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Clarion
Technologies

Introduction to
Agile Testing
Index
Topics
Introduction
Pages
Chapter 1: What is Agile Testing
Chapter 2: Principles of Agile Testing
Chapter 3: Why migrate to Agile Testing?
Chapter 4: Business benefits of using Agile Testing
Chapter 5: Getting started
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Prologue
Firstly, we’d like to thank you for taking the time to download
2
this eBook. This eBook was created with an aim to give
prospective Agile adopters an overview of Agile Testing –
as an exploration tour and a getting started guide.
3
The book includes many theories derived from the author’s
4-5
experience as a Quality Assurance professional, Agile expert
and consultant. We hope this book will help you get a
better understanding of the Agile Testing and that you feel
6-7 encouraged to try out things on your own.
8 Everybody who wants a deeper understanding
about Agile Testing and whether it is suitable for
their own business, will find this book useful.
Introduction

I
n the early 1990s, as PC computing began
to flourish in the enterprise, software devel-
opment faced a major crisis - the application
development crisis or the application delivery
lag. Industry experts estimated that the time
between a validated business need, finding
its solution and finally its actual application in
production was 3 years.
The only problem with this was - the business
moved at a much faster pace than that, even
25 years ago. Within the span of 3 years,
requirements, systems and even the entire
business was likely to transform. This meant
half-baked projects, projects that got cancelled
halfway through, and those that managed to
Complicated hardware and software system
took decades to be designed, developed and
deployed.
Obviously, thought leaders were frustrated.
In 1990s, an aerospace engineer called Jon
Kern, became increasingly frustrated with the
long lead times and with the decisions that
were made early in a project and couldn’t be
&
Agile
changed later. By then there were several others
who were frustrated and felt there had to be a
better way to build a great software. Jon Kern
was one of 17 software thought leaders who
started meeting informally and discovering ways
to develop software more simply.

was born
be completed did not meet business needs of
that time at all even though the project’s initial
objectives were met.

In certain industries such as Aerospace or
Defence, the impact of this lag can be far
greater. To give you a drastic but not unusu-
al example, the Space Shuttle program, which
was operationally launched in 1982, used
information and processing technologies from
the 1960s.

1
Chapter 1: What is Agile Testing?
Agile Testing is a software testing practice
that follows the principles of Agile software
development.
In the Agile methodology, testing needs
to happen in real-time, thus allowing the
testing team to collaborate proactively with
the developers by helping them identify
issues and develop specifications that guide
the development team towards writing an
error-free code.
Several teams using the waterfall methodology
or other traditional testing models find that
as the product grows, the amount of testing
grows exponentially and Quality Assurance
may falter sooner or later. This is because,
conducting manual testing for 2 or 3 iterations
could be easy, but as the number of iteration
grows it becomes almost impossible to conduct
error-free testing for each and every iteration.
Therefore, Automation Testing forms one of
the core practice of Agile Testing.
With Agile, testing becomes an integral part of
the core software development and actively
contributes throughout the software coding
process. This process also encompasses testing
from the customer’s perspective as early and as
often as possible.
Yet, for a variety of reasons (time, money,
skills, etc.), the testing phase of the soft-
ware development cycle sometimes gets
little consideration from developers and
IT managers.
Nevertheless, testing is the only way to
determine whether an application will func-
tion properly in real time and is of high quality.
Without having an effective testing strategy in
place, companies often take of significant risks
such as:
Low quality software product
Customer dissatisfaction
Cost overruns
Unpredictable delivery
Poor resource estimations
Competitive threat
Brand injury
Revenue loss from the product
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Chapter 2: Principles of Agile Testing
Now that the concept of Agile Testing is clear,
let’s move on to the principles that it follows.
Continuous feedback
A successful tester is an information provider,
who can perfectly articulate the requirements,
tests, results and feedback. Providing continuous
feedback and seamless coordination helps the
developer write error-free code.
A tester is an information provider – one who
articulates requirements, tests, results and
feedback. Keeping the team informed will always
be a key role for any successful tester.
Deliver value to the customer
A successful project delivery involves making
sure that the customer is happy. If the customer
is dissatisfied, the project is a loss. An Agile
tester should therefore remember to focus on
the bigger picture keeping the goal in mind and
not just on ticking off the to-do list.
Enable face to face communication
Although technological progress has enabled
several geographically dispersed teams to work
together, face to face communication remains
the most effective kind. A good Agile tester
should ideally fix up face to face meetings or
find operative alternatives to facilitate the same.
Be open-minded Automate Testing
Testers are required to communicate across Every group tests its products before releas-
the team which makes it necessary for them ing, yet delivered software almost always has
to interact with different personality types. An defects. Testers struggle to catch them before
open-minded tester, who always asks tough the product is released but they may reappear
questions is often most likely to succeed in or creep in at a later stage despite implement-
rolling out high quality software products. ing the best manual testing practices. Test
Automation software is the best way to increase
Keep it simple the effectiveness, efficiency and coverage of
After all the development and testing is over, it your software testing.
all boils down to one thing – keeping it simple.
Therefore, Agile teams should deliver the simplest
solutions possible to the client.
Practice continuous improvement
The main motive of testing is to find new and
better ways to solve problems. The whole team
should adopt this mindset to be successful.
Respond to change
In Agile projects, change is inevitable. Testers
should be able to respond to these changes
in a timely manner. In order to ensure this,
testers must equip the team with as much
information as possible so as to enable them
to make an informed decision about whether
to release a particular feature or not.
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Chapter 3: Why should you migrate to Agile Testing?
Agile has become the new norm and for all the Agile testing has positively impacted this
right reasons, in fact. Small and medium size aspect. The project sponsors start getting
businesses for whom quality and speed can the indications very early in the project. This Manual Tests through UI
make or break the business have also started ensures that the team has an opportunity to
adopting Agile to stay on top of their game. One do course correction as required. Due to the
of the major reasons being - adoption of Agile early feedback cycles, the cost of fixing the Automation Suites
methodology allows businesses to implement defects is much lesser as compared to fixing
product improvements and modifications in a the same defects in the classical approach.
Unit
faster way which helps them keep up with the Tests
dynamic market demands. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach
to testing, on a high level, traditional testing
However, Agile also means that there are practices are aimed towards optimizing the Traditional
shorter sprint cycles and faster feature operations of large, centralized testing groups.
delivery. With these characteristics, it becomes On the other hand, for agile development
extremely important that the testing can keep environments with rapid deliveries, agile
up with the speed of development to ensure testing is the way to go.
that the software is released with no bugs or Automated
broken code. Test automation, therefore, plays UI Tests
a crucial role in agile testing.
Automated
Acceptance Test
In the case of traditional testing approach,
the real indication of success or failure of the Surveys show that
software testing life cycle is determined only 80% of all software Unit Tests
in the testing phase. Naturally, the project
sponsors have incurred most of the costs as
organizations are
testing is the second-last phase of SDLC. already practicing Agile

Agile development

4
 6 Common reasons for which companies adopt Agile
over traditional methodologies
Early ROI
Faster delivery, naturally vouches for early returns on
investments. This also increases the value of work in
turn. The challenge lies in adopting new approaches that
allow teams to think of work in small, individual pieces.
This requires a mind shift, but it’s worth the hassle when
you consider how much it can maximize project value.
Early risk reduction
Agile doesn’t treat risk as a separate area
to be managed, Agile itself is risk management.
By delivering early and getting feedback,
the risk of building the wrong product is reduced.
Agile responds quickly to customer needs
If a customer wishes to change his priority midway
in traditional software methodology, it affects the
product to a great extent. This does not happen in Agile.
Agile makes use of iterations such that the customer can
access the progress of the project at any given time. Agile
aids the project development team in delivering products
based on the feedback they receive from the customers.
Faster time to market
Traditional methodologies involve 18-month delivery
cycles that more than often deliver the wrong products.
Several people who adopt Agile are particularly fed up
of such issues. Besides, the idea of two-week delivery
cycles and quarterly release cadences is appealing for
clients. Most markets and our competition are moving
too fast forcing companies to deliver products to the
market faster.
Build the right products
Delivering in smaller increments facilitates the opportunity
to tweak the product as per the requirement of the
customers. Adoption of Agile ensures a win-win success for
both the customer and the team by giving them a chance
to converge on the best possible outcome.
Better quality
Low quality products are an ongoing disaster that plagues
the industry. However, when businesses fix time, cost,
and scope, the only thing developers have left to manage
is quality. Agile fixes time, cost, and quality and equips
the team with tools to vary the business and technical
scope of the solution. This helps you trust what was
actually delivered.
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Chapter 4: Business Benefits of Agile Testing
There are a lot of advantages of using Agile Testing. Firstly, Agile Testing saves time and money which is the
main benefit for organizations today. Clients can more readily understand the approximate cost of each feature, which
improves decision making and determines priorities. With Agile Testing automated tests are fully leveraged to implement
Regression; application delivery is accelerated and changing priorities are effectively managed.

According to Techbeacon, several organizations have moved to Agile as –

Organizations believe that

Agile enhances collaboration
between teams that don’t
usually work together.
54%
Organizations say that Agile
increases the level of software
quality in organizations.

52%
Organizations believe
that adopting Agile results in

49%
increased customer satisfaction.

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Besides the above-mentioned benefits, a On the other hand, in traditional environ-
business can benefit from adopting agile as: ments, a major bug can set a project back by
months as it may affect the entire code base
The whole team is responsible for quality which can prove to be very expensive. In case
In traditional development processes, testing is of Agile testing, fixing these bugs at the earli-
done after the development cycle is complete. est can save a lot of time, money & resources.
In contrast, the whole team is responsible for
the quality of the product as Agile teams mix
Flexibility to incorporate new requirements
disciplines. For example, you may find one
Traditional methods such as waterfall function
tester working with a team of developers.
best when business requirements are all
The developers often write unit tests as they
planned and outlined at the start of the
add more features and then use these tests
project itself. However, almost always business
to test the app continuously as they keep
requirements are far from immutable. Agile
adding features. The tester will write test
methodologies are designed to get work done
cases and then build and test the new code as
while provisioning for change requests and
it is being completed catching bugs and giving
enhancements.
developers feedback almost immediately.

Testing cannot be short shrifted

Facilitates better communication
As testing is done continuously throughout the
Since Agile allows the tester and developer
software development life cycle, it can’t be cut-
to work together, there is an unrestricted
off. At least, it can’t be cut by much. Often in
flow of communication. For example, if a bug
waterfall projects, testing is omitted entirely
report needs more detail, then the developer
or cut short in order to meet deadlines. This
can nudge the tester on the shoulder and tell
results in bad software being sent to users.
her exactly what needs more detail and get a
response right there. Additionally, daily scrum
sessions help catch issues in advance and help
keep important issues in the spotlight.

Defects are easier and cheaper to fix

Almost immediate feedback is possible when
testers and developers are working on the
same team. This lets the developer fix the bug
while the code is still fresh in his mind.
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Chapter 5: Getting Started
Remember that it’s ok to be nimble about your
agile adoption
It is most certainly not necessary to take
on all practices at once. You can start with
fundamentals such as short iterations and
simple design to get your teams into a steady
rhythm. Once the rhythm is set, you can
incorporate the other supporting practices on
a priority-basis gradually.
Tackle things one thing at a time
If most of the team is new to Agile, ensure that
even the people who are aware of Agile possess
people skills to understand the challenges that
others can face. If the entire team is new to
Agile, apart from training the team, create an
atmosphere of learning and encourage asking
questions.
Respect the tests
Consider code and tests as a unit and break-
free from the mindset that ‘code is the concern
of the developer’ and ‘testing is the concern of
a tester’. Tests and code are of equal concern to
the entire team.
Review what you’ve accomplished
Use continuous integration and automation
testing process to your advantage by having
them provide feedback about the code quality
daily or on every check-in. Feedback ensures
review of what has been accomplished till date
and makes sure that it has been done perfectly.
In short, stay as releasable as possible.

Respect the testers

Ensure that testers are treated equally by the
team and remove any barriers of communication
that arises and hinders the free flow of
communication between developers, testers
and the customer.

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About the Author:

Ajit is a PMP & CSQA certified testing and Quality Assurance professional with 16 years of experience in IT
quality industry across verticals. Over his comprehensive career he has led significant efforts to build strong
software testing and quality assurance solutions, services and teams into manual, automation, performance,
mobile, database, security, compatibility, GUI, usability, localization, end-to-end functional and regression
testing.

He has a proven, measurable track record of building self-directed team onsite and off-shore, developing
detailed strategic plans, delivering tangible results through continuous process improvement, technology
consulting and relationship management techniques.

He excels in resource selection / development, people leadership and management.

As a Practice Lead at Clarion Technologies, Ajit has proved to be instrumental in perfecting the crucial
18 process areas that need to be fulfilled for a company to obtain the CMMI Level 3 certification.

References

blog.belatrixsf.com/10-must-have-principles-for-agile-testers/
www.cigniti.com/blog/myths-around-agile-testing/
www.cognizant.com/InsightsWhitepapers/The-Case-for-Agile-Testing-codex891.pdf
www.optimusinfo.com/advantages-agile-testing/
validata-software.com/blog/?p=331
 Clarion
Technologies

About the Company

Agile is not just a methodology, it’s a mindset and at Clarion, we believe it totally. We
have a team of Agile certified experts and SCRUM masters who help the business
and product owners not only adopt Agile for their projects but also succeed with that.
Examples like project deliveries ahead of time with 20-30% more features and 100%
customer satisfaction prove our expertise and passion for Agile.

www.clariontech.com