Why Should Organizations Go Agile in Their Testing Approach

The agile project management methodology emphasizes on software applications being developed and tested in rapid and incremental cycles. The model does not consider software development and software testing as two distinct processes. In an agile environment, the programmers and testers have to work together to ensure that the software quality is maintained. The collaboration promotes continuous iteration of development and testing throughout the entire software development life cycle (SDLC).  Each business can reap a number of benefits by adopting the agile software testing model.

Understanding Important Benefits of Agile Testing Methodology

Instantaneous Feedback

In an agile environment, programmers and testers work as a single team. So the entire team is responsible for software quality. The testers can write unit tests each time a new feature or functionality is added to the application, and test the new code almost immediately. Further, they can provide instant feedback to the programmers about defects or bugs in the software. Based on the feedback received from the testers, the programmers can fix the bugs in the same build.

Better and Continuous Communication

In an agile environment, testers have to stay connected with programmers, project managers, customers and other stakeholders in the project. The emphasis on people and interaction results in better and effective communication. The programmers can simply contact the testers to gather more specific and detailed information about the bugs identified by them.  The daily scrum sessions further help the entire team to focus on identifying and fixing important issues in advance.

Easy to Eliminate Major Defects

It becomes easier for programmers to fix the bugs when the defects in the application are identified immediate after the coding phase. As the code it still fresh in the programmer’s mind, he can get the defects fixed without putting any extra time and effort. The instant feedback provided by testers help developers to work on major bugs in the application almost immediately. The business can further avoid additional cost when the bugs are identified during the coding phase.

Easy to Reproduce Bugs

While preparing a bug report, testers have to write detailed and specific information about the bugs identified in the software. They can further reduce the defect turnaround time drastically by reproducing the bugs. But testers have to put additional time and effort to reproduce the bugs. In an agile environment, they test the software once the code is written. So they find time to write detailed bug reports and reproduce the defects accurately. 

Easy to Incorporate Changes

To reap benefits of waterfall software testing, a business has to define the business requirements from the beginning of the project. But software developers nowadays have to build applications based on frequently-changing business requirements. So it becomes impossible for the managers to outline the business requirements clearly before the project starts. But a business can always adopt agile testing methodology to incorporate changes and enhancements required by the client. In an agile environment, applications are developed and tested in short sprints. So the programmer and testers have to focus only on a single sprint with specific features. They can easily accommodate the new business requirements in the next sprint without any hassle.

Enhanced Test Coverage

Often developers have to test software thoroughly without increasing its time to delivery. So they have to prioritize the defects at the time of preparing bug reports. But agile methodology enables testers to perform tests continuously throughout the software development life cycle. Many enterprises even invest in test automation tools to enable testers to repeat the tests under various conditions. Thus, the testers can assess all aspects of the software without affecting the delivery time.

Shorter Delivery Period

Each business has to deliver software continuously and rapidly to make the client happy. Hence, businesses frequently explore ways to shorten the delivery period. Agile methodology emphasize on development and testing of the application in small iterations. So it becomes easier for enterprises to deliver the working software to the client at frequent intervals.  The constant interaction between the testers and customers further resolve various issues and differences without any delay.

However, it is also important for the organization to keep in mind some of the important shortcomings of agile testing model. Likewise, the managers also need to understand when to use the agile testing methodology. But each enterprise can reap benefits in terms of time, quality and cost by implementing a custom agile testing strategy.    

Exploratory Testing and Business Values Delivered

A gradual increase is being noted in the number of businesses switching from scripted testing to exploratory testing. The conventional scripted testing approach requires the active test cases to be designed in advance, with clearly defined processes and expected results. The predesigned tests are used by testers to compare the actual test results with expected results. So the testers must be provided with adequate information to execute the tests and interpret the test results effectively.

But exploratory testing approach emphasizes on concurrent test designing and execution. It further requires businesses to deploy skilled software testers, and allows testers to become more imaginative and exploratory. While performing exploratory testing, the QA professionals have autonomy to decide what tests to perform next, and how to prioritize tests due to time constraints. So a business can avail a number of benefits by adopting the modern software testing approach.

What Makes Businesses Switch from Scripted Testing to Exploratory Testing?

Defects are Found Quickly

The predesigned test scripts restrict professionals’ imagination and creativity. When the testers have adequate information about the software to be tested and use the predesigned test scripts, they do not come up with fresh and innovative ideas. Exploratory testing requires them to design and execute tests concurrently. So they can learn and improve continuously, while coming up with new ideas and innovative ways to solve problems.

Accommodate Individual Testing Approaches

Exploratory testing approach requires enterprises to deploy skilled and experienced QA professionals. So each tester can analyze the specific problem in a particular way. The members of the team can further suggest various ways to test a particular feature or functionality of the software.  So the same aspect of the application can be tested in a number of ways. The different approaches effectuate testing, and help testers to identify all flaws in the software.

Allow Testers to Control the Testing Process

The scripted testing approach differentiates the process of test design and test execution. So an enterprise has option to deploy different teams to design and execute tests. Also, the testers need adequate product information and detailed business requirements to execute the tests effectively. So the testers fail to execute tests if the test cases are not designed in advance or they are not familiar with the application. But exploratory testing enables testers to design and execute tests concurrently. They can easily gather the required information, and design and test cases in each situation. 

Freedom to Follow Leads

Nowadays testers have to test all aspects of the software within a shorter amount of time. So they find it daunting to read, understand and execute predesigned test scripts. Most modern testers prefer designing and executing tests in parallel without referring to any predesigned test cases. Further, they want to deploy the limited time in finding bugs instead of reading and understanding test cases. The absence of predefined constraints further enables testers to identify bugs in the software by following all promising leads.

Facilitates Agile Testing

Many businesses nowadays adopt agile methodology to reduce software testing time and cost significantly. But the delivery cycles in agile project is extremely short. Further, the developers and testers have to collaborate with each other deliver a flawless software application. So the businesses are no longer required to deploy skilled professionals to make test plans, design test cases, and manage defects in the software. When a business adopts exploratory testing approach, it becomes easier for it to design and execute test cases concurrently without deploying any additional professionals. So exploratory testing helps businesses to reap benefits of agile project management methodologies.

On the whole, the exploratory testing approach is completely different from conventional scripted testing approach. But companies like Microsoft have proved that both testing approaches are compatible with each other, and can also be used on a single project. So a business has option to either adopt exploratory testing model or use both testing models simultaneously. 

Challenges Faced by Testers during Testing Cycle

In the past decade, software development has made a huge progress in the future direction. However, the scenario is not as good when it comes to the testing of the software. Statistical survey shows that the budget of the IT industry has increased from 18% to 26% in a span of two years, but the budget allotted to the testing departments is not even close to satisfaction. Marked development is needed in this field in order to ensure good software for the customers.

1.    Agile Development: According to the statistics, 93% of the companies prefer agile development method of software testing as compared to 83% of them in 2013. This method requires a new set of skills and view as it has less documentation and faster methods of testing the software. Automation has made marked progress and is the best choice for regression testing which has mounted up. Testers are being reduced to advocates of the end users.
2.      Mobile Technology: With the advent of smart phones, the internet is being accessed majorly through them. Loads of apps are beings developed for these small platforms. This has shifted the testing industry from software to mobile app testing realm. This has reduced the focus off of the pure manual testing of software. The testers, while testing mobile application requires a varied set of skills in order to handle the job of the small platforms. The traditional software testing protocol is being replaced.
3.     Big Data: Gathering and sorting out data is looming big in the software industries these days. Each and every IT company gathers a huge amount of data, but not all can analyze it or check the validity of these data and use the results for future benefit. However, the real trick behind the accumulation and analysis of the data lies in the fact as to how well you have extracted the data and how error free it is. Dealing with such a huge amount of data and storing the same in a beneficial manner is appearing to be a huge challenge.
4.     Cloud Access: With the emergence of cloud computing, people are hugely relying on it, majorly due to the ease of access to the data stored in the cloud. People are always on the go, and they need to access their data on multiple devices and it has been made possible due to cloud computing. However, moving software testing to the clouds is posing to be a huge challenge, especially on the security and performance front as there is a huge chance of security breach along with loss of data.
5.      Lack of Resources: This is one of the most brooding challenges that the testers face. Lack of resources results in incomplete testing of the software or tests which are not up to the mark of the quality provided by the company, ultimately resulting in dissatisfied customers. If these lacks of resources are combined with the lack of training, then the yield is even more disastrous. Optimum resource is required for proper usability, security, and performance testing.

These are the most jarring challenges which are being faced by the software testers every day, during test cycles. To get improved results from the software testing processes, organizations should pay heed to these challenges and try solving these challenges.