T5 maturity model

More and more projects and companies switch over to agile processes. With regard to the test, many agile teams make resebling mistakes which they can sometimes only fix elaborately within the course of the project and which can even put the goal achievement in risk. Even if things are going well or if the project has only just begun: there is always upside potential!

Inadequate communication and integration of the different disciplines (e.g. requirement management, development and test) are important common factors of these frequent mistakes. However, there are often no specific proposals for improvements or a guideline on which action works best for which project situation so that the deficiency could be remedied.

The T5 maturity model provides an easy model for systematic analysis. It tells how effectively and efficiently the tests in agile teams contribute to the quality goals in the project. It shows deficits and flaws in the test procedure and it provides you with specific steps for improvement. With T5, teams can be compared, discrepancies detected and specific actions derived.

The Name T5 comes from the five dimensions “Team”, “Technology”, “Transparency”, “Test methods” and “Test approach”.

The advantages of the consulting model for agile teams:

  • Self knowledge: the actual state is systematically itemised
  • Suggestions: reasonable order of improvement actions, also as an input for team retrospectives
  • Backup: check list for the completeness of the improvement actions
  • Motivation: identifying reasons for improvement actions as well as key figures on the grade of improvement
  • Limited effort: viable sprint accompanying in just five days
  • Limited team effort: every team member is only a few hours involved

The 5 dimensions:

  • Team
    „Team“ analyses to what extend the team fulfils the agile requirements after the common assumption of responsibility and self-organisation. It’s also crucial if the teams members who primarily handle test activities are well integrated in the team and assess themselves in that way, too.
  • Test approach
    “Test approach” focuses on the quality of the test input artefacts, the team workflows and team organization.  
  • Test methods
    “Test methods” examine how “good” the testing actually is and which actions for quality assurance take place in the process and how early.
  • Transparency
    “Transparency” takes a look at the cooperation in the team: information flow, common scheduling, estimation and progress tracking as well as the important test goal of fast feedback.
  • Technology
    “Technology” bothers tools, their capability to involve the team, as well as sustainability and reusability of the applied tools.

Here you can find the German-language article about the T5 maturity model „Wie Agilität und Prozessreifegrad-Modelle zusammenpassen“, which was published in iX.

We would be happy to provide you with further information. Please contact us at info(at)imbus.de or call +49 (9131) 7518-0.

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Your contact person at imbus

Mrs. Klaudia Dussa-Zieger

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