Thank you very much for the fantastic article.

I’m just curious about the Testing activities during the sprint and wondering how you guys manage it. I’m part of the test automation team following Agile.
My question is when should a Test team start preparing the test resources like – Testcases, test scripts etc

As in this case if its a 2 week sprint, and if we assume we are (Test team) getting a new build/release from development team, ideally the test team should have the test cases handy so that they can test the requirements OR system. Also ideally when should we start automating the test cases?

Please clarify.

Thanks
Vinod

In our experience, the first three days and the last two days are generally the most intense for the entire team – product manager included. By having the requirements workshop on day 7, the Product manager has four semi-solid days to gauge sprint progress, review the backlog, prepare new stories, meet with stakeholders etc.

As the team becomes more established, requirements workshops become shorter on average – some teams only meet for 30 minutes to discuss new stories. With that said, as long as the team decides on a schedule and sticks to it then the disruption will become factored into their velocity.

Hope that makes sense.

Tara

I’m currently also using 2 week sprints, but I’m sure the team would consider the timing of those meetings highly disruptive to the last days of the sprint. Basically the last 3 days before the review would probably not be particularly productive. Not only the interruptions of the meeting, but the fact that those meetings take the focus away from the work in the current sprint.