Agile testing was developed to respond to changes quickly and smoothly. It is used whenever customer requirements are changing dynamically. Agile testing does not lay emphasis on testing procedures, rather focuses on foregoing testing against newly developed code until quality is achieved from an end customer’s view. In other words, in software development companies, the emphasis is shifted from testers to the entire project team working towards desired quality.
The Word ‘Agile’ refers to moving quickly; testers have to understand and adapt to rapid deployment cycles and changes in testing patterns. It involves testing from the customer’s perspective as early as possible, testing early and often as code becomes available and stable enough from module/unit level testing.
Agile testing integrates closely with outsourcing software development. Since software is released often, there is a need to test it often. This is mostly performed by using automated acceptance testing so as to minimize the amount of manual work. Agile Testing moves the project forward by providing information, feedback, and suggestions. Continuous testing is the key to ensure continuous progress. In this type of testing, reusable checklists are used to suggest tests. The focus is on the essence of the test rather than the incidental details. Also, in Agile testing, we test all the time, not just at the end which relieves us from tough test schedules. Buggy software is hard to test and modify; and hence slows down everything. Keeping the code clean helps fix the bugs fast.
In agile testing, no conventional testing practice are applicable to wait until the completion of entire development cycle activities take place, whereas the testing is closely intact with the development and is done in parallel to as and when some part of code is developed.
Agile testing should be as quick as possible to test the parts of the code as soon as they are ready, stable, and final from developer’s unit or module level testing. This is to show the customer a high quality working product at regular short time intervals. So, agile testing is all about custom application development testing placing the customers’ quality & delivery needs for the software in the first place rather than the software vendor’s huge, repetitive testing lifecycle, and the quality strategies. The goal is shifted from “software testing as quality watch” to “a collective team effort towards a demonstrable quality”.
The agile testing drives the concept of “test-driven development” covering basic test cases to even out the main functionality of a requirement, thereby helping the developers to keep an eye on quality from the time of coding, keeping the code clean while covering the critical and fundamental test cases in their unit tests. With the test checklists already available even before the programming of the software starts, the testers are able to reuse them to easily manipulate and update the test cases for manual & automated testing, while managing the on-going requirement changes within the specific time frame.
To find more information on the same, check out software testing.
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