Involve Testers in your Retros
One of the challenges having multi-functional teams is that often the Retro’s focus on the developers and don’t involve the testers in the retro discussions. I just wanted to jot down some thoughts on what one could do to involve testers in the retros more.
Ask them to bring the testing metrics to the retro
One of the best ways to get people involved in a team is to give them something to do that matters. You can ask the tester in the team to bring the testing metrics along. These are important for the team to track their code quality, they include: percentage code coverage, number of code smells, and the number of bugs in the “Bugs” backlog.
By asking the tester in the team to collect and present the metrics in the retro, they will be immediately brought into the retro conversation in the area where their expertise is required: testing!
Obtain their feedback on the testing metrics
Once the tester has presented the metrics you can begin by asking them and the team their opinion on the following questions:
- Has code quality improved in this Iteration?
- As a team have we less code smells or bugs than before in our code base?
- Are we improving in our test driven approach to software development?
These questions should lead to a good conversation on the testing health of the team and hopefully to action items that can be performed in the next sprint.
Elicit feedback from the testers on how the work with the developers and PO progressed in the last Sprint
As part of the retro I would also ask the testers if the about their interaction with the rest of the team in the last sprint:
- Did the PO involve them in the process of creating the acceptance criteria for the User Stories?
- Did the developers ask them for their opinion on the tests to be written before they started coding on a backlog item, during its development and once the item had been completed?
These questions should allow you to gauge whether or not they are really being included as a part of the team or just there to test the finished items.
