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What is agile testing?

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Question added by Lara Abbas , jo , jo
Date Posted: 2017/05/10

Hi,

Let us discuss Agile testing with example:

What is Agile Testing?

Agile testing operates under the philosophy that continuous testing is a crucial part of development, on a par with coding.

In Agile, testing is integrated directly into the development process so that bugs are discovered as early and as often as possible. As a result, testers can identify problems at every point in the development process, moving the product quickly towards release.

Agile testing is software testing that follows the best practices of Agile development.

An agile team works as a single team towards a common objective of achieving Quality. Agile Testing has shorter time frames that are known as iterations.

Advantages of Agile Testing

The benefits of Agile Testing approach include:

  • It saves time and money
  • Agile testing reduces documentation
  • It is flexible and highly adaptable to changes
  • It provides a way for receiving regular feedback from the end user
  • Better determination of issues through daily meetings

For example, Agile development takes an incremental approach to design. Similarly, Agile testing includes an incremental approach to testing. In this type of software testing, features are tested as they are developed.

An Agile Test Plan Example

Here’s an example of an Agile test strategy in Helix ALM.

The backlog includes user stories — the items that need to be developed and tested. These are prioritized in order of importance. And this example shows development and testing in progress — and tests that have been completed.

If you are wondering where to begin this journey? Then you should check the certificate in agile tester certification

As I have one reference for a Agile Tester Foundation Certification I found one course on google they provide certificates

The certification cost is also affordable here.

Many of the reputed company employees have done this courses from here and give good responses and rated this certificate as the best

To get this certification you have to pass the GSDC Institution certifications.

GSDC's certification is aimed towards sharing a deep understanding of all the advanced l and d certification

The purpose of agile testing certification qualification is to confirm that a candidate has sufficient knowledge and understanding of the benefits of this certification.

Shajadul Haq
by Shajadul Haq , Employee , REFANS

Unlike the WaterFall method, Agile Testing can begin at the start of the project with continuous integration between development and testing. Agile Testing is not sequential (in the sense it's executed only after coding phase) but continuous.

Agile team works as a single team towards a common objective of achieving Quality. Agile Testing has shorter time frames called iterations (say from 1 to 4 weeks). This methodology is also called release, or delivery driven approach since it gives a better prediction on the workable products in short duration of time.

Test Plan for Agile

Unlike waterfall model, in an agile model, test plan is written and updated for every release.  The agile test plan includes types of testing done in that iteration like test data requirements, infrastructure, test environments and test results. Typical test plans  in agile includes

1) Testing Scope

2) New functionalities which are being tested

3) Level or Types of testing based on the features complexity

4) Load and Performance Testing

5) Infrastructure Consideration

6 )Mitigation or Risks Plan

7) Resourcing

8) Deliverables and Milestones

Agile Testing Strategies

Agile testing life cycle spans through four stages

agile_testing_1.png

 

(a) Iteration 0

During first stage or iteration 0, you perform initial setup tasks. It includes identifying people for testing, installing testing tools, scheduling resources (usability testing lab), etc. The following steps are set to achieve in Iteration 0

a) Establishing a business case for the project

b) Establish the boundary conditions and the project scope

c) Outline the key requirements and use cases that will drive the design trade-offs

d) Outline one or more candidate architectures

e) Identifying the risk

f) Cost estimation and prepare a preliminary project

(b) Construction Iterations

The second phase of testing is Construction Iterations, the majority of the testing occurs during this phase. This phase is observed as a set of iterations to build an increment of the solution.  In order to do that, within each iteration, the team implements a hybrid of practices from XP, Scrum, Agile modeling, and agile data and so on.

In construction iteration, agile team follows the prioritized requirement practice: With each iteration they take the most essential requirements remaining from the work item stack and implement them.

Construction iteration is classified into two, confirmatory testing and investigative testing.  Confirmatory testing concentrates on verifying that the system fulfills the intent of the stakeholders as described to the team to date, and is performed by the team.  While the investigative testing detects the problem that confirmatory team have skipped or ignored.  In Investigative testing, tester determines the potential problems in the form of defect stories. Investigative testing deals with common issues like integration testing, load/stress testing and security testing. 

Again for, confirmatory testing there are two aspects developer testing and agile acceptance testing. Both of them are automated to enable continuous regression testing throughout the lifecycle.  Confirmatory testing is the agile equivalent of testing to the specification. 

Agile acceptance testing is a combination of traditional functional testing and traditional acceptance testing as the development team, and stakeholders are doing it together.  While developer testing is a mix of traditional unit testing and traditional service integration testing.  Developer testing verifies both the application code and the database schema.

(c) Release End Game Or Transition Phase

The goal of “Release, End Game” is to deploy your system successfully into production.  The activities include in this phase are training of end users, support people and operational people.  Also, it includes marketing of the product release, back-up & restoration, finalization of system and user documentation.

The final testing stage includes full system testing and acceptance testing.   In accordance to finish your final testing stage without any obstacles, you should have to test the product more rigorously while it is in construction iterations. During the end game, testers will be working on its defect stories.

(d) Production

After release stage, the product will move to the production stage.

The Agile Testing Quadrants

agile_testing_2.png

The agile testing quadrants separates the whole process in four Quadrants and helps to understand how agile testing is performed.

a) Agile Quadrant I – The internal code quality is the main focus in this quadrant, and it consists of test cases which are technology driven and are implemented to support the team, it includes

1. Unit Tests

2.Component Tests

b) Agile Quadrant II – It contains test cases that are business driven and are implemented to support the team.  This Quadrant focuses on the requirements. The kind of test performed in this phase is

1. Testing of examples of possible scenarios and workflows

2. Testing of User experience such as prototypes

3. Pair testing

c) Agile Quadrant III – This quadrant provide feedback to quadrants one and two.  The test cases can be used as the basis to perform automation testing.  In this quadrant, many rounds of iteration reviews are carried out which builds confidence in the product.  The kind of testing done in this quadrant is

 

1. Usability Testing

2. Exploratory Testing

3. Pair testing with customers

4. Collaborative testing

5. User acceptance testing

d) Agile Quadrant IV – This quadrant concentrates on the non-functional requirements such as performance, security, stability, etc.  With the help of this quadrant, the application is made to deliver the non-functional qualities and expected value.

1. Non-functional tests such as stress and performance testing

2. Security testing with respect to authentication and hacking

3. Infrastructure testing

4. Data migration testing

5. Scalability testing

6. Data migration testing

7. Scalability testing

8. Load testing

QA challenges with agile software development

a) Chances of error are more in agile, as documentation is given less priority, eventually puts more pressure on QA team

b) New features are introduced quickly, which reduces the available time for test teams to identify whether the latest features are according to the requirement and does it truly address the business suits

c) Testers are often required to play a semi-developer role

d) Test execution cycles are highly compressed

e) Very less time to prepare test plan

f) For regression testing, they will have minimal timing

g) Change in their role from being a gate-keeper of quality to being a partner in Quality

h) Requirement changes and updates are inherent in an agile method, becoming the biggest challenge for QA

Risk of Automation in Agile Process

  • Automated UI provides a high level of confidence, but they are slow to execute, fragile to maintain and expensive to build. Automation may not significantly improve test productivity unless the testers know how to test
  • Unreliable tests are a major concern in automated testing. Fixing failing tests and resolving issues related to brittle tests should be a top priority in order to avoid false positives
  • If the automated test are initiated manually rather than through CI (Continuous Integration) then there is a risk that they are not regularly running and therefore may cause failing of tests
  • Automated tests are not a replacement for an exploratory manual testing. To obtain the expected quality of the product, a mixture of testing types and levels is required
  • Many commercially available automation tools provide simple features like automating the capture and replay of manual test cases. Such tool encourages testing through the UI and leads to an inherently brittle and difficult to maintain tests. Also, storing test cases outside the version control system creates unnecessary complexity
  • In order to save time, many times automation test plan is poorly planned or unplanned which results in the test fail
  • Test set up and tear down procedures are usually missed out during test automation, while Performing manual testing, test set up and tear down procedures sounds seamless
  • Productivity metrics such as number of test cases created or executed per day can be terribly misleading, and could lead to making a large investment in running useless tests
  • Members of the agile automation team must be effective consultants: approachable, cooperative, and resourceful, or this system will quickly fail
  • Automation may propose and deliver testing solutions that require too much ongoing maintenance relative to the value provided
  • Automated testing may lack the expertise to conceive and deliver effective solutions
  • Automated testing may be so successful that they run out of important problems to solve, and thus turn to unimportant problems.

Conclusion

 

Agile testing involves testing as early as possible in software development life cycle. It demands high customer involvement and testing code as soon as it becomes available. The code should be stable enough to take it to system testing. Extensive regression testing can be done to make sure that the bugs are fixed and tested. Mainly, Communication between the teams makes agile testing success!!!

JULIA BEGSENG
by JULIA BEGSENG , Bookkeeper , Saint Joseph Parish-Kayapa Multi-Purpose Credit Union

Agile testing is an iterative development methods where requirements evolve through collaboration between the customer and self-organizing teams.

Mohannad   Al-Musa
by Mohannad Al-Musa , Game Developer , Maysalward

A software testing practice that follows the principles of agile software development is called Agile Testing.Agile is an iterative development methodology, where requirements evolve through collaboration between the customer and self-organizing teams and agilealigns development with customer needs.

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