Agile Testing: Adapting to Rapid Development Cycles

Traditionally, the software development process followed a linear assembly line. The software development lifecycle included planning, designing and testing, before repeating these stages as needed before release. But this process meant that testing would only occur after the formal development phase was complete — and it created major problems for the development team. This resulted in process bottlenecks, costly schedule extensions, and more time spent resolving bugs, errors, and design flaws.

The Agile testing methodology simplifies projects by breaking them into smaller, more digestible phases while placing an emphasis on continuous testing, improvement, and cross-team collaboration. Development teams benefit from testing their code faster while receiving the most immediate customer feedback possible.

While agile software development methodology is not new, it continues to help teams create higher quality products, with faster time to market and more feedback and collaboration.

Before starting to implement Agile testing into a team's existing development process, companies need to learn about the various related tools and techniques, as well as the key benefits and challenges associated with this testing method and iterative development methodology. .

The essence of agile testing

Problems in traditional testing create costly bottlenecks in the development pipeline and even harm company growth. The Agile testing methodology presents a comprehensive solution to these problems, using flexible and responsive testing techniques.

What is agile testing?

The Agile testing process follows the Agile development methodology. This practice breaks larger test elements into smaller, more focused tests, allowing for more timely and efficient testing. The main focus of an Agile testing strategy is to ensure quality throughout the entire software development process.

In Agile processes, testing and development occur simultaneously to help teams discover and fix bugs as early and as frequently as possible. By having the opportunity to identify potential problems throughout the entire development process, testers help reduce software time to market.

Continuous integration and delivery are important aspects of Agile testing methods. While developers integrate daily code changes into a shared mainline, testers automatically review and release them to production.

Agile teams go through a process to plan, develop, test, and iterate before starting any type of development project. The basic steps involved in the Agile testing lifecycle – and throughout the development process – include:

• Requirements analysis : In this initial phase, the team analyzes the project requirements and ensures that they are clear, concise and testable. They also take the time to break down phases of development work into smaller parts to facilitate future testing.
• Test Planning : Testers create a plan that maps out the approach, objectives, and scope of testing while allowing for flexibility and adaptations as needed based on changing requirements, customer feedback, and issues.
• Test Design : This step involves designing test cases, scripts, and data based on requirements and user stories.
• Test development : Testers then move on to creating automated tests and manual test cases using test-driven development (TDD) and behavior-driven development (BDD) methodologies.
• Continuous integration and testing : As developers integrate code on the shared mainframe, testers review their changes and automatically validate the code.
• Test execution and reporting: Testers execute test cases at all phases of the development cycle while tracking and reporting test results and collaborating with developers to resolve issues.
• Release and deployment : After passing all required tests, teams determine that the software has met the defined requirements and release it to production.

Key Agile Testing Principles

The main principle of Agile testing is to make the process a continuous and fluid component of all parts of the development cycle, not limiting it to any specific phase. It also focuses on making testing a team-wide project, encouraging all team members to embrace change in an interactive environment.

• Early, Frequent, and Continuous Testing : In Agile procedures, testing is not a separate phase but a constant part of even the earliest phases of development. This allows teams to find and fix issues faster and more efficiently.
• Automating testing : Automating testing keeps the process as fast and flexible as possible.
• Providing continuous feedback : Testers are responsible for distributing the results of their tests and conveying customer feedback to developers, enabling the creation of more robust products.
• Delivering value to the customer : This is the highest priority of Agile testing. Every action of an Agile tester should lead to creating the best possible product for the customer.
• Enabling constant communication : While face-to-face communication is ideal for an Agile tester to ensure he or she communicates effectively with developers and bridges the gap between customers and developers, video chats and virtual meetings combined with project management software and software programs Direct messages help facilitate easy and constant communication.
• Commitment to continuous learning: Agile testers must continually improve their skills and knowledge.
• Adapting to change : Because requirements can change regularly, agile testers must remain adaptable and flexible to keep up with demands.
• Self-organized : Agile testers should not simply wait for work to come to them. They must look for problems at all points and collaborate with others to solve them.
• Focus on end users : A key quality of every good Agile tester is their focus on the end user to help deliver products that prioritize utility, functionality, and usability.

Difference between traditional and agile testing

In the traditional waterfall development method, testers arrive late in the development cycle. The sequential nature of the development cycle means that the next phase of development only begins after the previous one has been completed. In other words, testing occurs after development.

This presents several challenges, especially when you encounter unexpected changes and bugs in requirements. Here, testers have virtually no flexibility to adjust to changes, and finding the sources of problems is much more complex and expensive.

Because traditional testers have to wait for the product to cascade down the “waterfall,” they receive little to no feedback during the development phase. They also need to rely on a narrower set of development skills to determine whether or not the product needs to return to the development phase. This time-consuming back and forth hinders the team's ability to meet deadlines and ends up costing customers more. They often have to decide between delaying launches or releasing low-quality products – neither of which is a desirable outcome.

In Agile testing, testers work alongside developers throughout the development process. They efficiently detect and fix bugs in the early stages and continuously test new code snippets integrated by developers. They also help facilitate communication between users and developers, allowing developers to implement changes to the product while it is still in production.

Agile testing techniques

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to Agile testing. Teams and testers must collaborate to decide the best technique for their current project based on several factors.

Test Driven Development (TDD)

Test-driven development (TDD) begins with developers and testers building unit and component tests before beginning the formal coding process. This method involves structuring a process based on a combination of three types of operations: creating unit tests, programming and refactoring. TDD focuses on the main goal of writing new code only if a test fails. This not only helps avoid creating duplicate test scripts, but also allows developers to create more optimized and resilient codebases.

Behavior Driven Development (BDD)

By encouraging collaboration to understand end-user behaviors, behavior-driven development (BDD) aims to bridge the gap between stakeholders and developers. This information guides teams from planning to implementation to promote ongoing collaboration. BDD combines and extends the practices of TDD and ATDD.

BDD applies the Five Whys principle to every project and user story, minimizing waste by implementing the behaviors that most directly contribute to business results. It also focuses on creating more accurate guidance based on communication between developers, testers, customers, and domain experts.

Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD)

Acceptance test-driven development (ATDD) is similar to test-driven development, but embraces the collaborative nature of Agile testing, bringing together developers, testers, and customers to create acceptance tests based on customer input.

Using ATDD, developers have a direct view of what their customers want and can verify that the product meets their expectations. This technique eliminates ambiguities from the development process and reduces the chances of significant errors.

Pair programming

In pair programming, two programmers work together on code development work in pairs. The driver actively writes code while the browser checks the code for accuracy and errors. To keep things engaging, pairs often switch between roles.

Paired programmers often verbalize their thought processes as they work to make the process more effective. This practice helps developers create better solutions by identifying and fixing issues and bugs earlier, producing higher quality code, and working more efficiently.

Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)

Continuous integration and continuous development (CI/CD) is an Agile practice that introduces automation and continuous surveillance at each stage of the application lifecycle. Using automation in testing helps better ensure high software quality and security, along with continuous delivery. It allows companies to increase their competitive advantage with a much shorter time to market for new products.

Using a CI/CD methodology helps all parties involved. Thanks to the automation element of this technique, developers and testers are not burdened with the same repetitive activities and have the freedom to focus on core tasks and what they do best, further reducing the scope for human error.

Tools for agile testing

Tools are an important part of Agile software development and testing because they help teams identify important issues before they turn into larger problems. From defect monitoring to continuous deployment, Agile tools offer a variety of features to help teams work more efficiently and effectively.

Common Agile Testing Tools

• Jira : A popular project management tool, Jira is useful for planning, tracking, reporting, and defect monitoring.
• Selenium : Selenium is an open source automation testing tool that automates web browser actions. Agile testers use it to test web applications and ensure they work as expected. It allows each team member to contribute to test case automation as well thanks to its collaborative features.
• Cucumber : Using behavior-driven development techniques, Cucumber allows teams to create and run automated tests based on easy-to-understand features and maintain plain-text descriptions.
• Jenkins : An open source automation server, Jenkins allows Agile teams to fully automate their software development processes. Team members automate application building, testing, deployment, and continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD).

The role of automation in agile testing

Using automation whenever possible helps prevent testers from performing repetitive tasks, while speeding up turnaround times and improving testing accuracy rates. Without it, teams spend a significant amount of time on the same tasks over and over again.

Other benefits of automation in this type of testing include:

• Test script reuse : Testers run and reuse automated tests at will.
• Optimal test coverage: Automated testing activities significantly increase test coverage, which plays a vital role in the efficiency of software testing activities. Testers do not have to perform all tasks manually and gain the freedom to focus on other essential activities, such as creating tests for different application features.
• Rapid Test Execution : Automated testing is a parallel aspect of development that ensures early identification and fixing of bugs from the beginning. Fast test execution means fast solutions, which translates into time savings and delivering a better product to end users.
• Cost-effective : Automation is sometimes expensive at the time of implementation because it requires proper training in addition to tools and configuration. However, the cost factor decreases over time because test cases are executed whenever necessary, improving the speed and efficiency of testing activities without additional costs.

Challenges in agile testing

Agile methodologies offer numerous advantages, but there are also some challenges when it comes to testing. Testers often face time constraints, a lack of detailed documentation, and the need to adapt to changes frequently.

Time Limitations

In agile software development, the main goal is to have fast development cycles with sprints or short iterations. This often puts a lot of pressure on testers. Reduced testing times lead to inadequate coverage, resulting in overlooked issues that are more expensive and difficult to fix later in development.

Lack of detailed documentation

Agile often prioritizes working software over comprehensive documentation. This can lead to a lack of detailed documentation for test cases and other test components, which can cause difficulties for future references and new team members.

Product owners cannot write good acceptance criteria without fully understanding the specifics of a feature. This leads to a lack of information about requirements, without which testers will not be able to create comprehensive test cases. A potential solution to this is to have Agile testers begin their testing by using only available information and creating test scenarios that might work well for a specific feature.

Adapting to continuous change

Agile projects are susceptible to continuous changes that involve modifications to requirements, design and functionality. Sudden changes negatively impact Agile testing efforts because testers must quickly adapt to changes and alter their test cases accordingly.

When specific changes to requirements occur near the end of a sprint, they roll over to the next, becoming a burden on the entire Agile team. To master adapting to continuous change, testers must make a habit of sharing as much information as possible about what tests have been performed and what application areas have not yet been tested. This helps the team understand how to apply the necessary changes in the sprint without compromising the quality of the product.

Benefits of Agile Testing

Adopting Agile testing practices offers many benefits to teams and product owners.

• Higher quality products : Agile testers and developers work simultaneously from the beginning of the development process to detect problems as quickly as possible. Early testing allows testers to detect and eliminate bugs faster. Each product iteration goes through a thorough testing process, where developers and testers combine their skills to build the best quality product. Thanks to the collaborative nature of Agile, the entire team also works with customers, using their input to develop higher-quality, easier-to-use products.
• Faster delivery : Unlike traditional waterfall testing, Agile development processes, testing processes, and eventual product releases are not separated by months. Agile compresses the entire development cycle and uses customer feedback throughout the process. This ensures faster delivery of products that adapt to the current market and remain relevant to customers.
• Happier teams : Agile testing requires communicative and collaborative teams. Developers, testers and customers work together to create the best possible product and generate maximum value. All members interact closely, creating a more productive workplace and happier team.

Conclusion

While traditional waterfall development and testing methodologies provide benefits to teams, they create many opportunities for bugs, errors, and deviations from project requirements to cause prolonged delays in the testing phase. Or, even worse, these problems could end up affecting the end user experience.

Following an Agile testing methodology allows teams to break down significant, overwhelming test elements into smaller, more focused, continuous tests to improve timelines and efficiency, and improve overall product quality. Additionally, employing these practices helps ensure the release of high-quality products through early detection and resolution of errors and bugs.

This form of testing involves following some essential practices to improve the value of delivery to the customer. These practices help teams adapt to changes more easily, automate as much testing as possible, and provide continuous feedback. Faster, higher-quality software releases depend on adopting an appropriate Agile testing methodology based on a project's specific requirements. Some of the most popular options include test-driven development, behavior-driven development, pair programming, acceptance test-driven development, and continuous integration and development.

Part of Agile testing, however, is learning to go with the flow, so to speak, throughout the development of a product. Testers must learn how to overcome challenges ranging from fluctuating customer requests and time constraints to a lack of detailed documentation and demanding developers. However, the advantages of implementing such a testing methodology come with significant disadvantages. Agile testing helps teams create higher quality products without sacrificing quality or creating extended deadlines compared to other types of testing.

Common questions

What is the role of a tester on an Agile team?

In an Agile team, testers play a vital role, working closely with developers and product stakeholders to identify test automation opportunities, define test automation frameworks applicable to the project, and determine potential areas of impact and use cases. They also strive to regularly integrate customer feedback into the process.

How often should testing be done in Agile?

Agile testing models make testing an ongoing part of each step of the development process, starting in parallel with writing code.

How do you ensure quality in Agile testing?

Choosing the appropriate testing technique along with using automation wherever possible helps testers ensure quality in Agile testing. Potential technical options include pair programming, test-driven development, behavior-driven development, acceptance test-driven development, and CI/CD.

What are some best practices for Agile testing?

Best practices for Agile testing include testing earlier and more often, automating tests, and providing continuous feedback, as well as enabling constant communication, practicing continuous improvement, and adapting to change.