Against this backdrop, Agile Project Management emerges as a strategic imperative for modern businesses. But why is Agile gaining such widespread success, and why do project managers increasingly rely on it either independently or in conjunction with other frameworks? The answer is simple. Through the seamless integration of Agile principles into project management practices, managers attain heightened control over their projects. What sets Agile project management apart is its dual emphasis on delivering both quality and value to the customer while meeting project constraints.

What is Agile Project Management?

Agile Project Management is an approach centered on embracing change throughout the development process. Unlike traditional methods, it prioritizes delivering features with the greatest business value first, while also emphasizing real-time communication to manage project cost, time, and scope effectively.

Traditionally, project managers bear the burden of balancing various aspects such as cost, scope, quality, and risk. However, Agile distributes project responsibilities across three key roles:

1. Product Owner: This individual sets project goals, manages scope, adapts to changing requirements, and prioritizes product features.
2. Scrum Master: Responsible for guiding the team, prioritizing tasks, and removing obstacles to progress.
3. Team Member: Handles task assignments, daily management, quality control, and progress reporting.

Agile streamlines complexity by breaking down the project lifecycle into iterative cycles called “sprints,” typically lasting two to four weeks. Instead of the traditional waterfall approach, where requirements are determined upfront and the product is developed and tested at the end, Agile focuses on delivering small, usable segments of the product in each sprint.

Previously, software development primarily followed the Waterfall model, which lacked the iterative nature of Agile. The Agile approach, however, is iterative and incremental, aimed at facilitating quick delivery of business value. It adheres to the Agile Manifesto principles, emphasizing flexibility, collaborative efforts, continuous improvement, and timely delivery with high quality.

Benefits of Agile Methodology

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How To Integrate QA Testing In Agile Methodology?

1. Customer Satisfaction

In Agile methodology, product owners are always involved in the progress of development that is highly visible and flexible to change.

• Customers are involved in the decision-making process which leads to greater customer retention
• Its highest priority is to satisfy the customer through the early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
• Demonstrating working functionalities to customers in every sprint review.
• It delivers products to the market rapidly and frequently with each release.

2. Reduces Risk

Utilizing Agile techniques can reduce the likelihood of project failure, as there is always a working product from the outset of the first sprint, mitigating the risk of future failures.

• Developing in sprints ensures a short time between the initial project investment and validation of the approach.
• Agile provides flexibility when implementing new changes after implementation, with minimal associated costs.

3. High Product Quality

In Agile Methodology, testing is integrated during the cycle, which means that there are continuous checkups to see the product work during development. It also helps the product owner to make changes if needed and the working team is aware if there is an issue in the product.

• It elaborates and defines the requirements just in time so that the knowledge of the product is as relevant as possible to all teams.
• Continuous integration and daily testing into the development process make the development team address that issue at the right time.
• Optimal utilization of automation testing tools is ensured.
• It conducts Sprint retrospectives that allow the scrum team to continuously improve processes and performance.

4. Predictable Costs and Schedule

The product’s cost is predictable and constrained by the team’s capacity within the fixed schedule time box, supplemented by client-provided estimates prior to each sprint.

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
• Working on software over comprehensive documentation.
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
• Responding to change over plan.

5. Focus on Users

It generally uses user stories with business-focused Acceptance Criteria which define the product features by focusing on the needs of real users, each feature incrementally delivers value. It also provides the opportunity to beta-test software after each sprint.

• All activities are focused on providing tangible business values.
• All activities are focused on providing business value by ensuring a useful, usable, and engaging product.
• The customer is not defined as the project stakeholders, but the end users as well.

6. Increased flexibility

Agile implementation offers unparalleled flexibility to project teams. It enables the teams to work in smaller bursts and incorporate changes rapidly.

• Dividing projects into short sprints allows for manageable and adaptable workflows.
• Constant feedback and involvement of the product owner facilitating quick adjustments to project requirements.

7. Continuous improvement

Agile methodology emphasizes continuous improvement as a core principle. It promotes self-reflection and iterative enhancement.

• Iterative work cycles ensure that each sprint builds upon the previous one, minimizing the repetition of mistakes.
• An open culture of idea exchange and collaboration cultivates shared learning opportunities among team members, thereby enabling collective improvement.

Bottom line

Organizations today seek flexible project delivery methods, gravitating towards Agile Project Management to adapt to rapid changes. While traditional project management processes persist, embracing agility poses perceived risks due to its informality. Yet, a mature Agile approach, coupled with Scrum training, empowers professionals to navigate these challenges, evolving into proficient Scrum Masters who enhance business value.

Agile Project Management stands as a critical strategy for value-driven efficiency amid perpetual flux. Its iterative nature and customer-centric ethos help enterprises address uncertainties, guarantee product excellence, and align with evolving market dynamics.

The post Core Benefits of Agile Project Management appeared first on ImpactQA.

As 2023 draws to a close, it’s the perfect time to peer into the future of Agile testing processes. What stands out as the trend that could significantly shape the destiny of your tech teams in 2024 and beyond? Are there any emerging developments poised to have a lasting impact in the years to come? Here are a few crucial agile testing trends expected to impact enterprises wishing for quality software testing in 2024.

Shift-Left Approach

One prominent agile testing trend in 2024 will be the adoption of a shift-left approach in more mainstream application development projects. The shift-left approach entails the relocation of testing activities to the early stages of development, as opposed to the traditional practice of conducting testing after the development phase. Its core principle is centered on the concept of testing at an early stage and testing often. This approach empowers test engineers to conduct more in-depth exploration during each iterative testing phase, as they focus on smaller portions of code or specific features in each iteration, as opposed to the entire end-to-end application.

The prime advantages of the Shift-Left Approach are:

• Early detection and mitigation of software bugs and vulnerabilities
• Reduced development costs and faster time-to-market
• Improved collaboration between development and operations teams

Low-code Test Automation

In contrast to traditional software development, low-code test automation remains a notably underexplored domain. You can count on the one hand the number of low-code platforms dedicated to quality assurance. This situation appears to be a missed chance, considering the potential benefits of reducing the technical complexity for individuals with a QA-oriented perspective. The integration of OpenAI’s GPT model might encourage software vendors to consider creating a low-code test automation tool tailored for quality assurance purposes.

The prime advantages of the Low-code Test Automation are:

• Accelerates test script development with minimal coding
• Reduced technical demand for streamlined automation
• Enhanced developer-tester collaboration with simplified workflows

Agile Supported by AI & ML

The effective usage of artificial intelligence and machine learning to support agile methods creates a dominant way of data analysis. Such collaboration enables software teams to find better productivity linked to testers and developers. AI & ML together provide real-time information and even offer a clear prediction as to when the project will enter the release phase. The incorporation of futuristic technologies like robotics, IoT, quantum computing, etc., is very much possible with the effective operations of AI & ML in the software development process.

The prime advantages of Agile supported by AI & ML are:

• Delivers precise insights on better approaches for creating testing code
• Assessment of code and associated tests to eliminate bugs
• Incorporation of innovative technologies for augmenting software development & time-to-market

DevOps Approach

The concept of DevOps is solely based on lean management. It focuses on merging development and operations to create a practical environment. A DevOps approach seeks to filter out the software development lifecycle to remove waste and speed up software delivery. It is observed that the combination of Agile and DevOps can refine team communication and relationships, thereby reducing software failures. Furthermore, DevOps readily amalgamates continuous testing into the development process to ensure code quality.

The prime advantages of the DevOps Approach are:

• Faster software development and deployment with continuous integration and delivery
• Integrates coding and testing processes by ensuring the testing of each code change
• Integrates operations within the team to lessen downstream testing concerns

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Success with Agile & DevOps Guided by Continuous Testing

Scaling Up Test Automation

Although not the most recent trend in agile testing, automated QA is proving to be highly impactful, with a growing number of companies recognizing its value. The initial investment is relatively affordable, aside from the expense of hiring engineers, as many solutions are either free or open source. Even with a conservative approach, substantial time savings can be achieved by utilizing a test automation tool that consolidates both automated and manual tests within a single solution.

The prime advantages of Scaling Up Test Automation are:

• Accelerates testing cycles and shortens development timelines in agile projects
• Enhances test accuracy and coverage, reducing the risk of human errors
• Enables continuous integration and delivery, promoting rapid and reliable releases

Quality Engineering

The dependency on quality engineering is more when you manage testing activities in an agile environment. What is different in quality engineering when compared to quality assurance? Quality engineering deploys continuous testing of the concerned product with the deep involvement of automation. It is ensured that the product is placed under effective testing to make it error-free.

The prime advantages of Quality Engineering are:

• Deliver quick feedback on the software product since continuous testing is
• performed covering diverse platforms and operating systems
• Reduced software failures and availability of early feedback

Adopting Unit Testing in Agile Development

Agile’s core tenet is adaptability, and unit testing aligns seamlessly with this principle. When developers create their straightforward tests, it streamlines the development process, preventing issues from reaching the QA phase. Though implementing unit tests may entail extra effort for developers and collaboration with QA, the time saved, even in the short term, significantly outweighs these initial investments.

The prime advantages of Adopting Unit Testing in Agile Development are:

• Improves code quality by encouraging cleaner and more maintainable code
• Provides faster feedback, facilitating quicker iterations and frequent software delivery in Agile development

Conclusion

The effectiveness of Agile Testing in today’s embryonic & progressive testing environment cannot be ignored. Hence, matching pace with vital technological upgrades to improve agile testing is the primary motive for most software testing companies.

You can get in touch with ImpactQA to learn more about agile testing.

The post Top 7 Agile Testing Trends to Look Out in 2024 appeared first on ImpactQA.

87% of companies have embraced agile methodology for testing their software solutions. By implementing agile methods right from the start of SLDC (Software Development Lifecycle), businesses have a tight hold on the bugs, thus ensuring that code-cleaning is more efficient. To learn why agile methodology can enhance testing outcomes and how to integrate QA into the agile methodology, continue reading.

Reasons to Embrace Agile Methodology

For the longest time, developers and testers had worked in silos. As a result, the QA team only got to start work after developers finished building a product. Although time-tested, this method carried significant risks:

• If the testing team identified the bug, the development team had to rework the code. In other words, one team could begin work only when the other team finished theirs. Hence, project timelines got stretched.
• The teams were forever uncertain about when was a product launch likely.

So, how has agile methodology transformed the landscape? Listed below are some of its primary benefits:

• Teams no longer work in silos; Instead, they communicate internally on issues and setbacks, thus working towards a common goal.
• With developers and testers working closely, bugs resolve faster. Hence, this approach allows products to launch without delays.
• With bugs identified before a product launch, companies do not worry about quality issues.

However, the software testing company must be well versed in the best practices and steps to implement the agile methodology in QA

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How to Implement QA in Agile Methodology?

Here are ways to implement QA in agile methodology, smoothly:

Determine the Process

When teams embrace agile methodology, testing and development are simultaneous.
The development process gets divided into smaller iterations. Once the build is submitted at the end of every iteration, the QA team starts working on it.
The first step to integrating QA into agile methodology is identifying the iterations, determining the gaps, and executing the test cases. Once the stages are defined, the development and testing teams collaborate to build the software solution.

When defining the process, companies must ensure that the build and feedback move seamlessly between the development and testing teams. This will help the two teams finalize the build at the earliest and enhance the outcome.

Know the Users

Who is the end-user of the software solution? Defining the target market, identifying their personas, building images, and testing use cases are essential.
Planning the tests for a pre-determined target group helps develop a focused approach.

Analyze the Risks

Companies might face several risks when setting up the QA team with a new methodology. Hence, identifying the risks, and analyzing and mitigating them is crucial.

For instance, the end goal for any team is to create a bug-free product. However, one or several bugs may go unseen despite thorough QA checks. As a result, the teams must understand and assess various probable bugs. This understanding will help them mitigate the risks of unseen bugs. Additionally, it will also help them avoid problems during development.

After all, the QA team’s work doesn’t end at the launch of the application. They will continue working on resolving issues and patching bugs for better experiences.

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Automate the Tests

It would help if the teams integrated automation with the correct methodology to improve test quality. While a few tests still require manual tools and techniques, several can be automated. Regression testing is, by far, the most tedious and time-consuming aspect of QA. It would help if specific iterations were automated to ensure the team members don’t spend much time testing the software. With the tools producing the test cases, the team can focus on the most critical tests.

Test automation solutions can help accelerate bug identification and resolution. If there are too many variables or cases where the users cannot reproduce the tests, they should opt for manual testing.

Early Testing Wins

As discussed, implementing QA at the start of the SLDC is one of the essentials. The agile testing company or provider should get to work as soon as the developer commits to the project’s first phase. This will ensure that the bugs are removed immediately. When the team tests smaller iterations, cleaning the code and maintaining the quality is easier.

However, testing early isn’t the only solution; tests should occur as frequently as possible. If the developers have committed two builds, the testing teams test the co-relation to ensure smooth outcomes.
With this agility, they can test new features as soon as they are introduced. They can even save time and money by resolving problems and mitigating risks.

Solid White-box Testing Methods

When integrating QA with agile methodology, ensure the testing teams know the potential problems and outcomes. Planning will help them determine the risks and acknowledge the solutions easily.
For instance, they would have anticipated the issues that could cloud their judgment and would be aware of the different test scenarios and the potential outcomes. Hence, going into testing with an open and knowledgeable mind can help determine the errors and resolve them.

The idea behind implementing agile methodology is to ensure all departments work closely. Companies should opt for white box testing, as it anticipates error conditions, thus helping teams identify different scenarios.

Conclusion

Moving from a traditional methodology to agile is not the only guarantee of transformation. Businesses must change mindsets, adopt a defined approach to implementing the change and make it more streamlined.
Thus, partnering with an expert agile testing company to integrate QA into testing processes is essential. They can help one manage the integration in a phased manner.

ImpactQA is an expert in agile testing services having a vast experience with global clients. They have delivered capable testing solutions and mitigated risks for several business solutions. Businesses can connect with them to integrate QA into agile for the best outcomes.

The post How To Integrate QA Testing In Agile Methodology? appeared first on ImpactQA.

The trends these days favor Agile and DevOps, likely valued by enterprises to gain a significant competitive edge with Continuous Testing acting as a driving catalyst towards superior digital transformation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has escalated the focus towards quality digital offerings, thereby pushing organizations to test early and automatically for boosting business. The best possible way to rely upon Agile and DevOps is to agree with continuous testing that provides the proper framework to address all essential requirements with changing market dynamics.

Introduction to Continuous Testing

To be clear, Continuous Testing (CT) is not a tool or technology like test automation. Similarly, you cannot define it by calling it a ‘plug-and-play process.’ There are no fixed steps for forming a Continuous Testing strategy.

In simple words, Continuous Testing can be viewed as a methodology under which testing is implemented across different phases of software delivery. It is basically by testing early and correctly, organizations get the correct direction to arrange the systems, engineering, processes, and automation required to upscale cycle time and ultimately deliver quality products and services. Continuous testing is an intelligent way to ensure improved customer experience, operational efficiency, and competitive glory on a broader canvas.

What is the Need for Agile and DevOps?

For building quality applications that are stable and secure, enterprises must focus on issues related to resource mobilization and time limitations. Such measures are vital to ensure a competitive business environment and create greater attention on continuous test automation.

The crucial factors defining the value of these two methodologies are:

• DevOps helps enterprises address their integration and acceleration needs by setting up a toolchain that passes through development, integration, QA, and delivery.
• The DevOps methodology is suitable for enterprises that aren’t able to manage demand or deploy rapid changes across the SDLC smoothly

Impact of Continuous Testing on Agile & DevOps

How do you expect applications to be intuitive and high-performing? These days, applications are used across multiple devices, browsers, operating platforms, and networks. In order to make software apps scalable, secure, and high-performing, the software development process should accommodate a robust QA approach in the form of Agile or DevOps. Looking at the modern ways of testing, Agile and DevOps ensure QA is managed through an integrated team alongside the development process.

Below mentioned are the different ways how continuous testing can prove to be a tipping point for software testing companies.

• After implementing an Agile testing service, the application is tested based on performance, usability, security, and scalability. Therefore, defects are identified and immediately fixed quite early during the SDLC. For enterprises, deploying a continuous testing strategy helps arrange the systems, processes, and automation to advance the time-to-market and install better feedback loops. Eventually, the organizations experience desirable business results.
• The effect of continuous testing is beneficial for QA specialists within the Agile testing pipeline. It creates immediate feedback for recognizing end-user experiences. Such an arrangement is helpful in managing business risks developed due to process complexities.

Switching to Continuous Testing

If you wish to develop a Continuous Testing strategy, it highlights the will to align the organization with certain business milestones.

• Faster delivery of high-quality products
• Better customer experience via quality products
• Reduced cost and advanced operational efficiency

The implementation of continuous testing also works to target prime challenges within the cycle, including:

• Lack of traceability
• Delay is analyzing the health of the software product
• Unsatisfactory automation lead to delay in QA cycle time
• Lack of scalable infrastructure leading to incapability in terms of delivery of QA requirements
• Automation fails in the absence of external systems
• Lack of real-time reporting concerning software build and testing process
• Absence of dynamic infrastructure causing unproductive resource utilization
• No centralized dashboard for precise feedback

Final Say

The complementary association of Agile, DevOps, and Continuous Testing has favored the creation of a fresh standard that supports quality deployment as a continuous process. If your organization wishes to acquire new heights in the market, the delivery of top-notch software products and services requires the active deployment of these three methodologies.

But as per a recent study, out of 70% of enterprises that adopted Agile, only 30% preferred automated testing. This makes it evident how testing processes are still stuck up in the past even though organizations are ready to spend time and resources upgrading their development processes to match the ongoing business demands.

A better way is to get in touch with a renowned software testing provider for initiating continuous testing while continuously shifting from development to testing to deployment. Get in touch with ImpactQA, a leading software testing company, to create a continuous testing strategy by consulting skilled and experienced professionals. To know more, contact us right away!

The post Success with Agile & DevOps Guided by Continuous Testing appeared first on ImpactQA.

Or maybe you were one of the testers who received a code right before its deployment and insisted that the code was not ready, yet your marketing team pushed it on release.

Most of the companies follow a culture like this where they prioritize deadlines above quality and end-up delivering codes full of bugs. Keeping the testing department aloof of the development process gives way to such chaos within the testing and development teams. Needless to say, marketing and sales teams play a major role in additionally pressurising companies into releasing codes without proper testing.

Agile methodologies come to rescue here! Agile can help bridge the gap between increasing business expectations and unsatisfactory IT delivery. Though more than 70% of the businesses today still follow the waterfall model of software development and testing, Agile testing companies are taking centre stage by offering dynamic software testing services to offer efficiency and increased speed to delivery for businesses.

Defining Agile

Looking at the definition of agile, oxford says “agile is used to describe a way of managing projects in which work is divided into a series of short tasks, with regular breaks to review the work and adapt the plans.”

Agile is a better way of developing software. In the field of testing, Agile is a kind of software testing process that follows the path laid down by agile software development. Here the development is aligned with customer’s and testing team’s requirements.

Through agile development, testing companies today have started to give value to:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

In other words, agile testing focuses on delivering a continuous stream of business value, even if your systems or processes are constantly changing.

How Agile is different from the Traditional Waterfall Approach?

The waterfall approach in software development is a sequential process in which development is done in a steady flow of steps starting from requirement analysis and going all the way to maintenance.

In this process of development, software testing is yet another phase that’s touched only until the end of the development cycle.

Here are some of the qualities of the traditional waterfall method:

• First code, then test
• Development and testing teams were considered separate from each other each working in their own silo
• Each part of the process is heavy and requires tons of documents
• Testing becomes a bottleneck in the very end, thus making it virtually impossible to maintain a schedule
• Automation tools come into picture after the coding process is completed

The waterfall approach mostly lacks effective team engagement and suffers from disrupted communication between developers.
The latest agile methodology delivers solutions to the, most common loopholes in the waterfall model.

• Brings together coding and testing
• Effective feedback and collaboration come into the picture
• The added process of exploratory testing suggests loopholes in the code before time
• Gives rise to better ideas and mind mapping
• All teams integrate into one structured operational system

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Agile testing Methodologies

Now let’s have a closer look at the most common agile testing methodologies.
Four basic agile methods are being used by developers and treasurer today:

• Behaviour Driven Development (BDD
• Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD)
• Exploratory Testing
• Session-Based Testing

1) Behaviour Driven Development (BDD)

Behaviour driven development or BDD is very similar to the test-driven development approach or TDD.

It encourages communication between the stakeholder involved in a project so every other member understands every feature of the system before the beginning of the development process. In BDD, tester developers and analysts create scenarios that promote example focussed communication in detail.

The main idea of BDD is that a specific team creates relevant scenarios and then builds a test series around those scenarios that are predicted to fail. Next, these testers build software functionality and program them to pass in the same scenarios.

The basic difference that comes from traditional Test-Driven Development (TDD) is that there, complete software functionality is tested, not just individual components of a software code.

Best practices

Best practices for testers following a BDD methodology include:

• Streamline the documentation to keep the process lean
• Embrace the famous “three amigos” model where the product owner, developer and tester come together to discuss possible issues
• Use a framework like Cucumber to define criteria accurately
• Build automated tests in a way that they can be reused as and when needed
• Make your business analysts learn the Gherkin syntax and write test cases directly

2) Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD)

Acceptance Test-Driven Development or ATDD involves three players, customer, developer, and tester. All these three players come together in meetings to gather inputs from their roles and use them to define acceptance tests. The customer focuses on the problem, the developer pays attention to proposing a possible solution to the problem and testing analysis on possible situations where things could go wrong.

It basically represents a user’s perspective and represents the possible ways of how the system can function. It also ensures that the system functions as planned. These tests are mostly automated and their script is closely similar to the BDD approach.

Best practices

Best practices for testers following an ATDD Agile methodology include:

• Interact closely with customers, for example through focus groups, to determine expectations
• Focus more on team members standing on the front line with the customers, such as sales representative, customer service agents and accountM
• Managers to understand customer expectations better
• Prioritize strategies on two questions:
  • Will your customer use the system if it does X?
  • How can we as a service provider validate if the system does X?

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Testing in Agile with Behavior Driven Development

3) Exploratory Testing

The test execution and test design phase go hand in hand in exploratory testing. It’s a type of functional testing service that focuses on interacting with the software rather than separately planning, building and running test cases. It allows testers to play with their code differently. Firstly, it’s not scripted, which means testers can mimic possible user behaviours and get to be creative in finding all possible ways that can break a software. They do not document the process but pay more attention to identify the defects. Because of its unscripted approach, exploratory testing often helps in identifying ways how users can interact with the software in real life.

Exploratory testing follows four key principles:

1. Parallel test planning, test design and test execution
2. Specific yet flexible
3. Aligned toward the investigation of potential opportunities
4. Knowledge sharing

Best practices

Best practices for testers using exploratory testing include:

• Use tools like mind map or spreadsheet to organise the functionality of the application
• Focus more on certain areas
• Keep a track of your test scripts to avoid repeating mistakes
• Document results in tools like qTest Explorer to maintain accountability

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7 Best Practices of Exploratory Testing

4) Session Based Testing

Session-based testing is very similar to exploratory testing but more organised. Its goal is to ensure that the software is tested comprehensively. It adds charters that helps testers identify what to test and in which sequence. Secondly, it adds test reports which give testers the option to document all their discoveries throughout the testing process. These tests are conducted in time-boxed sessions which ends with a face-to-face brief between testers and developers, scrum masters or managers, covering the following points:

1. What was done? (Past)
2. What was discovered or achieved? (Results)
3. What issues did they face? (Obstacles)
4. What is left? (Outlook)
5. What did they felt about the areas they tested? (Feelings).

Best practices

Best practices for testers using session-based testing include:

• Outline clear directions or missions for testers to be on track
• Develop a clear charter that indicates the mission
• Run the testing session without any interruptions
• Document all your activities and notes during the session in a session report maintained throughout the test
• Hold a briefing session between the tester and the manager to review your findings from the session and discuss the strategy ahead

Agile Testing Quadrants

With the above testing methodologies well in place, it’s difficult to assess which type of tests should be run, how often to run, when to run, and who to run it by? The famous concept of agile testing quadrants comes into picture here, given by Gregory and Crispin, that provides a taxonomy of the tests. As per Crispin, the two left-hand quadrants can help teams know which of the given codes to write and understand when they are done writing. The two-right handed quadrants helps the team know more about the code they have written by providing valuable feedback to the left-hand quadrants.

Quadrant 1:

Automated Quadrant – This quadrant has tests that are specifically designed to improve the code of the product being scripted. These tests help improve the design without affecting the functionality as a whole. The tests being covered here include unit tests, API tests, web service testing and component tests. The main idea is to improve the quality of the product by a structured source code management and seamlessly integrated development environment. This quadrant helps teams identify possible pain points and eases out the processes for the future. Some of the basic tools used here include TeamCity, xUnit, Eclipse, IntelliJ Idea, etc.

Quadrant 2:

Automated and manual Quadrant – This quadrant contains tests such as Functional testing, story tests, Prototypes, and simulations that are designed to improve the business outcomes. They help create products that drive value for the business and customers by formulating the right set of questions and ultimately derive tests that are aligned with the business. It involves a lot of brainstorming and planning. To support this, tools like MindMap may be used along with Visio for a straight flow of diagrams. Behaviour driven tools such as Cucumber and easyB can be easily used to ease functionality.

Quadrant 3:

Manual Quadrant – This quadrant is associated with Manual testing and contains tests to provide feedback for the tests that are conducted in Q1 and Q2. It tests the product and user experience by evaluating the product and its use by opting for options like demos, feedback, checking user experience, etc. The tests most commonly used here include Exploratory Testing, Scenario-based Testing, Usability Testing, User Acceptance Testing, and Alpha/Beta testing. It involves intuition and critical thinking along with a strategical usage of Simulator and emulators.

Quadrant 4:

Tools Quadrant – This quadrant is associated with Automated tools and contains tests that use technology to ensure the code fulfils every non-functional requirement such as security and compatibility. The tests used in this process include Performance & Load Testing and Security Testing. Majorly the tests performed in this quadrant are done on priority basis which means they may begin early in the SDLC process or be introduced later in testing as and when required. Major tools used in this process include jConsole, jProfiler, Loadrunner, jMeter, jUnitPerf, etc.

Make Agile Testing Work for your Enterprise

With agile testing, development can be more controlled that can result in reduced bugs in code and fewer chances or your application crashing down. Repetitive testing ensures all the components of your software system are working correctly at every single step. Agile testing is a necessary step towards achieving high test coverage and better code quality along with delivering value to your customers.

We at ImpactQA follow the best agile testing practises in our end-to-end testing procedures. Our best in industry testing approach helps our clients seamlessly integrate both their agile and hybrid development processes together to deliver quality products.

Schedule a call to know how ImpactQA can help you get better testing results!

The post Agile Testing: Best Practices and Methodology appeared first on ImpactQA.

AGILE – A term coined in 2011 by a small group of people who were tired of the traditional approach of Software Management of developing projects.

Agile helps teams to provide fast and unpredictable responses to the feedback they receive on their projects.

The 12 principles of agile development include:

1. Customer satisfaction through early & continuous software delivery

Clients are happier if they don’t have to wait for extended periods of time and receive working software at timely intervals between releases.

2. Accommodate changing needs throughout the development process

Whenever there is a change in requirement or feature, it should not cause a delay in the development process and get accommodated easily in the software.

3. Frequent delivery of working software

As Scrum operates in software sprints or iterations, this ensures regular delivery of working software.

4. Collaboration between the developers & business stakeholders during the project

Better decisions are made when the business and technical team collaborate.

5. Support, belief, & motivate the people involved

The unhappy teams cannot deliver their best like the motivated teams. So, support and trust are needed on the team.

6. Enable face-to-face interactions

There is no miscommunication when teams are co-located which not only saves time but also gives better interaction result.

7. Working software is the prime measure of improvement

The ultimate measure of progress is delivering functional software to the customer.

8. Agile processes to support a consistent development pace

Agile process establishes a routine through which teams establish an iterative and maintainable speed through which they can deliver functional software, and they repeat it with each release.

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Core Benefits of Agile Project Management

9. Attention to technical aspects & design enhances agility

The apt skills and righteous design ensures the team can maintain the speed, constantly improve the product and back up the change.

10. Simplicity

Develop just enough to get the job done at the moment.

11. Teams which are self-organized encourage great designs, requirements, and architectures

Motivated and Dexterous team members who have the decisiveness, take ownership and interact regularly with other members of the team and share designs that deliver standard products.

12. Regular reflections on how to become more and more effective

Self-evolution, process betterment, advancing expertise, and techniques help the team members to work more coherently.

The aim of Agile is to merge development with the business needs, and the success of Agile is evident. Agile projects are customer-centric and advocate customer guidance and engagement. Because of this, Agile has grown to be an overall view of software development throughout the software development industry and an industry all by itself.

What is a Digital Transformation?

It is the unification of digital technology into all areas of business, radically changing how you utilize and yield value to customers. It is also an aesthetic change that requires organizations to continuously confront the status quo, investigate, and get comfortable with unfulfillment. 

Digital Transformation is the unprecedented use of digital technology to resolve conventional problems. These digital solutions capacitate inherently new types of innovation and artistry, rather than simply upgrade and support conventional methods.

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What is Agile Digital Transformation?

An agile transformation is an act of transfiguring an organization’s form or nature gradually to one that is able to accept and advance in an adaptable, cooperative, self-organizing, fast wavering environment. The Agile Manifesto values and principles can be followed and taught throughout any type of establishment as it does not just apply to development teams.

The whole establishment needs to interpret the clarity of an agile transformation and the value of it in order to gain from the rewards of achieving true, healthy agility. The whole cultural and organizational mindset must change to one that embraces a culture of self-organization and collaboration.

Principles of Agile Digital Transformation:

PRINCIPLE 1:  START WITH A TRANSFORMATIVE VISION

As per a recent Gartner survey, 63% of business leaders stipulated they don’t exactly know what would be the possibilities of next-generation technology. Not astonishingly, just 13% of respondents said they have discovered the next paramount digital business technology investment. The reason for this is that the company lacks a transformation vision that will plan out a digital strategy and, more importantly, give the business the ability to measure progress and make real-time adjustments to improve outcome. Superior management must create, be coherent, and interface the compelling future digital vision.  Transfiguration does not happen bottom

-up.

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PRINCIPLE 2:  FOCUS ON BUILDING DIGITAL CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT

Successful digital transformations are always built on front-end customer experience, unlike traditional digital projects. There should be more and more exposure to new growth opportunities by adding digital features to products as well as by changing direction and considering how the products and their services adapt to the digital customer. To create a value we need not use technologies and tools as an integrated package instead there should be sets of applications that can automate the user experience through social, data, cloud and mobile.

PRINCIPLE 3:  SUPPORT THE VISION WITH SECURE DIGITAL PLATFORMS

The organizations must always prioritize risks germane as per their specific operation. As the hottest application in need is for security, there should be smart tools to manage the risks for detecting the intrusions quickly and to respond in real time. The key to liberating the existing IT assets and enabling digital innovation with growth is the interface to digital components. The security of assets and data is paramount, the right strategy will support the speed, safety, and growth required in today’s digital economy.

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PRINCIPLE 4: DRIVE INSIGHT WITH DATA-DRIVEN VISUALIZATION

The growing digital organizations not only persistently collect data but identify and envision that data in a context that induces insights that can be acted upon. The solution to unlocking real-time data intelligence for zestful and unified customer engagement is comprehending and address customer personas and micro-segments.

Traditionally companies have a reasonably strong foundation of sales transactional data. However, this data often lacks the necessary dimensionality to create meaningful demographic, attitudinal, and predictive insights. In addition, data rarely is augmented by leveraging publically available and purchased data.

Many organizations are using data visualization to communicate information clearly and efficiently to users through statistical graphics, plots, infographics, and dynamic tables and charts. Effective envisions helps users in examining and reasoning data and documentation.

PRINCIPLE 5: EMBRACE DIGITAL AGILITY TO CREATE ADVANTAGE

Due to the constantly changing customer and market conditions, Business leaders often wrestle to execute extensive projects. The conventional business model features unconnected, unintegrated platforms by business function and projects with 6-18 month lifecycles. Oftentimes, by the time the project is accomplished, market and user requirements have changed with success criteria and ROI seldom realized.

To circumvent these perils, firms must grab adaptable differentiation by developing a “digital agility advantage” that allows a company to embrace market and operational changes as a matter of routine through the use of digital technologies. Digital agility initiatives are rooted in 30-day sprints with new iterations built better and faster. This allows a company to constantly evaluate and modify – the concept of learning, launch, re-learn, re-launch – rectifying the perspective in attainable iterations. Thriving organizations in the digital age must exhibit an awareness of how to be agile; only then, they would be able to execute in an agile way.

The post Agile Digital Transformation appeared first on ImpactQA.

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Core Benefits of Agile Project Management

Agile began as a product development innovation as it sparked a corporate approach and process revolution. Agile development laid the logical groundwork for the Lean movement in entrepreneurship, which pushed mainstream business leaders to systematize and manage their business model & product development work around a sequence of experiments, testing significant hypothesis along the way. Agile initially grab attention and turn out popular in the startup world, but soon were embraced by famous business leaders around the world.

According to the new study continuous development (generally call CI/CD (continuous integration and deployment) will change the testing world as much as the agile revolution did. But will it? We have a tendency as technical experts to view Agile as an extensive way of talking about our daily standups or SCRUM. However, from the HBR’s point of view, it meant more than that. The claimers say that CI/CD, which they call “continuous development,” will have a great bang and effect, even, and has started in the “bowels of technology companies & startups.” They suggest that only 20% of IT teams are utilizing some form of what they call “continuous development.” Regardless, they also suggest managers to change their mindset and pay attention and find dramatic strategic benefits of successfully implementing Continuous Development: maximize engineering productivity, faster time to market, fix errors quicker and experiment more rapidly.

• Maximize engineering productivity

High-quality engineers love continuous delivery environments as they can instantaneously see how their work adds value to the organization.

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• Faster time-to-market

Customers enjoy the additional advantages of new features sooner. Plus, the developers receive customer feedback on their creative features very rapidly, which leads to better feature that accurately meet client’s needs.

• Run more experiments rapidly

Frequent releases allow companies to constantly experiment with newly added features and test them on various audiences. In few cases, fresh features are deployed in the code and turned off or on for a specific customer segment by using an easy feature flag.

• Fix errors quicker

Because software code is released in small batches, it is simpler to identify the source of any troubles. Even it is also simpler to understand the consequences of an alteration if you’re making lots of simple steps.

So, Continuous Development is a growing buzz in the software industry. For good reason: it signifies the effective method for software development to attain both external and internal objectives. The insight here for business executives is that continuous delivery is more than merely an obscure software development. It represents a significant cultural weapon and competitive advantage in the battle for talent and customer loyalty.

The post Will CI/CD Change the Testing Scenario Like Agile Did? appeared first on ImpactQA.

In today’s hyper-competitive business environment, organizations are constantly innovating to gain an edge in the market. Towards this objective, most organizations have adopted Agile and DevOps practices for delivering software. A common practice that has evolved much over the last two decades is automation of testing. Various tools and frameworks have evolved in these two decades with an intent to reduce the cost of automation as well as to popularize its use across various persona in the SDLC for enabling better collaboration and effectiveness.
One of the key challenges of test automation remained a lack of common understanding between the business analyst, manual tester, developer and automation engineer of what was being tested and how. Behavior Driven Development was introduced to bridge this gap and bring the domain expertise, business logic, and tests into a common framework comprising of a language based inputs and popular test automation tools.

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BDD (Behaviour-Driven Development) - Nuts & the Bolts

Behavior Driven Development (BDD) Explained

BDD (Behavior Driven Development) style framework makes use of simple, domain-specific scripting language (DSL). These domain-specific scripting languages convert structured natural language statements into executable tests. The outcome is a closer relationship to the acceptance criteria for a given function and the tests are used to validate that functionality.

BDD primarily works with open source tools and technologies like Selenium WebDriver, Appium and other Java-based libraries for test implementation and support. In this approach, Gherkin language is a layer of abstraction which works on an implementation layer which in turn is integrated with the execution layer. Figure 1 depicts the high-level structure of the implementation.

Test scripts developed in BDD framework provides a clear picture of the behavior/flow of the system and applications under test, the input and its expected output.

BDD also supports various types of test data management approaches. The test data can be managed in the feature file with scenario outline and example as well as externally using various forms like JSON, XML, Excel, etc.

BDD Tools

BDD act as a test layer that can be easily integrated with any type of automation framework. Some of the popular tools like Cucumber provide support for both pre-defined steps and customized steps which can be directly used by the testers for scripting. The different BDD implementation tools available in the market support various types of programming languages like Java, C#, Ruby, Python, etc. which increases the potential of framework customization and adaptability.

Selecting a BDD tool:

Every tool and approach have its pros and cons. Careful consideration has to be given in selecting the right tools in order to be successful. Before making any decision on the BDD approach implementation it is always advisable to understand the application flows, features, behavior and the kind of testing that needs to be performed. There should be a thorough research on the fitment of BDD with the framework along with a proper design which makes the BDD implementation more successful.

In order to reap the maximum benefits of a tool or an approach, it is always advisable to follow its best practices.

Caution: BDD may not be the ideal framework in every situation. E.g. in case of scenarios comprising of the very large number of test steps, BDD framework could result in increased test script maintenance. It is always advisable to externalize the test data from the test scripts and the code implementation. Hence the feature file’s test data management feature is not recommended if the test data is huge.

If you have an existing product and you want to automate a large set of regression tests, (re)writing these as feature files using Gherkin syntax and parsing them in your framework would not add much value as the feature is already developed.

If the test case scripting in BDD form is not carried out in a controlled or disciplined way, it might lead to certain problems like duplication of steps which would result in the unmanageable and confusing framework.

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Common Features of BDD tools:

Some of the features of Cucumber (commonly used to implement BDD framework) are mentioned as below:

1. Uses plain English user-friendly language to script.
2. Open source and easy to understand and implement.
3. Test data can be managed with feature files in case of small applications and externally for medium and high complex applications.
4. Supports informative and detailed test execution reporting. There are options available to plug in various different reporting libraries like extent reports, cucumber enhanced reports, etc. with the BDD framework. These reports can be customized as per the requirement of the project.
5. BDD framework can be easily integrated with Jenkins and other related tools in order to support Continuous Integration and delivery models.
6. BDD framework implemented using these tools can be easily integrated with 3^rdparty tools to support Test Management and Defect Management processes.
7. BDD style frameworks are supported for all the platforms and applications like Desktop/Mobile Web and Mobile Apps.
8. Parallel execution, headless browser execution, API based execution are all achievable with BDD. There are a lot of open source tools available in the market supporting these concepts or integrations. To name few of them, Selenium and Appium grids with Cucumber to support parallel execution, Rest Assured to support API based executions, etc.
9. BDD framework also supports Cloud-based execution with various providers like AWS, SauceLabs, Xamarin, etc.

Best practices for implementing BDD

• If the automation framework provides pre-defined steps to use, then there should be the proper availability of cheat sheet/document to refer otherwise it would really become a bottleneck for testers to script with the BDD style framework.
• Actions/methods developed for the steps definitions should be reusable and mapped to unique actions or activities.
• Features provided by BDD like Background, Hooks should be wisely used.
• Feature files created should be unique and be mapped to the application features.
• The detailed narrative should be provided to understand the feature and its scenarios.
• As mentioned above, test data should be managed externally in order to separate test data management, test cases management, and the framework code.
• There are a lot of online tutorials available to understand the workflow of BDD and its implementation with the different types of automation frameworks and approaches.

The Benefits of BDD

• BDD test cases are in the form of plain English language, thereby reducing the need and effort of maintaining additional documentation.
• With BDD, testers can script test cases in parallel to development, which in turn saves a lot of efforts required later during automation scripting.
• Another important benefit of BDD is that even a non-technical tester can develop and maintain automation scripts, thereby reducing dependency on technical members who in turn can dedicate their time to software development.
• High visibility of project’s progress to all the stakeholders is ensured with BDD (HOW?).
• Cost and effort of testing a product reduce considerably.
• Requirement traceability matrix can be easily generated with this approach.
• Finally, the software/ product gets delivered with high quality in a short period of time, providing business agility

At ImpactQA, we have recently implemented BDD for automation in several projects and customers are reaping the benefits listed above. For any questions or comments, please reach out to us at services@impactqa.com

The post Testing in Agile with Behavior Driven Development appeared first on ImpactQA.