Organizations need a strong Agile Testing strategy for their ‘Digital’ success

Every organization is craving for ‘digital’ excellence, to gain the competitive edge and meet the changing preferences of the consumers. Speed is a quintessential factor, but quality is needed to ensure stability for any digital initiative. Hence, Software Testing and Quality Assurance become indispensable components in the software development cycle. Whether it’s a device for smarter homes or it’s an application for a smarter car, no one can skip the step to ensure quality. Agile Testing is one of the methodologies and approaches chosen by organizations to achieve the expected quality standards and ensure seamless customer experience.

Why is Agile Testing approach recommended?

Agile adoption largely focusses on development teams, agile frameworks, and the allied technical practices within its strategy. Apart from this, a good amount of emphasis is laid on the tools, especially, test automation tools to speed up the development and testing activity. One of the greatest highlights of Agile Testing is the collaborative balance it brings for the testing and development teams.

There are multiple reasons and supporting factors that can validate adoption of Agile practices. However, an approach can work for you if you have a strong supporting strategy. When it comes to launching Digital initiatives for businesses, it is very much critical to focus and spend some time on the strategy, as there is not much scope to waste time and go wrong in a competitive consumer scenario. Most importantly, Agile practices also provide the flexibility to go back and forth, and track the progress effectively. Business Agility is imperative in the current ‘digital’ context.

How can you build a robust Agile Testing strategy for your ‘digital’ business?

Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2018 states, ‘Artificial intelligence, immersive experiences, digital twins, event-thinking and continuous adaptive security create a foundation for the next generation of digital business models and ecosystems.’

Development of any new digitally powered product and service will need tremendous business agility, which can be achieved by adopting a relevant Agile Testing strategy.

Combine it with a Test Automation strategy

An Agile strategy has to incorporate a relevant Test Automation plan, as it can help teams to speed up the testing process and assure the quality parameters. The tools leveraged for automation must induce more collaboration, frequent testing patterns, and high levels of visibility of the automation process. It must also provide insights into the testing activity by going back in time and making the necessary judgements. Test Automation is like a glue that keeps the Agile practices on track and helps to speed up the testing activity.

Open channels of communication

Agile testing involves shorter testing cycles and frequent testing. There are even instances where the roles get interchanged. Hence, it is critical that your strategy includes open communication channels and constant communication mechanisms such as stand-up meetings and video calls. This will enable more collaboration and transparency to ensure that the project is on track.

Leverage the team’s earlier testing experiences

Adopting Agile is not enough, it is important to club it with the right software testing strategy. Whether it’s a Test Driven Development (TDD) Approach or a Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) Approach, it is recommended to consider the past experience of the software testing team while building your agile strategy. This will reduce the pressure on training the team and accelerate the development activity. Moreover, it helps to bring consensus within the team when people with similar experience and expertise collaborate together.

Adopting a proactive approach towards Testing and Quality Assurance

Similar to legacy structures, it is difficult to apply Agile practices within the traditional mode of testing. With Agile, Testing becomes much more important than just harnessing a ‘gatekeeper’ attitude. It is important to build a much more proactive approach and look at ways in which the application can be made market ready. Hence, testing becomes much more process-driven, scalable, and traceable.

Nurture skills beyond Testing and Development

Agile, as we understand, needs more collaboration and communication between team members. That’s the reason it is important to encourage more and frequent communication. Whether it is about reviewing the code, having a relook at the application’s features, or refactoring the code base; collaboration is indispensable. Agile teams must comprise members that are not only technically sound, but also are good at communication and interpersonal skills. These soft skills will go a long way in ensuring that the project is successfully completed with all the required inputs from the customer.

Objective-based strategy

It is important to understand whether Agile Testing approach makes sense for your application development activity. Not all application development activities can align with Agile Testing practices. Most of the times, Agile Testing works for applications that need constant updates and alterations, which is very much required for Digital Transformation initiatives. Hence, it is important to establish the relevance of Agile Testing approach within a software testing strategy. Agile adoption for the sake of it can result in chaos and mismanagement.

“The continuing digital business evolution exploits new digital models to align more closely the physical and digital worlds for employees, partners and customers,” says David Cearley, vice president and Gartner Fellow, at Gartner 2017 Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando, Florida. “Technology will be embedded in everything in the digital business of the future.”

When technology gets embedded within everything in the digital business, there is a constant need to ensure quality at every level. Agile provides the flexibility and scalability to do so, but incorporating it into a relevant software testing strategy is imperative for successful Digital Transformation.

Cigniti has been a trusted testing partner for many organizations in various stages of adopting Agile. We have helped organizations new to Agile build in QA planning, estimation, metrics into their sprints. In case of more mature organizations, we have seamlessly integrated with their sprint teams to improve test coverage, velocity, and quality.

Connect with us and leverage our expertise both in Agile Testing and Digital Testing for your new and fresh business ideas.