5 Benefits of Employing Colocated Teams for Agile Software Testing

The term “colocated team” indicates that there is a functional team working on a project sharing the same workspace.

Today, many IT organizations prefer distributed teams to cut down their expenditure and efforts. However, there is a large section of industry that prefers to manage colocated teams for certain areas of their project. Agile testing is one such area where the benefits of colocated team are more visible than others.

Benefits of Colocated Teams in Agile Software Testing

• Accelerates Communication and Improves Reliability
  Agile testing is very significant aspect of agile software development. It demands continuous communication and collaboration between team members to succeed. When a team shares the same workspace, collaborating and sharing views among members is easy. The development and testing teams can convince and convey their opinions and suggestions among them which minimizes confusions and rework. This continuous communication help teams to arrive at better decision making and problem solving – core requirements of any agile software development.

• Promotes Trust and Mutual Respect
  Daniel Mezick of New Technology Solutions emphasizes that successful team performance is possible only when there is trust and mutual respect for team members. In colocated teams, people are already familiar with each other and trust factor is always there. This familiarity ensures early involvement of testers in software development project. Testers can work closely with the development team,understand their requirements and develop effective test plans.

• Streamlines Product Development
  Colocation help teams to discuss and iron out their differences at each stage of the project and work productively and efficiently. The delays arising due to difference in time zones or non-availability of reliable communication tools can be minimized, when teams are sitting together and discussing the problem face to face. They are able to arrive at corrections and decisions faster than communicating virtually or waiting for mails from their other team member located on the other side of the globe. It is needless to say that a well-managed team contributes to the success in the project and helps to streamline the development process.

• Lowers Operation Costs
  Colocated team helps to lower operating costs incurred due to installation of high-speed telephone lines, video conferencing devices, test drivers, data centers and stubs. Less time is spent on lengthy communication over video conferences and teleconferences that are expensive and less futile.

• Team Management is Easier
  Many managers agree that managing a colocated team is always easier than managing a distributed team. Most managers select their team on the basis of their personal equation with individuals and this experience always helps them in better team management.

Today, many businesses are driven to outsourcing and distribution due to lack of talent needed to build colocated teams. If you are facing the same problem, it is better to seek the services of a trusted colocated testing service provider such as Cigniti that can collaborate with your development teams in a co-located model for you web application testing needs.

1. Understand business ecosystem, priorities and the development environment
2. Support Continuous Integration, Test Driven Development (TDD) and Behavior-Driven Development (BDD)
3. Leverage Scrum, Extreme programming, Rational Unified Process and KanBan practices
4. Strengthen iterative coding and infrastructure calibration
5. Define, Test, Measure, Report and Retest QA

Contact Cigniti to learn more.