle and continued to build skills in that domain. They were able to remediate quickly and effectively the defects introduced, then accelerate their delivery, introducing so few issues into production that their contract was extended!