7 Features of Agile Testing you should know about

Increased competition in the domain of software development has forced companies to cut inefficiencies and at the same time improve the quality of software. Since customers have a plethora of choices vis-a-vis software that are available in the market, companies need to be at the top of their game or risk losing out to competitors. By adopting Agile and lean methodologies companies can expect the following:

·         Streamline their development and testing departments

·         Improve synergy among various teams operating in the above functions

·         Cut down on inefficiencies and improve productivity – qualitatively

·         Transform the work ethos with greater interaction among team members

·         Prevent glitches at the development stage itself rather than wait for the entire product to get completed

·         Incorporate automation in the Agile testing procedure to eliminate errors that tend to escape during manual testing

In the traditional model of SDLC, development and QA teams operate in silos and have less communication between them thereby leading to delay in the delivery of product, not to mention glitches that remain in the final product. However, in Agile application testing methodology both development and QA work as a unit wherein one complements the other. The emphasis is more on communication and coordination as opposed to the silo driven ‘I know the best’ kind of thinking.

Agile testing services are marked by features, rules or procedures that form an integral part of them. Seven of the same are discussed below:

1) Formation of Scrum: The entire development and testing process is divided into small segments called scrum, wherein tasks to be undertaken (read code writing and testing) are decided in consultation with the stakeholders (clients and management.) A scrum includes the iteration of processes aka sprint (writing codes and testing done simultaneously) based upon empirical feedback. The focus is to achieve better coding that meets the overall project goal without any hidden glitches. Once a sprint is run it is checked for irregularities by the scrum master before being passed on to the next sprint. Such Agile application testing during the development process itself accelerates the software’s time to market.

2) Preference to quality: As Agile testing is integrated into the overall software development life cycle quality is never given a short shrift. In fact, quality forms the backbone of Agile testing services.

3) Involvement of stakeholders: Agile testing services ensure stakeholders are involved in each and every activity of the SDLC. This provides greater visibility of the processes and effective management of expectations.

4) Quick detection of quality issues: As Agile application testing forms part of the development process every code gets tested immediately thus helping in early detection of errors (if any). This helps in improving the overall quality of the product right from the inception stage.

5) Continuous integration: Agile testing services focus on incorporating changes that might come into the picture from time to time, and integrate individual pieces of codes as they are written and tested. Thus the product becomes more relevant to the needs of customers rather than be just a product off the shelf.

6) Faster time to market: As Agile application testing involves sprints of fixed duration wherein Agile testing and integration of changes (if any) are taken care of, the product gets ready faster.

7) Cost saving: Even if conducting simulated automation testing as a part of Agile testing services can incur a cost the fact that sprints are of fixed duration and existing manpower can be deployed for better use rather than on manual testing, can prove to be cost saving.

Conclusion

Agile application testing is the need of the hour to bring out robust, glitch free, customized, software into the market. 

Michael works for Cigniti Technologies, which is one of the top Independent Software Testing companies in the world to be appraised at CMMI-SVC Level 5, and an ISO 9001:2008 & ISO 27001:2013 certified organization.