Testing is a crucial part of agile product development, but it can also be a bottleneck if not done efficiently and effectively. How can you automate and scale testing in agile to deliver high-quality products faster and more reliably? In this article, you will learn some best practices and tools to help you achieve this goal.
Agile testing is not a separate phase, but an ongoing activity that involves the whole team and the stakeholders. It aims to provide continuous feedback and validation of the product's value, quality, and usability. To keep up with the fast-paced and iterative nature of agile, testing needs to be automated and scaled as much as possible. Automation and scaling can help you reduce manual effort, increase test coverage, accelerate feedback loops, identify and fix defects early, and optimize resources and costs.
Choose Wisely: Pick user-friendly testing tools – no one wants to wrestle with complicated software! Build Your Rollercoaster: Integrate testing into your CI pipeline smoothly – fewer screams, more test runs. Pizza Priorities: Sort test cases like a pizza menu – start with the tastiest ones first (aka, the critical ones for automation). LEGO Scripts: Create modular test scripts like LEGO blocks – easy to assemble, disassemble, and build upon. Magical Test Data: Manage test data like a magician – make it disappear and reappear when needed. Relay Race Tests: Parallelize test execution like a relay race – pass the baton (or test) quickly from one runner to the next.
Agile development thrives on rapid iterations and frequent releases. However, manual testing can become a bottleneck, slowing down the process and hindering its core principles. This is where automation and scaling testing become crucial. By automating repetitive tasks, tests can be run more frequently, catching bugs and regressions early and ensuring a wider test coverage compared to manual testing. Integration with CI/CD pipelines provides immediate feedback on potential issues, allowing for faster fixes and reduced costs. Additionally, automation frees up testers for more complex tasks, optimizes resource utilization, and scales efficiently as the application grows in complexity.
In my experience automating and scaling testing in Agile environments also supports CI/CD, aligns with methodologies like TDD, and scales with project growth. Automation reduces manual effort, allowing teams to focus on more complex challenges, which improves software quality and team morale.
In Agile, out of many , Most challenging part to maintain the Regression Automation test suite which needs to scale at higher level of software app delivery in prod. It is because of multiple changes/development inline which complicats the automation developer to include more automation scenarios in automation regression suite. This becomes more intricates when there are many downstream apps are involved.
To automate and scale testing in agile, utilize test automation frameworks (e.g., Selenium, Appium, Cypress) for UI testing, API testing tools (e.g., Postman, SoapUI pro , REST-Assured), integrate CI/CD processes, adopt behavior-driven development (BDD) using tools like Cucumber or SpecFlow, leverage cloud-based testing platforms for parallel execution across environments, and implement continuous testing throughout the development lifecycle to enhance test coverage, increase efficiency, and deliver high-quality software more frequently.
Automation is not a one-time project, but rather an ongoing process that requires careful planning, execution, and maintenance. To automate testing in agile, you must first define your testing strategy and goals to determine the types, levels, and scope of testing that should be automated. Subsequently, you must select the automation tools and frameworks that are best suited to your product, technology, and team. After designing and implementing your test automation scripts, cases, and scenarios, you can execute and monitor them by scheduling runs and handling failures, errors, and exceptions. Lastly, it is important to review and improve your test automation performance by evaluating quality and refactoring as your product evolves.
Automating testing is crucial for maintaining agility in Agile development. Here's how to achieve it: Prioritize tests: Focus on repetitive, regression-prone, and critical user journeys that offer high value. Start small and gradually expand your automated test suite. Choose the right tools: Consider factors like budget, expertise, and application type. Popular options include Selenium, Cypress, Appium, and Katalon Studio. Ensure the tool integrates with your development and CI/CD pipeline. Establish a framework: Define clear guidelines and coding standards for test scripts. Use version control for easy maintenance and collaboration. Integrate with your CI/CD pipeline to automate test execution upon code commits.
Scaling testing in agile requires the ability to test more features, functions, and scenarios across multiple platforms, devices, and environments without sacrificing quality or speed. To do this, you should consider test prioritization and selection in order to determine the most important and relevant tests to run for each iteration, release, and user story. Additionally, you need to figure out how to run multiple tests simultaneously and distribute them across different machines, servers, or clouds. Test optimization and maintenance is also essential for reducing redundancy, complexity, and flakiness. Techniques like test-driven development, behavior-driven development, or exploratory testing can help you enhance your test quality and efficiency.
Scaling testing in Agile requires a shift-left approach, emphasizing early testing and continuous integration. Development of an OTT platform was my journey where I learned about the importance of the integration of development and testing. Leveraging feature tweaks for managing testing in production created a culture of shared responsibility for quality that drove scalability and fast feedback loops. Key strategies include modularizing test code, leveraging parallel execution, and adopting cloud-based test environments for flexibility and efficiency.
A wide variety of tools can help you automate and scale testing in agile, depending on the product, technology, and team preferences. Selenium is a web-based automation tool for creating and running tests for web applications on various browsers and platforms. Appium is a mobile-based automation tool for creating and running tests for native, hybrid, and web applications across different devices and platforms. Cucumber is a behavior-based automation tool that enables you to create tests using natural language and business rules. TestNG is a testing framework with annotations, assertions, and reports. Jenkins is a continuous integration and delivery tool for automating and orchestrating testing and deployment processes. JMeter is a performance testing tool for load, stress, and scalability of web applications and services. Finally, Postman is an API testing tool that helps you create tests for RESTful and SOAP-based web services and endpoints.
Automating and scaling the testing that takes place in agile is crucial. I often use tools such as Selenium for UI testing, JMeter for performance testing as well as Jenkins for CI/CD, incorporating them into the development pipeline to enable continuous testing. These days Cypress and TestRail are some of the latest tools used for end to end testing and test management, respectively that have transformed everything by enhancing efficient automation and keeping pace with rapid agile processes.
Once upon a time, there are very less number of open sources tool were available in market and many commpanies were rely on the License based. Where as today , there are many open sources with all plugin are available in the market. I would talk 3 tools which i found really interesting to automate and easily configurable with CI/CD pipelines are: 1. Cypress - Web based automation having feature to less code and code available. 2. Taurus- It is quite today popular to use this tool for performance testing in CI Pipeline . THere are many plugins available to connect Taurus to run the scripts in many language 3. Postman using Newman - Nowdays quite popular Postman for webservices testing using newman to integrate with CI Pipeline automation
Collaboration and communication are essential for successful testing in agile. Testing is not a solo or siloed activity, but rather a collective effort that involves developers, testers, product owners, and users. To ensure successful testing in agile, it’s important to test early and often; involve the whole team in planning, designing, executing, and reviewing tests; involve stakeholders in defining, prioritizing, and validating requirements; and use the tools that support your testing activities. Additionally, it’s crucial to share test results and feedback with the team, stakeholders, and tools to improve processes and outcomes.
The success of Agile testing depends on collaboration and communication. For instance, by using JIRA as a tracking tool and Slack as a means of real-time communication, my teams have cultivated an atmosphere in which issues are promptly addressed. Carrying out regular stand-ups and retrospectives alongside having shared dashboards so that everyone is aligned and updated. Another approach to ensure seamless integration of testing into the agile process is by stressing the significance of the "test early, test often" attitude across the agile process.
In my experience, testing can be automated for agile projects if there is proper bifurcation of different product feature such that they can be independently automated and tested. In this manner, different automation script can be allocated for different segment of a product and changes to any segment due to customer feedback would not affect the automation scripts for all the segments and while changes can be implemented in one part , the other part could be regressively tested. This is imperative for agile projects due to its dynamic requirements which changes with customer feedback.
In my experience, end to end automation of test scenarios are very challenging in an environment where more than 50+ agile teams are working in parallel in the same enterprise application with handful of flows. In a span of 2 weeks, understanding changes from all agile teams is close to impossible and also will negate the whole purpose of automation. Identifying the exact change and focus the automation predominantly at API level would be a good start and then it can be extended to UI, E2E if possible.
Automating testing in agile means using tools to test software automatically. This saves time and catches bugs faster. We can do this by using tools like Selenium or Appium to run tests automatically. We also integrate tests with the code so they run whenever we make changes. This way, we catch problems early. We can also speed up testing by running tests on different devices at the same time or also running tests in parallel. By automating testing, we make sure our software works well and is ready for customers quickly.
As per my understanding: Automating and scaling testing in an agile environment requires a combination of the right tools, processes, and regular maintenance. By integrating automated testing into your CI/CD pipeline, you ensure that your application maintains high quality while allowing your development team to move quickly and efficiently.
Firstly, i would suggest to plan it accordingly in PI Planning what testing types(Integration, Functional, E2E, performance and Security) will be applicable and what are the downstream/upstream applications involved. Once we will have insights, needs to be identified-how the development stories has been aligned with which sprint. On getting to know about the development stories alignment , needs to align the Automation stories where preferred would be Automation Spike initially should be created during the development phase, thereafter once dev story finished automation story should be started implementing.