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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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