Go deeper than MVP/MLP and shape your agile software development around minimum testable features. To succeed with digital transformation, business leaders need to get past the mindset that you need a perfect product to go to market. There’s still a place for waterfall processes, but the benefits of agile development are becoming more of a necessity than an option. http://by.dialexa.com/minimum-testable-features-a-different-approach-to-agile-software-development

1. Minimum Testable Features: A
Different Approach to Agile
Software Development
By Ben Moore
http://by.dialexa.com/minimum-testable-features-a-different-approach-to-agile-
software-development

2. Dialexa
We are on a mission to make every company
a great technology company.
We work with organizations to define and
execute digital transformation strategies to
improve business operations and customer
experiences. Our services include:
• Multi-Year Technology Roadmap
• Platform Engineering
• User Experience Design
• Custom Software Development
• Hardware Prototyping /IoT

3. Want to succeed with digital
transformation?

4. Get past the mindset that you
need a perfect product to go to
market.

5. The benefits of agile
development are becoming
more of a necessity…

6. … than an option

7. When you create a minimum viable product

8. It’s important to take it a
step further.

9. And to shape the MVP
around minimum
testable features.

10. Rather than building a front end to pull data
and define the user interface…

11. …while separately creating an API layer on the
back end to run all of the logic.

12. And then bringing them together towards the
end…

13. …Which caused integration issues.

14. We realized we could avoid these issues all
together if we just planned our sprints and
stories better from the very beginning.

15. This is what gave rise to the
minimum testable feature (MTF)
mindset.

16. What is a Minimum Testable Feature?

17. Your final product is ultimately a full list of
features defined by your development team and
stakeholders.

18. But at the very start, you break
the final vision out in epics in
order to plan sprints effectively.

19. Epics = high-level features that you
expect to exist in your MVP

20. With a minimum testable feature approach,
you plan out stories for each epic

21. This way the front end and backend are
working on each feature concurrently.

22. Feature owner: one of
the resources working on
the feature; responsible
for not only their portion
of the feature, but the
overall end functionality
of the feature.

23. You go beyond
individual testing

24. And ensure that the feature is covered by not
only unit tests, but integration tests.

25. This will ensure that the
feature as a whole is
complete.

26. This is when small
integration bugs are found
and fixed before even getting
to the quality assurance
team.

27. Once the feature owner is satisfied with the
quality, they demo the feature to the QA team
for final sign-off and approval.

28. The MTF approach lets you address
bugs early, minimizing your
technical debt in the project.

29. By shifting from an MVP to an MTF approach

30. You’ll have to front load more effort into your
spring planning

31. But you’ll have shortened
feedback loops, better
product quality, and an over
all quicker development time.

32. One of the Greatest Consequences of an MTF
Approach

33. You create functional features iteratively so
that you have something to showcase to
stakeholders.

34. When the front end and back end are disconnected

35. You don’t have an integrated product to
visually demo until the very end of the project.

36. While it’s great to
showcase features
early on…

37. Creating awareness could lead stakeholders
to request new directions and new features.

38. The key to implementing a MTF minded
project is to manage expectations throughout
the entire project.

39. The backlog might change,
but that’s what agile
methodology is all about.

40. Be sure to manage
stakeholders
expectations and
communicate clearly the
pros and cons to each
change of the project
scope.

41. The MTF approach gets to the true
heart of agile development.

42. P R O P E R T Y O F D I A L E X A L L C © 2 0 1 7 - C O N F I D E N T I A L & P R O P R I E T A R Y
Doug Platts
VP of Marketing
marketing@dialexa.com
If you are looking to undertake a digital
transformation initiative we would love
to see how we can help make your
company a great technology company.