For software development, quality is everything. Quality assurance is a systematic procedure which ensures the product and service excellence. A robust Quality assurance team examines the requirements to design and develop reliable products by increasing the confidence of the client and the ability to thrive in a competitive environment. Here is some best practice for the agile Quality Assurance process.
As companies have started learning from each other’s tech disasters, the movement to Agile has fastened; This has put a traditional testing service into a delicate position. After a study, it has been understood that testing is a sensitive and vital part of the DevOps procedure. But it can forget sometimes, and sometimes may lead to some incidents; and how it can implement carefully and diligently by Organizations who want to release the products more smoothly.
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What is the Agile QA Process?
Many companies have created a shift from the traditional waterfall development methodology to the agile procedure. Agile testing defined QA into the project as early as possible to foresee the issues and write the test case. Agile testing introduced QA to uncover any gaps in the requirements. The project is split into iterative stages, and QA engineers enable to add focus to the development process and offer rapid and continuous feedback.
Agile QA process
The agile Quality analysis procedure starts at the inception of the software development life cycle and from the initial design meeting to the final and hardening of the application. This method is repeated in two-week sprints until the project is released.
The customers are benefited by the sprints, which deliver working software and anticipate the changes by providing better estimates in less time. It also allows course correction instead of completely derailing the project. The QA team incorporates lessons which are learned from the previous projects and improve the procedure for further projects. The movement to Agile has transformed ‘the last minute approach’ distinctively. In Agile, the product is delivered very quickly and with a successful release.
Testing reflects the development of new versions.
By enrolling testing experts into Agile systems, the testing conducted runs smoothly throughout the Software Development life cycle, despite the last moment testing. The Agile team delivers feedback on test status, test progress, product quality, and feedback on process quality, quality assurance, and the values to every step of software delivery.
Risk Analysis
One of the essential aspects of any QA process is risk analysis. Risk analysis is referred to as the method of inspecting or identifying and assessing potential risks with their impact. The agile testing process helps organizations to avoid and mitigate risks. An application can’t be 100 per cent bug-free. But a dedicated team should attempt to remove the most problematic bugs or prevent them from any bugs. By knowing all the possible outcomes of a project allows the QA team to create preventive measures which reduce the chances of occurrence.
Test early and often
This model is to incorporate QA at every stage of the project’s lifecycle to identify the problematic issues as early as possible. QA engineers test and retest the product with the new feature added. And this allows validating which new features implemente as expected and to catch any issues which may have been introduced. By testing early and often leads to the conversation of the time and budget.
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White Box and Black Box
Black box testing assumes no knowledge of how it does and what it does. It only understands what it should do from the perspective of the users. White box testing allows QA engineers to develop a deeper understanding of the system’s internal. To perform agile testing QA teams need to have an extra level of understanding of systems to validate features.
White box testing enables QA teams to anticipate potential error conditions and to develop better test systems. By understanding how the system actually works ensures that they have tested all possible input scenarios. This helps to identify more potential security issues and white box testing. It also encourages close collaboration between development and quality assurance.
Automate when feasible
Automation helps to increase the effectiveness of the QA staff. Automation also provides a process to ensure the previous deliverable continues to work. But QA engineers mainly focus on testing newly delivered features. Automation also gives the development team the level of confidence to make changes to the systems. By using the knowledge which any problems will identify rapidly and can fix before delivery to the QA team. The QA team should prioritize test cases and determine which of them should be automated. Implementing automation costs more upfront and saves money in the long run by increasing the efficiency between development and QA teams.
Understand your audience
By understanding the target audience will help to improve the QA process and will enable your team to build value-driving applications. You can also prioritize the QA process to save money and time.
Dream Work
Behind every success story, a team of professionals works incessantly to maintain the standards of the quality upheld by the organizations. Each team working on the projects takes responsibility to ensure quality. The QA teams know what the customers need the system to do and how to prove the client’s satisfaction with the system. By using an agile QA process, engineers root out the problematic issues and help the team to deliver high-quality products and to ensure client confidence and successful product delivery.
Many companies are going agile, and everyone talks about the frequent and iterative deployments.
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How do these values fit with QA?
While reviewing the values and principles of the agile, the tester doesn’t see testing addressed as clearly as we would like, and tester is not even sure if the traditional QA has a place. The Testers must be improving their new Automation skills and learning to use new technology and tools. Testers also have to work closely with the developers to generate the code that forms automated tests; this collaboration creates more thorough tests that provide extensive coverage.
Working Software Over Comprehensive Documentation-
Testers learn that working software is prioritize over comprehensive documentation. The goal of the tester should not be to write extensive test documentation or test cases. Writing and executing manual tests takes a lot of time and results in errors. If the motive of the tester includes working software, then figure out for ways of rethinking the approach. This is the only opportunity to look into the test automation tools which will make the testing more efficient.
The value does not show that you cannot have any documentation. It also means that the tester should create documentation only if it provides more value and writes it only if you need documentation or something. Make sure to not spend too much filling out forms or any other necessary work. Look for the streamlines process to execute the tests and to clearly communicate the defect to the development team without much overhead. Look for automation opportunities. Ensure that it drives the result of having working software. Test Automation needs an investment in the technology, processes, and people, but it also requires testing and discipline, which has to be embedded in the approach and continuously improved.
Always consider the customer of the application of what quality they expect. The relationship with the customer should look like a partnership.
Responding to Change Over Following a Plan-
The main concern testers have with the infrequent software delivery, which includes keeping up with the testing. Agile includes continuous learning and adjustment. Don’t dream of building a plan for the future which might not come true and instead, work in putting automated tests and guardrails so that testers are able to react quickly to change priorities and functionality. Sprinkle in as much automation as you can so that when any changes occur, you get ready instantly. By automating the Smoke testing and manual Regression testing, the tester can save time and do more Exploratory testing , which speeds up delivering a product. Automated testing enables you to arrive first and avoids failure at the first sign of a problem.
According to the old waterfall world, then the QA team would get a few weeks prior to release and to test all the new functionalities. As the waterfall usually went the few weeks would shrink from three to four weeks maximum as software development deadlines slipped. To ship the product, QA teams feel much of this pain.
The QA team should be involved throughout the whole agile procedure, and teachers should be part of the team as well. Whether it’s a task on pairing or discussing on how a story should be tested, they are intending discussions around the testing and quality. Agile teams have regular discussions so that testers can be colocated and available to jump in on the discussions whenever it happens. Don’t make more paperwork and process while sharing the ideas instead try to involve yourself in the whole software delivery process.
How Should QA Work in Agile?
QA skills help the team to deliver quality software in a continuous way.
Let’s look at these in detail but with agile, you should.
Join the Agile Team-
One of the biggest changes includes having QA as a part of the agile development team and not a separated team. When the team is from start to finish, then you have the chance to affect the delivery of the product much more. In an agile team, the role is not defined, and you may be able to write your own story by stepping in as a testing coach or automation SME.
QA have a good understanding of good testing practices and help the team by sharing their own experience. Make sure to consider how a feature would be easier to test and look for more incredible ideas for ways to make the design more testable.
Try to involve yourself in stan ups, retros and demons. Make sure to stay on top of the work the team is doing. So you become aware of dependencies between the stories and what additional testing will be necessary. When a team focuses on delivering the working software faster to the clients. Then you will get the opportunity to provide flexible support to the teammates.
Focus on the Customer
You can focus on the customer with agile. You will need to learn and understand a lot about how the customer uses the product. Then it will be easy to combine the knowledge with the working system to describe tests and scenarios. It might not be apparent from the outside. By knowing the product’s design helps to identify interesting edge cases which should be considered. By understanding the client’s help with a blind spot, the engineers might miss. The more you focus on the customers and more the perspectives you will get. This will allow you to uncover assumptions which might leave a gaping quality hole in the end product.
Automate Your Test Suite
The agile testing process is done parallel to the development, and automation becomes critical. Without this, you will find retesting the same functionality in repeated ways for falling behind quickly. The developers need to write unit and integration tests. They don’t cover all the scenarios of having not built up the skills yet. Developers test knows the internals of the system by using white box testing methods. You would be able to test from the outside as a QA professional. The applications were black box and white box testing. To perform automated testing, you will make tests which engineers can use as well. These tests are included in the development pipeline and executed automatically without manual intervention. Work to become an expert on agile testing methodologies and strategies.
You will need to learn to code to automate all types of tests. Learning code has its own benefits. You will have the option to create tests both automatically and by using code.
Earlier, you had to wait for the business analysts to finish the need phase before starting your tests plan. To ensure that you had full coverage and traceability for all the requirements. But now things are different. You are a part of the process of defining stories. And adding them to the backlog to help the team define the criteria. It must be met for each story to be considered. Team members frequently interact with the product owner. Make sure that every person is aligned with the functional and nonfunctional tests the user story will have to pass.
Estimate the scope and size of the testing effort
Agile testers help to estimate the scope and size of the testing effort for every user story. Your team will review and update the estimates of upcoming user stories. It will be based on the team’s experience from the previous sprint and re-plan upcoming sprints. This should be improved over time.
The tester will involve in the design of the software by working closely with the developers to assess and advise on testability aspects. The tester will look at concerns like whether software testing can be automated. It can be tested independently from the rest package.
Tester plays a role in testing on an agile project. Every member has their own speciality. It takes responsibility to deliver the team’s user stories at the end of the sprint. The tester will write functional, performance and automated unit tests. Also, deploy the code into the test environments and executes the test.
Small functionality increments
In an agile project, there are several small functionality increments which means the software is continually changing. The changes often make the speed of regression testing incredibly as the code should be tested every time a change is committed. It means testers need to automate the tests as much as possible.
Figure out the opportunities to automate tests and deploy scripts. In order to develop test automation frameworks for the team and the rest of the agile release.
Testers will be working more closely with the developers and if they find any defects. Then let them use your system to debug so that they can fix the issues as quickly as possible.
While many of the valuable pieces of information are exchanged by the water cooler so keep your off-site colleagues in the loop.
The agile testing aim is to fix and verify the bugs within the same sprint. This is because the test will not pass and the user story cannot be considered ‘done’.
Mainly organizations include innovation and planning sprints which provide an opportunity to verify fixes to make up the program increment.
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Conclusion
Agile team testers are highly skilled, with good teamwork and the best communication skills. Each team member is equally responsible for the product quality and the performance of test-related tasks. So, start using Testim today for free. Agile provides teams to play with their strength and inspect the opportunities for the company’s development and improvement. Agile businesses leverage the talent and make teams perform best on their path.
