How to Align Testing with an Agile Delivery Process

As soon as you determine which testing methodology is ideal for your business, you're not really done yet. You still need to align testing together with the delivery. To accomplish this goal we urge a three-pronged strategy:

1) Get involved with the development process as early as possible

The sooner testers can get involved, the better. Ideally, testers must be present from day one. That's because giving anglers a seat at the table every step of the way stipulates a much greater level of insight into requirements and goals, encourages cooperation and helps hammer home the need to conduct regular (if not continuous) testing.

2) Test frequently, but thoughtfully

As a growing number of teams adopt Agile methodologies, efficiency is everything. This need for speed has directed teams to adopt DevOps and constant integration as well so as to keep things going, which requires testing more frequently. But in the midst of an efficiency and frequency concentrated shakeup, testers need to remain thoughtful so as to not create more overhead and run unnecessary tests that really slow down the process.

3) Hit the ground running with evaluation creation

Remembering the need for speed in the modern Agile, DevOps driven universe, testers will need to hit the ground running when it comes to getting tests generated. Specifically, the more testers can reduce the time from requirements gathering to test creation, the greater. Having a chair at the table for many discussions from the very beginning should help in this respect.

What is Next for Agile Testing?

Though Agile has made significant inroads into the software development lifecycle, there is still a long way to go, particularly among examining teams.

Moving forward, more widespread adoption and greater maturity of Agile methodologies will need testers to go beyond test development and implementation and start to focus on code integration and delivery also. 

At the exact same time, testers will need to hone their automation skills, become more involved in the entire software development process and continue to develop a collaborative relationship with programmers. Finally, these changes will also require testers to become experts at development and product usage in order to give more holistic testing strategies and take on the function of"quality champions."

In the future, three Important tenets will become especially important for testers functioning in Agile environments:

1) Communication

Agile necessitates a tight collaboration between testers and programmers, which cooperation makes communication a priority for testers. Additionally, in a world where quality becomes everyone's responsibility, testers will end up"quality winners" that function as internal specialists, which will put their ability to clearly communicate analyzing requirements and reasoning under the spotlight.

2) Skill Diversity

Within an Agile environment, everything can change on a dime, which needs testers to be elastic. Part of this adaptability is having a varied skillset so that individuals can change course as needed. For instance, functional testers need to expand their skills beyond guide scripted execution. This diverse skillset will be crucial as different sprints need different types of testing to be implemented in a brief timeframe.

3) Business Mindset

Finally, Agile takes on a very customer-centric approach in order to ensure customers get as much value as possible as fast as early as you can. QA Testers have a big role to play in delivering this value, but it takes them to take on a business mindset so that they can understand customer expectations, needs and concerns and develop their testing strategies accordingly