Improving Communication & Collaboration has been a hot topic for most of the teams I have worked with. So thought of sharing my experience in applying it which got enriched by feedback from the Agile Testing workshops I have conducted.
3 Amigo’s meeting's objectives are to improve Communication & Collaboration by writing clear and better scenarios in Gherkin language.
I think 3 Amigos Meetings very useful not only to teams using BDD, but it can be applied all teams to achieve improved communication.
So, here is how it can be systematically applied.
3 Amigo's Meetings can have 3 or more roles like BA/PO, Dev and Tester or BA, Dev, Test & UX Designer. It depends on the people involved to deliver the story or feature or functionality.
3 Amigo's Meeting can be conducted any time during Sprint or before Sprint. My preference is to have it before the Story implementation. The main reason is Amigo meetings provide the baseline/ insight/right context and clarity for the story which can be best used in the Sprint Planning meeting for implementation planning and estimation. After the planning meeting, it is always difficult to do research on the story.
We all have heard and implemented Kick Off meetings in Agile. But the problem I have seen at this meeting is either we don’t involve the right people or we don’t ask below mentioned 3 important questions from each role involved and I think that’s where 3 Amigos meeting can be useful.
Why
How
Who
All is done in kick off meetings is to get a quick overview of the stories from BA/ PO and perspectives of Dev and QA are received/discussed. But essentials get missed, For Example, Dev at times doesn’t tell how he is going to implement and testers do not know or clear on business specific or technical testability aspect of the story.
Do you remember Lisa Crispin mentioning in her Agile Testing book, tester/QA should not only derive tests from business but from a technical aspect as well. Plus, if Dev fails to share his implementation, QA potentially misses the regression aspect of the system which leads to whole communication problem and that’s why it is important to discuss on Why, How & Who in 3 Amigo’s meetings.
How 3 Amigos meetings would be useful in BDD and what BDD is all about. I will cover in my next article.
Books for Further Reading:
http://pragprog.com/book/hwcuc/the-cucumber-book
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Agile-Testing-Practical-Addison-Wesley Signature/dp/0321534468