An Overview
Owing to the high demand of extensive software and applications which can perform a perform exceptionally well, the software development is gradually shifting towards new development methodologies, out of which, agile development is the most prominent one.
Agile testing can simply be understood as a software testing methodology which follows the agile software development principles.
The Agile Workflow
Agile software testing is the software testing carried out in the context of an agile workflow. In the Agile development approach, software testing is not considered as an entirely different task. Rather, the developers and the software testers are considered as an integral team, who should work in collaboration with each other during the SDLC to ensure that the software being developed completely adheres to its development requirements and specifications.
As per the Agile viewpoint, efficient production of a software can severely get hampered if the development team strives to refine their code in order to make it perfect, before passing it on to a separate testing team. The reason is, when the perfect code handed over by the development team to the testing team, they may break it in multiple ways to test it and send the damage report back to the development team. This two-step process requires a lot of time, effort and money. But, if development and testing can be integrated together, the time and money can be saved.
Ways In Which Agile Testing Helps In Eliminating Testing Inefficiencies
Here are the top ways in which Agile Testing helps in eliminating the testing inefficiencies:
Seamless Communication
As a software developer and tester work as a team and in close collaboration at every stage of the project, a lot of coordination and communication happen between the two. With seamless communication, often the issues which arise between testing and development team due to lack of communication can be overcome.
Also, any defects can be identified and resolved immediately. The bugs detected by the testing team can instantly be brought to the attention of the development team, and a fix for the bug can be developed well in time. All these help in saving a lot of time, effort and money.
Effective Distribution of Responsibility
As both the developers and testers work together, there is an effective distribution of responsibility. The developers work on developing the code, while at the same time, the testers keep on writing the new test cases. Once a unit of the code is ready, it is tested and the feedback is provided to the developer, who then takes care of correcting the code or fixing any issues. In the meantime, the tester works on preparing the next test case.
It effectively decreases the time to market of the product and ensures that the testing gets completed along with the development.
Support For Continuous Delivery
The agile methodologies are known to support the continuous delivery, as the agile approach requires all the stakeholders communicate on a regular basis. Thus, there is continuous communication between the delivery teams, leads, users and business managers. All these people emphasize on constantly modifying and streamlining both, new and modified software, right in the development environment.
Elimination of Technical Debt
Technical excellence implies a situation where the overall IT system is festooned with security, usability, accessibility, performance efficiency and reliability. But sometimes, to achieve the technical excellence, the “technical debt” gets built up. It is the gap in what is being created and what is being desired by the end user.
Agile testing helps in decreasing and eliminating the technical debt, by ensuring that the teams working on the project always stay in close coordination with each other and don’t get distracted from the desired objective.
The aforementioned points prove hat agile testing is one of the best testing methodologies companies can adapt to save time, money and effort on the development of exhaustive software/applications.
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