How to set up QA processes for an agile environment?
Table of Content:
1. Introduction
3. How does QA fit into an Agile Testing Environment?
4. How to set up a good QA plan for your Agile Environment?
5. Conclusion
1. Introduction
Agile software development is developed as a method to establish a procedure that promotes adaptability, agility, and collaborative effort. With Agile, solutions emerge with a comprehensive strategy and with cross-functional team efforts.
Modern-era companies with varying requirements are recognizing its benefits for a more agile application development cycle and faster turnaround through demanding conditions.
However, more precise and faster development cycles are frequently disputed for quality, and that’s why Quality Assurance (QA) becomes one of the essential aspects of the development process.
While quality leads validation, it can’t damage the software development process and its speed. Although, QA becomes an indispensable element of the equation, especially, to cause validation and guarantee stability for the application.
And to establish that perfect synergy of the QA process, we require to follow every stage of this process thoroughly.
I have listed down the 6 stages of the QA process, but to get a better perspective, I suggest reading the blog written by the experts of TatvaSoft; following their simplified explanation, you can set up the QA process and meet the best quality standards.
- Requirements Analysis
- Plan the Test
- Design Test Cases
- Run Test Cases and Report Bugs
- Perform Regression Testing
- Run Release Tests
It helps the QA team to develop a robust, secure, and accessible application for any circumstances. Therefore, Software testing can never run in phases, as it needs to be prepared as a process.
However, this process is perfect for our traditional development project, but when we include agile software development we need something stronger and reliable that will be able to keep up with the pace of an agile environment.
In this post, we will explain what a QA process is and how to set up QA processes for the Agile Testing Environment. Let’s explore each stage and set up an excellent process for your next product.
2. What is Quality Assurance?
Software Quality Assurance is a collection of projects for assuring quality in software development processes. It guarantees that developed software reaches and complies with the established or standardized quality terms.
QA is a continuous process within the SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) that regularly reviews the progressed software to assure it satisfies the aspired quality standards.
Quality Assurance methods are performed in almost every kind of software development, notwithstanding the underlying software development design being practised.
QA includes and performs software testing methodologies to examine the software. Instead of checking the quality after the finish, QA processes test for quality in each aspect of development, till the software is finished.
3. How does QA fit into an Agile Testing Environment?
Quality Assurance can support Scrum teams to define the purpose and stay on the path to approach that goal without too much variation. It also helps the testing team to define the duties of every role associated with the product development lifecycle.
Determining a fair way of doing software testing, whether it is regarding development, managing issues, or establishing proper director and controller tools will decrease the risk of doing the same blunders again and again while working on a new project.
When there’s a definite, moderate, path to the purpose you’re attempting to reach, it’s simpler to perceive when things are not working as intended. QA team members will notice any difference before it turns into a problem, and changes and counter-measures will be considered on time.
4. How to set up a good QA plan for your Agile Environment?
A QA team reviews the specifications to design, develop, and produce good products thereby boosting client confidence, company reliability, and the capacity to succeed in a competitive environment.
Here, we have listed down some of our best practice tips for the QA process in Agile.
4.1 Attend sprint planning sessions.
A QA team member should regularly audit planning sessions. Attending guarantees QA is associated with the development team from the inception and provides QA to recognize potential problem zones and opportunities early on.
It is similar when developers evaluate the work it will need for them to write code, QA should determine the effort needed for testing the code through the planning session.
Without QA there, unit testing efforts and a practical time allocation can be ignored and not involved in the sprint’s overall measures.
4.2 Maintain transparency in objectives
Agile or other software development approach works efficiently when transparency is sustained.
Whether it is with the certainty of purposes, or accuracy through the process; it is necessary to put things in a clear light while managing in an Agile environment. This will support teams to cooperate well and present within time restrictions.
4.3 Make Testing an ongoing activity
The agile design strives to include a testing team at every stage of the project’s lifecycle to recognize problems as immediately as possible. Within every sprint, QA engineers test data and retest the outcome per the new feature attached.
This enables them to confirm that the new innovations were performed as anticipated and to detect any difficulties that may have been interjected.
4.4 Automated Testing
As agile testing is performed in correspondence to development, automation becomes important. Without it, you’ll see yourself retesting the similar functionality frequently and lagging immediately.
This is when you as a QA professional come in handy. You can test from the outside as if the product is a black box. With developers and QA both taking automated testing in agile, you’ll receive both black-box and white-box testing.
4.5 Test manually for the right reasons
Exploratory testing can recognize rifts in automated tests. This shouldn’t include without conscience passing through the same standard processes repeatedly.
Rather, this time is for suggesting those “what if” problems. What if the order will be cancelled after the transportation paperwork is printed? What if we lose internet connection while transferring the payment?
Set time into exploratory testing to provide your team more assurance that they didn’t abstain from a critical bug or lack of functionality.
4.6 Arrange for demonstrations from Development Team
The importance of in-person presentations and conferences is incredible. Therefore, whenever an occasion comes by, it is beneficial to plan face-to-face presentations for different application features from the development team.
This will end in further engagement from the QA team and assist simplify issues in person. Furthermore, in-person communications will decrease the feedback circle between development and QA, occurring in more collaboration and quicker turnaround.
4.7 Attend sprint retrospectives.
Take the opportunity to review progress and missteps that can enhance future sprints by declining to visit the final team meeting.
No matter how great a team is, there will invariably be a place for development. Sprint retrospectives are the chance to determine vulnerabilities and discover answers for them. QA requires to be included in these studies to have any interests discussed before the next sprint starts.
For instance, maybe a lot of the product was given to QA late in the sprint, heading to a hastened testing effort. QA might grow this concern to evade it occurring again the next time.
4.8 Document test cases
Being an agile team doesn’t give you chance to skip documentation. Documentation is required, particularly for QA. Keep your documentation strong because variations are compelled to happen.
Even the least documentation can determine a lot of significance to you and your team. For instance, if the agile team jump from project to project, with some test documentation new team member can speed up the process.
QA and Development in an agile environment can assist with this — we’ve created a lightweight testing tool to support you manage your test documents prepared.
5. Conclusion
In an agile team, everyone is accountable for quality. And this can be your chance to reflect by giving your expertise to the team. Work with your team to produce quality in the development process. As the purpose no longer requires just getting flaws and mistakes but stopping them through the development cycle.
And with agile, we can find methods to split that problem down and act towards the ultimate goal iteratively. You require to understand the benefits immediately and improve from there.
