Published on: August, 2012
Published on: August, 2012
Agile Software Testing By Belatrix Software | Topics: Software Development
The testing phase of software development sometimes gets the short shrift from developers and IT managers. Yet testing is the only way to determine whether an application will function properly at deployment. Without an effective testing strategy, companies sometimes blindly take on significant risks that go well beyond simply having poor functioning software. Organizational ramifications can be fierce, including the risk of:
At the development level, an oversight in testing can trigger countless technical and project outcome challenges:
Agile testing mitigates these risks and presents an effective solution to ensure that you achieve the technical, project and business goals of the development process. In this whitepaper, we discuss Agile Testing, why it’s important, and how to implement it.
Agile Testing is a software testing practice that follows the principles of Agile software development. Agile development integrates testing into the development process, verses having it as a separate phase. Testing therefore is an integral part of the core software development and actively participates though out the software coding process. Agile Testing involves a cross-functional Agile team actively relying on the special expertise contributed by Testers. This allows the combined team to better meet the project’s defined business, software usability, quality, and timeline objectives. Agile teams use a “whole-team” approach to “bake in quality” to the software product. This approach allows the team to work at a sustainable pace because testing occurs in real time, allowing testers to collaborate actively with the development team and giving them an ability to identify any issues and transfer those into executable specifications that guide coding. Testing and coding are done incrementally and iteratively, building up each feature until it provides enough value to release to production.
Effective agile projects generally address the following important elements:
The process diagram at the back of this paper describes how the process works? Please note that for the purposes of this paper, some steps of the Scrum have not been included in diagram
Automation is a critical component of Agile testing. It would be impossible to keep pace with the Agile development schedule otherwise. Automation is used to run regression testing. The combined team (Developers, Product Owners and Testers) usually predetermine, at the start of the project, which parts of the software will be tested using automation.
Continuous integration/builds, unit, functional and integration test execution as well as continuous or automated deployment are common areas where automation may work better than traditional tests.
The entire project team agrees upfront on which of the main flows will be automated. They also determine at this point how to prioritize defects identified by automation, and how to fix that during sprints.
Automated tests consist of unit tests, capable of verifying even the most minute segment of software. Furthermore, it does so rapidly. This makes it possible to execute the test set multiple times per day, per hour or even more frequently if needed.
The benefits of automation include:
If the ultimate goal or big picture requirements are unclear, the details can become muddled. Normally for new products the software architecture takes a path based on the initial requirements. If the requirements change (as allowed for in Agile), the following scenarios can occur:
Testing tools include:
Selenium, IBM-Rational Functional Tester, MS-Team Foundation Server, HP Mercury, Apodora, Ranorex, Eclipse, Watir, Watin, Paros proxy, Nunit, MS SQL, Jira, Rally, TestLink, Jmeter, Pywinauto, Virtual Machines, WinSCP, XML, XLST, etc.
Relevant Technologies include:
C#, Java, Python, Silverlight etc.
The key message is that testing should be considered a crucial process to the final software outcome. Employing an Agile Testing approach can ensure overall alignment between Testing and Software Development, yielding overall project outcome and teaming benefits.
Belatrix Software Factory is a leading information Technology (ITO) provider offering Nearshore and Offshore software development and QA services. Belatrix’s clients include both established Fortune level and emerging, venture backed firms seeking to expand their global development resources. The firm works with clients in multiple countries, including USA, Canada, Spain, Germany, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico among others. Its development centers are located in two locations in Mendoza, Argentina, and one, recently added, in Lima, Peru. Belatrix, founded in 1993, is privately held with headquarters in Mendoza, Argentina.
Belatrix Software Factory – Quality Assurance Services
Belatrix offers comprehensive testing services to ensure that your product – project, web site or web application – conforms to stated/documented behavior and specifications. Our team performs tests of your application on all of the relevant operating systems and browser versions. Once a product’s expected functionality has been defined, test cases or test procedures are created to test actual against expected behavior of the program. Belatrix’s Quality Assurance practice provides testing and QA services for projects developed internally as well as for its clients. It also provides guidance to improve existing practices by developing standardized processes for the entire company and by applying lessons learned from ISO™, IQNet standards and CMMI™-SEI.
Belatrix’s QA team specializes in high value-added QA services that improves its clients’ project processes. Because of this we are extremely selective in our recruitment initiatives. We only hire top software engineers that have a passion for Quality Assurance.
Testing Strategies offered:
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