How do you verify quality in agile development?

1 Define quality criteria

Before you start developing any feature or user story, you need to define what quality means for that specific deliverable. This involves identifying the acceptance criteria, the non-functional requirements, the risks, and the dependencies. You also need to agree on how to measure and validate the quality criteria, such as using test cases, checklists, or automated tools. Defining quality criteria upfront helps you align your expectations with the stakeholders, prioritize your work, and avoid rework or defects later.

2 Test early and often

One of the core values of agile is to deliver working software frequently, which means that you need to test early and often as well. You should not wait until the end of the sprint or iteration to test your code, but rather test it as soon as possible, using techniques such as unit testing, integration testing, or test-driven development. Testing early and often helps you catch and fix errors quickly, improve your code quality, and reduce technical debt.

3 Collaborate with the team

QA in agile is not a separate or isolated activity, but a collaborative and cross-functional one. You need to work closely with the developers, the product owner, the business analysts, and the end-users, to ensure that you understand their needs, expectations, and feedback. You also need to communicate effectively with the team, using tools such as daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, retrospectives, or kanban boards. Collaborating with the team helps you build trust, transparency, and alignment, and deliver quality software that meets the user's requirements.

4 Automate what you can

Automation is a key enabler of quality assurance in agile, as it allows you to perform repetitive and tedious tasks faster, more efficiently, and more reliably. You should automate what you can, such as regression testing, performance testing, security testing, or code analysis, using tools such as Selenium, JMeter, SonarQube, or Jenkins. Automation helps you save time and resources, increase your test coverage and accuracy, and support continuous integration and delivery.

5 Adapt to changes

Agile is based on the principle of responding to change over following a plan, which means that you need to be flexible and adaptable as a QA professional. You need to embrace change as an opportunity to learn and improve, rather than as a threat or a disruption. You also need to adjust your QA strategy and practices according to the changing needs and feedback of the users, the stakeholders, and the market. Adapting to changes helps you deliver quality software that is relevant, valuable, and satisfying.

6 Learn and improve

The final practice of quality assurance in agile is to learn and improve continuously, based on the feedback and data you collect from your testing and delivery activities. You should not only focus on finding and fixing defects, but also on preventing and reducing them in the future. You should also seek to improve your QA skills, tools, and processes, by applying the lessons learned from your successes and failures, and by adopting best practices and standards. Learning and improving helps you enhance your quality assurance performance and maturity, and deliver better software outcomes.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?