Part 10. Agile Testing for High-Quality Software Delivery

10. Agile Testing ←

In the ever-evolving world of software development, Agile methodologies have revolutionized the way projects are managed and executed. One of the key components of Agile is Agile Testing, a practice that ensures high-quality software through continuous testing and feedback. This article explores the fundamentals of Agile Testing, its principles, practices, and benefits, providing a comprehensive understanding for QA professionals and development teams alike.

What is Agile Testing?

Agile Testing is a software testing practice that follows the principles and practices of Agile development. Unlike traditional testing methodologies where testing is a separate phase conducted after development, Agile Testing is integrated throughout the development lifecycle. This approach ensures that testing is continuous, incremental, and iterative, aligning with the Agile philosophy of delivering small, workable pieces of software frequently.

Key Principles of Agile Testing

Early and Continuous Testing: Agile Testing starts at the beginning of the project and continues throughout the development process. This early involvement helps identify defects sooner, reducing the cost and effort required to fix them.
Collaboration: Agile Testing promotes close collaboration between developers, testers, product owners, and other stakeholders. This collaborative approach ensures that everyone has a clear understanding of the requirements and quality expectations.
Customer Focus: Agile Testing emphasizes delivering value to the customer. Testers work closely with product owners to understand user stories and acceptance criteria, ensuring that the final product meets customer needs and expectations.
Flexibility and Adaptability: Agile Testing is highly adaptable to changes. Testers must be flexible and ready to adjust their testing strategies and plans as the project evolves and new requirements emerge.
Automation: To support the rapid pace of Agile development, test automation is crucial. Automated tests are executed frequently to provide quick feedback on the quality of the software, enabling faster identification and resolution of issues.

Agile Testing Practices

Test-Driven Development (TDD): In TDD, test cases are written before the actual code is developed. This practice ensures that the code is thoroughly tested and meets the specified requirements from the outset.
Behavior-Driven Development (BDD): BDD extends TDD by emphasizing collaboration between developers, testers, and business stakeholders. Test scenarios are written in a natural language that describes the desired behavior of the software, facilitating better communication and understanding.
Continuous Integration (CI): CI involves integrating code changes into the main branch frequently and running automated tests to detect issues early. This practice ensures that the software remains in a releasable state throughout the development cycle.
Exploratory Testing: Exploratory testing is an informal, unscripted testing approach where testers explore the software to identify defects and areas of improvement. This practice leverages the tester's creativity and intuition to uncover issues that automated tests might miss.
Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD): ATDD involves writing acceptance tests collaboratively with developers, testers, and product owners before the development begins. These tests serve as a contract that the software must fulfill to be considered complete.

Benefits of Agile Testing

Faster Feedback and Issue Resolution: Continuous testing and integration provide immediate feedback on code quality, allowing teams to identify and address defects quickly.
Improved Collaboration and Communication: Agile Testing fosters a collaborative environment where developers, testers, and stakeholders work together closely, improving communication and ensuring that everyone is aligned with the project goals.
Higher Quality Software: By integrating testing throughout the development process, Agile Testing ensures that defects are identified and resolved early, resulting in higher-quality software.
Customer Satisfaction: Agile Testing's customer-focused approach ensures that the final product meets user needs and expectations, leading to higher customer satisfaction.
Reduced Costs and Time-to-Market: Early detection and resolution of defects reduce the cost and effort required for rework. Additionally, the iterative nature of Agile allows for faster delivery of functional software.

In the dynamic and fast-paced world of software development, the need for efficient and effective testing methodologies is crucial. Agile methodologies have emerged as a transformative approach to software development, enabling teams to adapt to changing requirements and deliver valuable products incrementally. Within the Agile framework, Scrum testing has emerged as a powerful methodology that empowers development teams to ensure the quality and reliability of their software.

Testing in Scrum and Kanban teams is an integral part of the software development process, ensuring the quality and reliability of the delivered product. Here's how testing can be implemented in Scrum and Kanban teams.

Testing in Scrum Teams.

The term Scrum is the most widely used term which refers to a methodology that concentrates on all facets of software product development, including quality, usability, and performance.

Scrum testing is a software testing approach using a scrum framework that works on an iterative model. Its purpose is to create a development and management technique that adheres to agile principles. It oversees product or application development and works on creating the best product according to the requirements of a complex application.

The emphasis is more on strategy and flexible holistic product development where the development team works as a unit to achieve common goals. Scrum is a complex process with numerous variables that influence the end result.

Scrum testing structure.

Scrum Roles:

There are three main stakeholders during the scrum testing process: Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Team.

A product owner is the representative of a customer who defines the functionalities required for the project. This is represented in the form of product backlogs which is curated as all the goals are split into sections of product backlogs and these are further planned in the form of sprints.

Scrum Master is the moderator between the Product owner and the application development team. This role is responsible for getting the work done and meeting the goals from time to time.

The Team is a group of developers and testers who build the software system to meet the requirements specified by the scrum master and work according to the sprints defined by the scrum master. Sprints are widely used in Scrum methodology to divide the tasks into a few weeks. The duration of each sprint depends on the goals and the deadline for project submission. Some segregate the tasks into a sprint each of two weeks (Scrum Testing – What it is, Why it’s important, and How it Works?).

Scrum Events:

- Sprint Planning: Testers collaborate with developers to understand user stories and define acceptance criteria.
- Daily Standup: Testers share updates on testing progress, challenges, and dependencies.
- Sprint Review: Demonstrate completed features, including testing outcomes, and gather feedback.
- Sprint Retrospective: Discuss improvements in testing processes and collaboration.

User Stories and Acceptance Criteria:

- Testers collaborate with the Product Owner and developers to define clear and testable acceptance criteria for each user story.

Test Automation:

- Automated testing is integrated into the development process, focusing on unit tests, integration tests, and acceptance tests.
- Test automation helps ensure quick feedback and early detection of issues.

Continuous Integration:

- Continuous integration practices are employed to integrate code changes frequently and run automated tests to identify integration issues.

Regression Testing:

- Regular regression testing is performed to ensure that existing functionality is not negatively impacted by new changes.

Definition of Done (DoD):

- The Definition of Done includes testing criteria, ensuring that a user story is not considered complete until it has passed all relevant tests.

The product owner comes up with a vision along with stakeholders and converts the vision into a product strategy. A product roadmap is a high-level plan that communicates how a product is likely to evolve. The product roadmap typically covers several major releases or product versions to be broken down into sprints.

This is a very important step in the Scrum framework implementation. The product roadmap is done by the product owner, but should also include inputs from various other stakeholders in the project. The roadmap needs to be in place before you start planning out sprints.

An Agile product roadmap must remain flexible to better respond to emerging opportunities. However, it also must still provide clear direction for your team. This direction often appears through prioritization, by drawing a clear picture of what your company feels is the minimum lovable for your team to work on today versus what is likely to be the most valuable in the future.

The product roadmap should support the products’ vision and it should help the product owner to keep the project stakeholders aligned. The roadmap also makes it easier to coordinate the development efforts and it gives transparency in order to deliver business expectations.

The product owner actively works with the stakeholders to create a product backlog that contains requirements that can deliver value and also are prioritized as per the market need. A product owner takes up the ownership of the product backlog. A product backlog usually comprises two kinds of work items:

Epics – High-level requirements that are very coarsely outlined without much detail.
Stories – More comprehensive requirements for what should be done.

The product owner creates a high-level plan for the release of working software. Agile projects will have multiple releases, so you want to prioritize the features needed to get you to launch first.

The product owner converts all the high level requirements into user stories and sets up the initial product backlog. Once the product owner is all set for sprint planning, He organizes a backlog grooming session to refine and prioritize the user stories for the first sprint.

The product owner and the team plan sprints in which specific tasks and goals will be carried out. A typical sprint lasts between 1–4 weeks and should remain the same length throughout the entire project as this enables teams to plan future work more accurately based on the previous sprints performance.

Sprint planning is a team effort, and therefore the product owner, and all team members should be present to voice their thoughts and concerns. Sprint planning takes place at the start of each sprint cycle.

The key ceremonies in the Agile Scrum framework are listed in the figure below.

The sprint progress will be tracked through Scrum board on a daily basis. The scrum master organizes a daily stand-up meeting to identify the teams progress and impediments if any. The role of the scrum master is to remove the teams blockers and help the team to move forward to achieve the sprint goals.

The user stories prioritized in the sprint planning session will be ranked and prioritized for the sprints. The development team, including the testers, will have their own deliverables (tasks) created for User story.

Typical Agile Scrum Board has flowing stages:

User stories prioritized during sprint planning will be listed in the sprint backlog (To Do) as per the defined rank. The development team will start working on the development tasks associated to the story. The development teams moves the task to the Doing status once they started coding. After coding and unit testing, stories will be moved to Verify. The stories that don’t meet the acceptance criteria will be moved back to Doing. Stories that have passed testing will be moved to the Done stage after reviewing the acceptance criteria with the product owner (A Guide for Software Testing in Scrum).

Testing in Kanban Teams.

Kanban, a highly effective framework for “going agile,” is based on the Japanese business philosophy of kaizen, which believes that everything can be improved. One of the principles of kanban that makes it well-suited for agile delivery is that it only works if you commit to continuous improvement. Here, I’ll detail what kanban is, how to use it, and how your QA team can implement it right away (Kanban for Software Testing Teams).

Kanban Principles:

Kanban is a visual management method that emphasizes a continuous flow of work items.
Work items move through different stages on a Kanban board, from backlog to completion.

Work Item Types:

Testing tasks are represented as work items on the Kanban board, alongside development tasks.
Testers collaborate with developers to prioritize and manage the flow of testing work.

Work in Progress (WIP) Limits:

WIP limits are set for each stage to ensure a balanced flow of work.
Testers and developers collaborate to manage WIP limits and prevent bottlenecks.

Pull System:

Work is pulled into the testing stage based on capacity and priority.
Testers actively collaborate with developers to ensure a smooth flow of work.

Continuous Delivery:

Continuous delivery practices are emphasized, allowing for frequent releases of small increments.
Testing activities are integrated seamlessly into the continuous delivery pipeline.

Feedback Loops:

Short feedback loops are established to identify and address issues quickly.
Testers provide feedback to developers, and vice versa, to ensure continuous improvement.

Empowered Teams:

Cross-functional teams are empowered to make decisions about testing priorities and processes.
Testers actively collaborate with team members to enhance overall efficiency.

Continuous Improvement:

Kanban promotes a culture of continuous improvement.
Testers participate in regular retrospectives to discuss testing processes and identify areas for improvement (Agile Testing - Kanban), (ISTQB Agile Tester #19 - What is Kanban?).

Kanban in software testing starts by defining the steps of your workflow. These steps might be more generic, such as “Upcoming” and “Complete,” or function-specific like “Test Plan,” “Design,” and “Execution.”

You can then assign cards to each step based on what stage they’re at: upcoming for when you have something that needs work but hasn’t been assigned yet; In Progress if it’s currently being worked on or waiting for feedback from stakeholders; Complete once you’ve completed a task successfully without any errors.

This allows testers to see where there are bottlenecks so their time isn’t wasted working on things that aren’t necessary right now – this is called visualizing flow efficiency.

By making cards for each task or project, moving them through every step as they are complete, and setting limits on how many can be worked at once – Kanban will allow teams to maintain their workflow without getting caught up in one specific job.

Benefits for using Kanban in software testing:

1. Quickly fix bottlenecks

With the Kanban system, teams can identify and resolve bottlenecks in their software testing process faster.

By making it easy to identify where work piles up (e.g., if tasks start piling up ahead of one step in the workflow every time), they are able to see these issues as soon as they happen, eliminating any potential for long-term stagnation or overloading on a specific task’s resources that might have occurred otherwise.

This transparency also allows team members to clearly understand how far along each stage is at all times–thus knowing exactly what needs more attention than others so that nothing slips through unnoticed because somebody was overloaded with too much else going on around them.

2. Committing to the task at hand

Kanban has been proven to be valuable in software testing as it helps teams prioritize tasks and complete them efficiently.

Specifically, with Kanban models, developing a sense of urgency surrounding the work at hand helps avoid over-committing and not delivering on time because the team gets stretched too thin.

3. Improved prioritization

Kanban has created an efficient system for software testing teams by ensuring that they can work on only the projects in progress.

This means any new requests go untouched until there is time to take care of them, giving project managers more freedom over how those tasks are prioritized and what order they should be done.

4. Quicker output

Kanban in software testing helps avoid bottlenecks by making sure that no one team member has too much work coming into their queue.

Kanban is a system for visualizing and prioritizing tasks, which means it’s also more efficient at planning out future projects before they start to help the entire company stay on track with goals instead of falling behind schedule due to interruptions or lack of organization like what can happen without an effective project management strategy.

Kanban provides better problem solving through improved visualization techniques than other systems, such as Scrum, because its focus point isn’t just productivity but how well each task moves forward versus sitting stagnant waiting for something else–which not only emphasizes balance between different aspects but makes all areas easier to identify when problems arise.

Kanban is a tool that helps you organize and prioritize tasks. It’s used for software testing, but it can be applied to many other industries as well!

In both Scrum and Kanban, collaboration and communication between testers, developers, and other team members are crucial. The goal is to create a culture where quality is a shared responsibility, and testing is an integral part of the entire software development process. Whether in iterative Scrum sprints or continuous Kanban flows, testing practices contribute to the delivery of high-quality software (Using Kanban to improve software testing).

Сonclusion

The article delves into the realm of Agile Testing, dissecting its core principles, practices, and benefits. It elucidates how Agile Testing integrates seamlessly into Agile development methodologies, departing from traditional testing paradigms where testing occurs post-development. Instead, Agile Testing operates in tandem with development, ensuring a continuous, incremental, and iterative approach to testing that aligns with Agile's philosophy of frequent delivery of small, workable software increments.

Key principles underpinning Agile Testing include early and continuous testing, collaboration among stakeholders, customer focus, flexibility, adaptability, and automation. These principles lay the groundwork for Agile Testing practices such as Test-Driven Development (TDD), Behavior-Driven Development (BDD), Continuous Integration (CI), Exploratory Testing, and Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD).

The article accentuates the benefits of Agile Testing, emphasizing faster feedback and issue resolution, improved collaboration and communication, higher quality software, customer satisfaction, and reduced costs and time-to-market. It underscores the transformative impact of Agile methodologies in enabling teams to adapt to evolving requirements and deliver valuable software incrementally.

Moreover, the article delves into the application of testing within Scrum and Kanban frameworks. In Scrum, testing is integrated into sprint planning, daily stand-up meetings, sprint review, and sprint retrospective sessions. Roles like Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Team collaborate to ensure that testing aligns with project goals and requirements. Similarly, in Kanban, testing tasks are visualized on a Kanban board, facilitating continuous flow and enabling teams to identify and resolve bottlenecks promptly.

The overarching message is that Agile Testing, whether implemented within Scrum or Kanban frameworks, fosters a culture of collaboration, communication, and continuous improvement. It underscores the importance of testing as a shared responsibility throughout the software development process, contributing to the delivery of high-quality software products.