Agile (Testing) Methodology

Contents

Overview.................................................................................................................................3
Why OLD strategies do not always work..................................................................................3
What is AGILE Testing methodology?.......................................................................................3
What is a Story?......................................................................................................................4
Sprints.....................................................................................................................................4
Scrum Team – Scrum Master....................................................................................................4
Scrum meeting........................................................................................................................5
Agile Flowchart........................................................................................................................5
Automation makes an entry....................................................................................................5
Advantages..............................................................................................................................6
Challenges...............................................................................................................................6
Conclusion to Agile – Scrum............................................................................................................7
Overview
The traditional strategies were bound to much strict compliance, which did not give the company many
chances to incorporate all the latest changes effectively. This raised a need for a light weight and flexible
methodology to overcome the basic issues in traditional methodologies

Why OLD / Traditional methodologies did not work

Detailed test planning was required in traditional methodologies

 Not enough time
 Too many changes

Dedicating a phase for testing

 No iterations, so complete testing needs to be done in fixed timelines
 In Agile, a good tester is never done with his testing due to frequent changes in every iteration

Change control
 Changes are a commonplace in today’s world, which happen on the fly and all these frequent
changes could not be incorporated

What is AGILE Testing methodology?

Agile methodology is a software development / testing practice which abides by the Agile manifesto. Agile
manifesto is a statement of principles which was drafted by a group of representatives of various new
software development/testing methodologies, in the early 2000s to overcome the problems faced in
traditional development/testing methodologies and also to easily maneuver software activities in today’s
complex Business activities using light weight practices.

In Agile, developers and testers work together through out the cycle.

However, Agile methodology is followed differently in different organizations; but still, they share certain
common principles.

Agile favors direct communication within the team as well as the customer over complete documentation
and quick adaptation to change instead of fixing the problem later on. Stories achieve this.
What is a Story?
A story is a business and functional requirement created in a simple language, allowing developer and
client/customer to discuss requirements throughout the project lifetime. Their main purpose is to influence
the software development. Then they are passed on to the testers.

Allow projects to be broken into small increments

Each story spans across one or more functional areas.

Sprints
Sprints mean a specific time period (generally 2 weeks) defined to complete a product
development/testing cycle.
The software development and testing activities are divided into a number of sprints.

Scrum Team – Scrum Master

Some organizations follow a process of dividing their team into different scrum teams (which include both
developers and testers). Each team will keep the ownership for identified modules / business areas.

Each team will be led by a scrum master. He will not actually lead the team, but act as a buffer to remove
any hindering influences, to facilitate the team to reach the sprint goal.
Scrum meeting
Scrum meetings are daily short discussions that happen within the team to discuss what was done on that
scrum and the activities planned for next scrum. Meaning, all developers/testers will now know the exact
progress and happenings in their team.

Agile Flowchart

After development activities are completed with a story, it is passed on to testers to carry on with their
activities using the story as a use case. Manual testers check for gaps in the story if any, and proceed with
manual test execution. Tests which are marked as passed in this phase are chosen for automation.

Automation makes an entry

Running the tests over and over again gives you confidence that the new work just added to the system
didn’t break or destabilize anything that used to work and that the new code does what it is supposed to
do.

Together the set of automated tests can form a regression test suite. Regression testing is selective
retesting of a system or component to verify that modifications have not caused unintended effects and
that the system or component still complies with its specified requirements. The purpose of these
regression tests is to show that the software’s behavior is unchanged unless it is specifically changed due to
the latest software or data change.

These regression suites can be updated after every sprint and run just before closing a sprint or starting a
new sprint.

Advantages

 Quick adaptation to change in user/business requirements, instead of fixing the problem at the end
of complete development

 User stories are a quick way of handling customer requirements without having to elaborate vast
formalized requirement documents and without performing overloaded administrative tasks
related to maintaining them. The intention with the user story is to be able to respond faster and
with less overhead to rapidly changing real-world requirements.

 A user story is an informal statement of the requirement as long as the correspondence of

acceptance procedures is lacking.

 Maintaining a close customer contact.

 Allow projects to be broken into small increments, so that frequent automated regression and
functional testing can be done to identify issues at a much initial stage.

Challenges

 Stories must be defined in terms of business value.

 Stories should not span iterations/sprints.

 Good story definition is difficult to do.

 Clumsy story definition often impacts testers more than developers.

 Don’t “test” the stories, just help get them right.

 Testers should co-locate with developers and analysts.

 Testers have been an oppressed group and have often stuck together to provide mutual support. If
you’re going Agile, then it’s time to let go of this.

 Agile only works when there is lots of both formal and informal communication within a team.
Conclusion to Agile – Scrum

 The need for business to respond rapidly in an innovative, cost effective and efficient way is
compelling the use of agile methods.

 The future of agile methodologies seems very dominant.

 Some projects may be executed better with a more traditional predictive approach. One thing is
clear: that there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution.