Very enthusiastically, we embraced the vertical feature team concept. It made real sense to have the developers and testers to be in the same team.
After two iterations, we observed some pros ane cons of it. We witnessed an unprecedented co-operation and synergy between the two functions. Requirement clarifications, use case realisation, storyboard development etc were among those areas which really improved
However, the biggest complain that we are hearing is about the deliveries to the testing team which is getting delayed. The reasons for the delay cannot just be attributed to the developers alone but also due to some systemic issues like never ending changes in specification etc. We are definetely looking in to the root cause of the delay, but the effect of it is that, the testers never get the development builds on time.
Consistently, over the past two iterations we have seen that these delays result in delivering a build to the testers towards end of the iteration. The tester now have to test the development in a squeezed time frame racing against the time.
This not only is causing unwanted pressure on the teams, buy “may” also.impact the quality. So it is time to deal with thos issue objectively and find a solution to it. The solution may even be to splite the developers and testers into different teams and continue the developmentband testing iterations ina staggered fashion.