During the early years of the application development process, the apps and softwares were very simple and meant to perform a single process. So, all the steps involved in the development process were divided and conducted separately. However, with the advancement of technology and increasing demands of the users, the separation of the development stages started to yield many obstacles and degraded the quality of the application. In many cases, it even drastically slowed down the development process and delayed the delivery of the final application. So, the developers started integrating modern technologies like Agile testing to improve the efficiency of the test cases.
In this article, we are going to discuss everything that the developers need to know to efficiently introduce Agile test cases. We will also discuss some of the best practices to improve the quality of the final application.
The Basics of Agile
Agile testing works on the principle that all the development stages of an application should have proper synchronization and integration with each other. You need to specifically ensure that the development and testing of an application work side by side. This process helps the developers to find and eliminate bugs and critical errors from an application as soon as they occur. The quick and easy detection process is also an integral part of an easy and simplified debugging phase. All these factors indirectly help the companies to quickly roll a high-quality application towards the production phase. The traditional approach to the application development process was popularly known as the waterfall method. In this step, the developers could not proceed to the next phase of the application development life cycle before the completion of the previous one.
The waterfall approach for application development was quickly eradicated due to its inefficiency. This is because the developers could not keep up with the rising demands of the industry using this method for the application development process.
Advantages of Using Agile Testing
Now let us consider some of the major advantages of introducing Agile testing in the application development process:
- Agile testing helps to involve the testers from the beginning of the development process.
- Using Agile, the developers can integrate all the stages of the application development process. This integration helps to reduce the time and money involved in this process.
- Testers get a lot of time to create and implement the test cases.
- Agile testing also helps to reduce the expenses of the bug detection processes.
Different Approaches for the Agile Testing Process
Now let us consider all the different approaches the developers can take to implement Agile test cases:
Acceptance Test-Driven Development: This is a form of Agile testing that is completely dependent on the testing standards of the application. During acceptance test-driven development, the developers have to create the test cases from a customer’s point of view. This means that acceptance test-driven development of Agile test cases not only helps to bind the developers and testers but also helps to make the customers a part of the application development process. This process gives the developers and testers a clear understanding of the requirements of modern customers.
Behaviour Driven Development: Behavior-driven development process also works on a similar principle of acceptance test-driven development. But this process aims to further improve the working mechanism of ATDD. This is because the developers can also consider the business outcome of the application before beginning the test cases. It also helps to frame the test cases according to the intended business outcome of the software. The developers must remember that they have to begin behavior-driven development by first defining the behavior of the application.
Exploratory Testing with Agile: Exploratory testing is a form of verifying certain features of the application that cannot be checked with automated test cases. This means that the developers cannot perform exploratory test cases with the help of predetermined test scripts. Instead, they have to continue developing the test cases as they proceed with the process of exploring the application. It is also advisable for the developers to have a basic idea about the target audience and intended goals for an application to better understand it.
Session-Based Testing with Agile: Session-based testing was introduced in Agile testing to further Polish the working mechanism of exploratory testing. Using this approach, the developers can set a specific framework for the application test cases and eliminate any errors due to possible miscalculations. While using session-based testing, the developers have to define a specific charter before executing the test cases. The charter process also ensures that the testing phase continues uninterrupted. Lastly using this process, the developers can also eliminate the possibility of any backlogs in the application development process.
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Best Practices for Using Agile Testing
To successfully conduct Agile testing of modern applications, the developers must be aware of certain practices. These practices will help them to utilize the full potential and all the features of Agile test cases. So let us take a quick look at some of the prominent best practices for using Agile testing:
Avoiding Complexity of functions
It is a tried and tested result that complexities in Agile test cases can negatively affect the efficiency of the testing process. Moreover, it is very hard to keep track of the progress bar in complex test cases. Therefore, the developers must ensure that all the functions present in the application development project are simple and easy to understand. It is also a good practice to have separate test cases for verifying the functioning of all the individual elements present in the application. There are various tools available in the market that help keep track of all the test execution processes and their final results.
Repeating the critical Test cases
A common error in the application testing process is the output of false positive or false negative results. These errors can occur when your application is working fine but still the system reports an error and vice versa. Currently, the most effective way to get rid of this issue is to repeatedly perform the same test case. Therefore, the developers should also implement this practice while using Agile test cases. This is because it is impossible to compromise the quality of an application considering the stiff competition in the present development industry. Implementing automation testing in these repetitive scenarios can help reduce a lot of hassle and testing complexity.
Having a Definite Knowledge of the Application
While testing simple applications the testers didn’t need to have any idea about the application or its working process. However, with the integration of the development and testing phase due to Agile testing, these practices need to change. Testers must have a basic idea about the working mechanism of the application in development. They should also know all the basic commands of the programming language that is being used for developing the software. All these factors will help them to better test the application and ensure that it is serving its intended purpose. This process will also help to improve the synchronization and coordination between the development and testing teams.
Ensuring the Codes are Simple and Basic
While developing the test scripts for verifying the functioning of an Agile application, it is a good practice to keep the codes simple and realistic. This is because it is impossible to expect that the testing teams will have the same amount of development knowledge as a professional development team. So, a simple code base will not only simplify the testing process but will also help to eliminate any unintentional errors due to miscommunication. There is various documentation available that act as a perfect guide for creating simple Agile test cases. Lastly, it is also very easy to maintain simple codes for future projects.
Having a Definite Idea of the TDD Requirements
Test-driven development is one of the most advanced features of an Agile test case. However, the developers and testers need to analyze its perfect use case. So, Agile developers must have a definite idea about when and where to implement test-driven development approach. It is also important for companies to have an elaborate idea about the user groups and the best ways of expanding them. This is because test-driven development plays a critical role in improving the quality of the final application in the production phase.
Influence of Tools and Platforms in Agile Testing
The integration of different development phases can be a bit overwhelming for new testers. However, there are multiple tools and platforms available in the market for the simplification of this process. These tools also help the developers to initiate automation testing on the Agile test cases. However, the developers must be very careful to choose the correct tool according to their requirements. Some of the important factors to consider are the support for your preferred programming languages, the affordability of the license fee, and support for different libraries and frameworks. We can use the example of LambdaTest to further shed more light on this concept:
LambdaTest is a continuous quality cloud platform that enable devs and testers to perform manual testing and automated testing of web and mobile applications on an online device farm of 3000+ real browsers, devices and OS combinations. LambdaTest also helps developers to increase the speed of the delivery cycles by more than ten times using parallel testing to execute different test configurations at the same time.
The Conclusion
So, we can conclude that it is very important for the developers to introduce Agile test cases during the application development life cycle. Modern practices like Agile testing and integration of CI/CD tools are highly critical for producing apps that live up to the expectations of modern customers. It is also very important for application development companies to spread proper awareness regarding this fact. Lastly, app developers need to understand the influence of a proper app development tool. These tools or platforms are highly critical for accomplishing your ultimate goal of quickly delivering high-quality applications to your end users.
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