Assign work to QA team using Scrum template in TFS

Question

I am learning about using Scrum with Team Foundation Server (TFS). The project template is Scrum and we have the three columns Todo, In Progress and Done. Once the developers have completed their work and moved their tasks to Done what is the best practice to let the QA team know the work is done and they need to test it?

I watched the TFS Scrum training on PluralSight and this was brought up in the video and the facilitator said the answer was to just "tell the QA team its done and they would start their test plans".

Is this really the way its done in Scrum? You just tell them QA person, either verbally or in email, "Hey, I am done with Task 34, start testing?"

I would be curious to know how others are doing this. This is our first time trying to full utilize Scrum on my team and I know this is going to come up especially with my QA team whom is used to Waterfall and being assigned tasks.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Scrum itself doesn't really define how you're supposed to communicate within the Team. If just non-formally informing QA works for you, great. If not, look into a tool to do it. An important point, though: a story that has not yet been approved by QA should not be considered 'Done'. It's only Done once it's ready to ship to the customer.

A common practice is to add a 'QA' column on the scrum board, between 'In Progress' and 'Done'. Devs move stories from 'Ready' to 'In Progress' then to 'QA'. QA personnel then move it either to 'Ready' (if a problem was found with it) or 'Done'.

As Scrum prescribes cross-functional teams, the QA personnel should, ideally, be part of the Scrum Team. And as they are part of the Scrum Team, they should certainly have visibility to the Scrum Board. At which point, with a QA column, seeing which stories are ready to QA should be trivial.