What are the Benefits of an Agile Software Testing Approach?

 

The fast-changing domain of digital technology needs new software applications to meet an ever-increasing demand. However, the growing complexity and cost of such applications, changing customer preferences, and the advent of new technologies have created a cocktail of challenges. These include developing quality software applications and delivering them faster to the market. Moreover, the software applications need to be updated periodically in accordance with market requirements. To address these challenges, the software applications need to be tested alongside development using the agile software testing methodology. The methodology, besides identifying bugs in the software code quite early in the development cycle, provides flexibility, reliability, increased productivity, and cost-efficiency. 

In traditional testing, there is often a lack of communication between the developers and testers thanks to their silo-based working approach. And to add to their woes are challenges such as lack of end-user involvement, poor definition of the requirement, inflexible processes, and unrealistic schedules. As a result, a lot of time and effort is spent on managing process changes. However, in agile testing, the approach is more streamlined, focused, automated, inclusive, time and cost-saving.

What is an agile software testing methodology?

Imagine a scenario where a software application is slated for release in a week. When the complete application code goes for testing before release, the testing team discovers 5 critical errors. Since there is precious little time to address the errors, the release schedule is postponed for a few weeks, leaving the client fuming and the cost escalating. To avoid such a scenario, businesses have adopted the agile testing methodology. In this shift-left testing approach, testers are made part of an iterative development process called sprint. Accordingly, every piece of code is tested in parallel to detect bugs as soon as possible. If a bug is discovered in the code, it is immediately removed and developers go on to the next task at hand. Since automation is part of the agile testing approach, fast regression tests can be executed whenever a new function or logic is released.

What are the benefits of agile application testing?

The benefits businesses can derive from implementing agile software testing in their value chain are as follows:

Quick releases and faster time to market: The iterative model followed in this type of approach where both development and testing are performed incrementally reduces the time taken between planning for test requirements and validating outcomes. Since bugs are identified and mitigated early on in the SDLC, the application is released quickly.

Better collaboration: Unlike in the traditional waterfall approach, where development and testing teams work in silos and sequentially, the agile testing strategy is all about collaboration. Here, teams comprising developers, testers, and business analysts work together in sprints without taking recourse to excessive documentation. Since there is a seamless exchange of ideas among teams at every stage of development, faster results are delivered. 

High-quality product: Since there exists a synergy between developers and agile testing experts, issues such as the presence of bugs, preference of tools, or methodology, get sorted out. The issues are fixed during the development stage only and do not require the integrated code to be unwrapped layer by layer a la the traditional approach. Besides, given that the teams are in constant touch with the end-customers and take their input about the usability of the product, the outcome turns out to be of high quality.

Regression testing becomes easier: Regression testing is about testing the code when some changes are made to the software application. It checks whether the changes have had any impact on the existing functionalities or features of the software. Traditionally, this used to be done manually, entailing a greater degree of missing out on errors. However, with agile test automation, regression testing is done with minimal manual intervention, resulting in quick identification of errors in less time.

Easy maintenance: The involvement of multiple developers and testers in agile software testing allows for better perspectives to reduce the chances of errors during coding or testing. Moreover, with reusable test automation tools, the maintenance of applications becomes easy and cost-effective.

Conclusion

With customer experience driving the market adoption of software applications, comprehensive and incisive quality testing of such applications has taken center stage. It is only by utilizing agile testing services that businesses can achieve outcomes effectively, such as better quality software, higher productivity, reduced rework, comprehensive testing, early identification and mitigation of bugs or vulnerabilities, quicker release, and superior customer experience.

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James Daniel is a software Tech enthusiastic & works at Cigniti Technologies. I'm having a great understanding of today's software testing quality that yields strong results and always happy to create valuable content & share thoughts.

Article Source: medium.com