Minimum Testable Features—A Different Approach to Agile Software Development
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The document discusses the 'Minimum Testable Feature' (MTF) approach as an evolution of Agile software development, emphasizing the importance of planning sprints and stories to facilitate concurrent front-end and back-end development. By focusing on functional features that can be showcased iteratively, teams can identify and resolve integration bugs early in the process, thereby minimizing technical debt. This shift requires upfront effort in planning but results in shorter feedback loops, improved product quality, and quicker development times.
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Minimum Testable Features—A Different Approach to Agile Software Development
- 1. Minimum Testable Features: A Different Approach to Agile Software Development By Ben Moore http://by.dialexa.com/minimum-testable-features-a-different-approach-to-agile- software-development
- 2. Dialexa We are on a mission to make every company a great technology company. We work with organizations to define and execute digital transformation strategies to improve business operations and customer experiences. Our services include: • Multi-Year Technology Roadmap • Platform Engineering • User Experience Design • Custom Software Development • Hardware Prototyping /IoT
- 3. Want to succeed with digital transformation?
- 4. Get past the mindset that you need a perfect product to go to market.
- 5. The benefits of agile development are becoming more of a necessity…
- 6. … than an option
- 7. When you create a minimum viable product
- 8. It’s important to take it a step further.
- 9. And to shape the MVP around minimum testable features.
- 10. Rather than building a front end to pull data and define the user interface…
- 11. …while separately creating an API layer on the back end to run all of the logic.
- 12. And then bringing them together towards the end…
- 13. …Which caused integration issues.
- 14. We realized we could avoid these issues all together if we just planned our sprints and stories better from the very beginning.
- 15. This is what gave rise to the minimum testable feature (MTF) mindset.
- 16. What is a Minimum Testable Feature?
- 17. Your final product is ultimately a full list of features defined by your development team and stakeholders.
- 18. But at the very start, you break the final vision out in epics in order to plan sprints effectively.
- 19. Epics = high-level features that you expect to exist in your MVP
- 20. With a minimum testable feature approach, you plan out stories for each epic
- 21. This way the front end and backend are working on each feature concurrently.
- 22. Feature owner: one of the resources working on the feature; responsible for not only their portion of the feature, but the overall end functionality of the feature.
- 23. You go beyond individual testing
- 24. And ensure that the feature is covered by not only unit tests, but integration tests.
- 25. This will ensure that the feature as a whole is complete.
- 26. This is when small integration bugs are found and fixed before even getting to the quality assurance team.
- 27. Once the feature owner is satisfied with the quality, they demo the feature to the QA team for final sign-off and approval.
- 28. The MTF approach lets you address bugs early, minimizing your technical debt in the project.
- 29. By shifting from an MVP to an MTF approach
- 30. You’ll have to front load more effort into your spring planning
- 31. But you’ll have shortened feedback loops, better product quality, and an over all quicker development time.
- 32. One of the Greatest Consequences of an MTF Approach
- 33. You create functional features iteratively so that you have something to showcase to stakeholders.
- 34. When the front end and back end are disconnected
- 35. You don’t have an integrated product to visually demo until the very end of the project.
- 36. While it’s great to showcase features early on…
- 37. Creating awareness could lead stakeholders to request new directions and new features.
- 38. The key to implementing a MTF minded project is to manage expectations throughout the entire project.
- 39. The backlog might change, but that’s what agile methodology is all about.
- 40. Be sure to manage stakeholders expectations and communicate clearly the pros and cons to each change of the project scope.
- 41. The MTF approach gets to the true heart of agile development.
- 42. P R O P E R T Y O F D I A L E X A L L C © 2 0 1 7 - C O N F I D E N T I A L & P R O P R I E T A R Y Doug Platts VP of Marketing [email protected] If you are looking to undertake a digital transformation initiative we would love to see how we can help make your company a great technology company.