In part one of our series “How to improve quality as a team,” we talked about the effectiveness of adding shoulder checks to the agile development workflow and how that helps improve the overall quality of the product. This article introduces you to another fantastic exercise, you might be familiar, with called the user story kick-off. This practice helps larger teams align on more complex features, and in turn increase quality output as a team.

The software Quality Assurance role (QA) has traditionally been seen as a person who finds bugs and tries to break things. While these tasks still remain a big part of the QA’s role, the industry has seen a shift towards a more holistic approach where the QA role advocates for the overall quality of delivery — both product and process. Incorporating the exercise of “shoulder checks” into the agile software development lifecycle increases quality output.

Embracing DevOps is not easy. There are a lot of misconceptions about what DevOps is. DevOps is not a team, or a methodology, or a job role. DevOps is a culture founded on a set of work patterns and practices that have an impact on the whole value chain, from business to operations. DevOps helps you move from only having visibility about your own work, to having a birds-eye view and overall understanding of the whole value stream (from business to customer feedback).