Is your software engineering company scaling? Are you assuming that your quality and test practices will magically scale also? In 2015, Olo Engineering had roughly 40 engineers and 4 teams. In January of 2020, we have over 100 engineers and 15 teams! Not exactly hyper-growth, but definitely significant. Oh, and to further complicate things, those 100 engineers are all remote! We added new managers, new developers, new product owners, new quality advocates, new software engineers in test – and all of these new Olo-ites wanted to know: How do you do testing here?
This recurring question forced us to examine and articulate our approach to make sure we were scaling with the rest of the business. We adopted the terminology of Lisa Crispin & Janet Gregory in calling our approach Whole Team Quality (WTQ) and distilled our core practices into 4 threads:
- Visible Testing
- Test Scope
- Automated Tests
- Team Engagement
JoEllen not only introduces the core practices in each thread; she also describes how Olo rolled the practices out to 14 different teams and how they adapted the approach collaboratively with the team. She’ll provide sample agendas for WTQ bootcamps, strategy workshops, and quarterly retros, which collectively introduce the approach, provide practice in new skills, and guide the team in incorporating new practices. It’s WTQ-in-a-box for teams who are experiencing growth and struggling to articulate a cohesive strategy.
How successful were they? Well, ‘Amigos’, ‘mobbing’, and ‘working agreements’ are now part of the vernacular at Olo. We’ll delve into evolving success indicators of our Whole Team Quality practices as we prepare for another year of growth. Come learn how you can adapt our framework and techniques to scale quality on your team.
