A. Invest in better Story and unit-test automation
B. Create a story dependency with the systems team to collaborate on deployment
C. Instantiate a strict definition of done
D. Ensure that development and testing environments are equivalent to production
The correct answer is
D. Ensure that development and testing environments are equivalent to production
The first step to solve the problem of a team consistently receiving defect reports from production, despite thorough story testing, should be to Ensure that development and testing environments are equivalent to production.
Why this is correct
- Environment Consistency: Ensuring that development and testing environments mirror the production environment as closely as possible is critical to identifying and fixing issues before they reach production. Discrepancies between these environments can lead to situations where bugs that don’t appear in testing suddenly become apparent in production. By aligning the environments, teams can catch and address these issues earlier in the development cycle, reducing the likelihood of defects making it to production.
Why the others are not as correct
- Invest in better Story and unit-test automation: While investing in better automation for testing is generally a good practice, it may not address the root cause of the problem if the issue is environmental discrepancies. Automated tests can only catch issues that they are designed to look for, and if they’re run in an environment that doesn’t match production, they might miss critical defects.
- Create a story dependency with the systems team to collaborate on deployment: Collaborating more closely with the systems team on deployment could help with broader deployment issues but doesn’t directly address the immediate problem of defects slipping through testing phases due to environment discrepancies. This step might be beneficial as a subsequent action but not as the first step in solving the current issue.
- Instantiate a strict definition of done: While having a strict definition of done is crucial for ensuring quality and completeness, it doesn’t specifically address the problem of environmental inconsistencies leading to missed defects. A strict definition of done should include testing in an environment equivalent to production, but the first action should be to ensure such an environment exists and is used for testing.
Other SAFe Scrum Master Question – What is a good source of guidance when creating an improvement roadmap that improves the teams technical practices?