Agile projects also have a structured and organized approach to testing. Testing is important to make sure the product or service is of good quality, especially since there are usually multiple releases in Agile projects.
We focus on discussing requirements. Team members work closely with the Product Owner and Business Analyst to create user stories and acceptance criteria. Testers should be involved from the beginning to help define the Definition of Done, explore User Stories, and make sure validation criteria are followed. In Agile projects, every team member, no matter their role, needs to be proactive, enthusiastic, and forward-thinking when understanding requirements.
Agile not only improves the software testing process, but also adds flexibility and makes things easier to use. This leads to continuous improvement in the process and more testing being done because people are satisfied with it. The simple process is testing and development happen together in the same sprint. The testing team focuses on how the system will behave after the new changes are made and whether it meets the business needs or acceptance criteria. At the same time, the development team works on the design and code changes. The testing team creates test scenarios and test scripts. Once the code is ready for testing, the testing team starts the testing, which should be finished by the end of the sprint. The testing team is expected to work on smaller parts of the system and test them as they are provided, instead of waiting for the entire functionality to be completed.
Agile Meetings
Testers are following and attend the agile meetings to capture more requirement/design findings and production issues in the early phase & be flexible to adjust the strategy & plan to be adapt to the project plan and goals.
Test Strategy and Planning
The testing in Agile is no different to other project methodologies. The testing team has to definite testing approach and strategy in each project. It is to cover the testing types (both functional and non-functional) will be executed in the project.
In Agile, the test strategy needs to be reviewed at the beginning of each sprint due to the changing scope of requirements and testing. The test plan is created by the testing team, which is updated in each sprint and continued until the release. Testers participate in design discussions in Agile projects to identify the testing types to be applied and plan their test cases better.
Test Data Management
It becomes difficult when the system is dependent on another team for test data. Setting up test data is done along the Sprint to make it available just in time. The analysis of data needs is done during Refinement Meeting (backlog grooming) and Sprint planning meetings. If the data is complex and huge, it may not be possible to get adequate support from the team owning the data. Test data created in earlier sprints can be reused or used with minor modifications to avoid redundant data requests and reduce turnaround time for test data creation and manipulation.
Test Data setup activities and a Test data repository to increase reusability. Metrics-based test execution can improve tracking and coverage, while Risk-Based testing can be used in critical situations. To maximize test coverage, use Sprint Traceability Metrics. Agile Review Checklists can increase the quality of deliverables. Strong collaboration with waterfall teams can help balance workload during a crisis.
Need of Automation Test
In Agile, continuous testing of functionalities developed in past sprints is necessary. Automation test help to complete regression testing on time. Testers will focus on new functionality that requires manual testing, rather than retesting existing functionalities. A smaller number of automated test cases, when aggregated in each sprint, form an exhaustive regression suite that covers almost all functionalities from a system, regression, and acceptance testing. This helps minimize the cost of the project in the Release Sprint, as the majority of the testing can be handled through existing automation.
Defect Management
It is important to understand how the system works whether there is any bug that the team has spent effort to fix it. According to the bug list, the team can analyze for improvement later. So, whenever the stories are available to test, the testing team starts testing and finds bugs. the testing team communicates to the development team to fix it and also raise a defect in the bug tracking system.
What if a defect comes up later in the sprint or a defect is not directly related to any of the tasks taken up in the sprint? In such cases, a defect triage meeting is held to discuss if it can be fixed during the same sprint and how much effort is needed to fix and retest it. If the effort required is too high and it is expected that it cannot be completed in the current sprint, it is either moved to a task related to the problem that will be planned in a future sprint, or it is turned into a new task and assigned to a future sprint.
Acceptance criteria
Sprint acceptance and story acceptance needs to be testable & be reviewed in the sprint planning. It helps the team to make decision in sprint review,
Test Coverage
It’s important to identify and finalize the tests needed for user stories. This can be challenging because there is limited time for each Sprint. If the tests are not thorough enough, important requirements may be missed. Test coverage is typically discussed and decided upon during meetings where the backlog is reviewed, and the Sprint is planned.
To prevent missing any test scenarios, it can be helpful to create a matrix that shows the relationship between the requirements, user stories, and test cases. It’s also a good idea to use test management tool which can link each test case to the corresponding user story.
If there are changes made to the code, it’s important to make sure that the tests are still comprehensive. This can be done by analyzing the impact of the changes, reviewing the source code, and making sure that all changed code is properly tested.
Test Report
According to the Agile Manifesto, “While there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.” This does not mean that documentation should be avoided, but rather that creating working software should take priority over creating documentation. The test report is necessary to summarize what the team has been done in the sprint and tracking some KPIs to evaluate the effectiveness of the team.
