How can Agile Testers integrate into the Agile development team?

Agile methodology prioritizes teams, individuals, communication, and interactions over formal processes and specific tool preferences. During the sprint, Agile testers have to collaborate and interact with developers, fellow testers, business analysts, the Scrum Master, and product owners to accomplish their tasks. Interactions and collaborations are key to unlocking the most value and agility for the team in Agile methodology. Granting the team the flexibility to determine the optimal time and approach to leverage these interactions is the best way to adopt them. In Agile testing, there is limited time available for documentation. The focus should be shifted away from creating extensive test case documents with detailed steps or results.

What I find most QA folks are lacking, is the understanding of the whole process of the development (from the birth of the idea to the post-release follow ups and monitoring), and business perspective. Without these, it's very hard to be an effective part of the team, because Agile by it's nature involves lots of discussions and decision making. If the QA doesn't understand the perspective of others, it's very hard to reach a conclusion which is acceptable and satisfies all involved parties. Unfortunately, many companies still don't involve QA from the start to the finish, or provide opportunities for them to get more experience in these fields.

1. Individuals and Interactions, more emphasis on the people as the project is a result of the collective efforts of a people in a team. Project success depends on the team efforts and effective interactions. 2. Working product, testers are encouraged to minimize their focus on documentation, ensuring it's sufficient for understanding the product without unnecessary overhead. 3. Customer collaboration, collaborating closely with customers ensures that the testing process aligns with evolving project requirements. 4. Responding to change, testers should acknowledge that initial plans serve as a foundation, but they must be prepared to respond positively to changes, recognizing that adaptability is integral to the Agile mindset.

I am tester who is currently working in an agile set up. As per my observations, testing is not just writing test case and executing them. Testing comprises of thinking system as a whole rather than just the user story in context. An agile tester should have the mindset to connect the user story impact on the system as a whole. A tester in agile should have to involve in every aspect like Story Elaborations, Prioritization and refining the AC criteria along with regular test cases writing and executions. An agile set up does not have much time for documentation, hence an agile tester should learn to re-use test cases or edit existing test cases as per new changes rather than just writing new test case every time.

Emphasizing the need for adaptability within Agile methodologies, understanding that changes and adjustments may be necessary based on ongoing feedback. In an Agile environment, the ability to adapt and iterate is key. Continuous communication and collaboration between product owners, development and testing teams, as well as stakeholders, are vital to addressing challenges and ensuring that the process aligns seamlessly with the overall Agile development cycle.

QA doesnt have differrence from any other role in team, so should participate in all mandatory ceremonies. The agile ceremonies list includes: Sprint Planning Daily Stand-Up Sprint Review Sprint Retrospective While each ceremony is different, they smooth the same overall purpose. The regular ceremonies are a great way to bring teams together with a common objective and a consistent rhythm.

Crucial to the success of projects within Agile frameworks are the ceremonies that serve as key factors for effective team collaboration. Each ceremony holds significance for Testers, who play a pivotal role in rendering final decisions for project progression or cessation. Particularly noteworthy is the retrospective ceremony, offering an opportunity to address gaps and enhance project delivery in future sprints. Active participation from Testers is paramount, ensuring comprehensive tracking of process improvements and diligent monitoring of action plans.

During Agile ceremonies like sprint planning, daily stand-ups, sprint review, and sprint retrospective, active participation of all developers (team members) is essential. This collective involvement ensures a comprehensive understanding of goals, tasks, and progress. Additionally, it serves as an opportunity to grasp business requirements and contribute valuable perspectives. The inclusive participation fosters team motivation, uniting all developers in the pursuit of a shared sprint goal.

Active participation in Agile ceremonies is crucial for Agile Testers. In my experience, attending sprint planning ensures alignment with development goals. Daily stand-ups enable real-time collaboration, and sprint reviews offer a chance to assess software quality and usability. During sprint retrospectives, I contribute insights for continuous improvement. Leveraging these ceremonies helps clarify requirements, identify risks, and define acceptance criteria, fostering a collaborative and efficient Agile development process.

Participating the daily standup and sprint planning is important, this helps agile testers to plan their early automation. In my experience, co location of agile team helps a lot. Implement it wherever it’s possible.

Agile methodology has a business-centric outlook that prioritizes user satisfaction above everything else. Agile testers adopt the same approach in their practices by continuously focusing on the customer's best interests and needs. Agile testers will collaborate with developers, fellow testers, the scrum master, business analysts and product owners during the course of their tasks of the sprint. Interactions and collaborations among stakeholders are key to unlocking the most value and agility for the team in Agile methodology.

In my experience, benefit of collaborating agile testers with developers (backend and frontend) is that testers can provide the iterative feedback which helps developers to identify the quality of their code at early stage and make necessary adjustments promptly also it breaks down the isolation and encourages a collective commitment to delivering a high-quality product.

Shift Left Testing: The world is moving towards shift left testing. Advocate for early involvement in the development process by emphasizing the importance of testing activities from the inception of user stories. Work with developers to incorporate test automation, code reviews, and unit testing to identify defects early in the development lifecycle.

Collaboration with developers is integral for Agile Testers. In my practice, continuous engagement throughout the software development lifecycle ensures a holistic approach. I actively collaborate with developers, understanding design and architecture, reviewing code, and supporting unit and integration testing. Pairing with developers for exploratory, test-driven, or behavior-driven testing, as per project needs, enhances synergy. This ongoing collaboration fosters a shared responsibility for quality and contributes to the overall success of Agile projects.

As a BA/tester I sometimes feel that some Agile teams focus on a tester-dev relationship as the sole interaction within the team. Ie; they think it is a good practise to exclude a tester from any meetings with end users and other stakeholders, and exclude testers from making direct contact (when questions on business process arise) with those who will be using the software they are testing. So testers are only able to test based on what the dev knows. In my opinion, based on experience, this is contraindicative to the testing process. But yes, collaboration with devs is absolutely important, and a key part of a testers job is to provide as much helpful information to a dev as they can, to enable the dev to understand and fix issues.

With test automation into Agile development, organizations can meet the dynamic of the iterative and collaborative Agile methodology. The Agile development get about short iterative cycles, continuous revisions, and swift releases. Automation in Agile firstly ensures the quality existing functionality. Regression testing is employed to validate the existing functionality, that it is not broken by new features.

Lisa Crispin's Agile testing quadrants is one of the best models to implement agile testing in a scrum team. As per these quadrants, testers should automate the functional testing, performance, and security testing associated with the story to meet the definition of done. This reduces the risk of finding bugs around non-functional areas and regression later in the process. Remember the cost of bugs goes exponential if the bugs are found late. Automated testing is imperative for agile deliveries because software is changed very fast and it increases the risk of breaking existing code. Automating tests and running them on each deployment is the only way agile teams can reduce the risk of defect leakage.

Automation testing is always a boon in the long run for any product stability and quality assurance. Not only automate for building up regression, sanity and performance testing test suites, but also try to automate as much as possible even the steps in manual testing. This is a very good practice to follow and enable testers to test more deeply by providing the bandwidth to perform exploratory testing.

Automation is a cornerstone for Agile Testers, enhancing speed, efficiency, and reliability. From my experience, prioritizing automation, particularly for regression, performance, and security testing, accelerates the testing process. Utilizing tools like Selenium, Cucumber, JMeter, or Postman ensures effectiveness. Adhering to automation best practices, such as maintaining modular code, version control, and continuous integration, reinforces the benefits. This approach aligns with Agile principles, facilitating swift and high-quality software delivery.

Automation is an often misunderstood topic as usually people take it as an upperhand on manual testing. Well, it's not. It is important to understand in what scenario can the product be tested in manual or automated way. If the product is in initial phase where new changes come in and out, then there is not visible benefit of automating the process. Whereas, if the product is rather stable enough with minimal breakage, then the test scenarios can be automated using alot of automation tools and technologies. I do automation with Selenium, cucumber, JMeter, Tosca, etc. but also practice manual testing as and when required.

The early you find that the base of a building is weak, the better it is as after constructing to enough height, you will not want to break it down to fix a small issue present at the bottom. Or in worst case, if the issue is uncaught, building bites the dust. Keep the same analogy in mind that it is better to test early and often because it will help to find basic bugs and issues which can be resolved quickly and then you will be sure that you are building your product on a strong base. Whereas, if you dont test in initial phase and missout something, it can cause issues which can hamper product quality and also a loss of trust from consumers.

Commencing testing at the earliest stages of software development is imperative, and leveraging concepts like the test pyramid and a shift-left approach is particularly advantageous within the Agile methodology. This strategy aids in the early identification of defects in the software development lifecycle (SDLC). The test environment plays a pivotal role in ensuring software quality. The use of separate environments for testing, including development, quality assurance (QA), system integration testing (SIT), user acceptance testing (UAT), and production, instills confidence in the overall software quality.

Having CICD in place is helpful to do early automation, sanity on test environment can be achieved as part of CICD. There are automation tools available with auto healing functionality. Anyone can reach out to me for assistance .

"Test early and often" is a fundamental tenet of Agile testing, reflecting the need to initiate testing promptly and sustain it throughout the software development lifecycle. In my experience, this involves conducting various testing types and levels—unit, integration, system, and user acceptance testing—in small, iterative increments. Testing across multiple environments, including development, testing, staging, and production, ensures comprehensive coverage. Additionally, examining the software from diverse perspectives, such as functionality, usability, reliability, performance, and security, is integral to delivering a robust and high-quality product.

Absolutely agree with this. I'm sure anyone In software development, business analysis, and testing will have seen the age old cost of bugs/cost of defects diagram in its various formats. It's a well known diagram for a good reason. Yes, test early as early as possible. Test often Plan testing as early as you can (even if in this Agile world it means you have to rejig your test plans once or more before release to test). Also, let developers know what you plan to test and why.... Testing is not a mysterious puzzle they should be trying to solve to figure out what you want. It should be a robust, yet time and cost effective part of the development process, which is there to support developers to build great stuff, not to trip them up.

In Agile testing, continuous skill development is crucial. From my experience, Agile testers should broaden their expertise beyond testing, delving into business domains, user needs, software design, programming languages, automation tools, and quality metrics. Familiarity with agile methodologies like Scrum, Kanban, XP, or Lean is essential. Additionally, proficiency in agile tools such as Jira, Trello, Git, or Jenkins enhances adaptability and collaboration, aligning with the dynamic nature of Agile practices. This commitment to learning ensures agile testers remain versatile and contribute effectively to the team.

Learning as a discipline will keep your technical debt as low as possible. Focus on one language, framework and toolset but keep your eyes and mind open for new trends. There is always room for improvement and pilot projects are ideal to test a new path of problem solving. The current trend of AI is here to stay and we need to understand how to benefit from it.

Agile testers actively participate in sprint planning meetings to understand the user stories, acceptance criteria, and potential testing scenarios. Engage in regular communication with developers, product owners, and other team members. Work closely with business analysts and product owners to clarify requirements and understand the expected behavior of features. This ensures clear expectations for testing. Understand and adopt the Agile principles and values, focusing on flexibility, adaptability, and delivering value to the customer. Participate in sprint retrospectives to discuss what went well, what didn’t, and suggest improvements for the testing process. Stay updated with new testing techniques, tools, and industry best practices.!!!

Actively participate in all Agile processes: daily stand-ups, sprint planning, retrospectives, and reviews. This allows QAs to stay updated with the project’s progress and contribute their insights. Work closely with devs, product owners, and other stakeholders. Write tests with devs, discuss requirements with the PO, etc. Testers should be involved from the beginning of the development cycle. QAs should aim for continuous testing - writing and executing tests as soon as new code is written. Agile testers should be open to learning new tools and techniques and adapting to changes. In Agile, everyone on the team is responsible for quality. Testers are not just responsible for finding bugs, but also for promoting a culture of quality.

Agile testers can integrate into agile development teams by understanding agile principles, actively participating in Scrum events, fostering collaboration and communication, testing early and often, emphasizing test automation, acquiring cross-functional skills, embracing change, engaging in continuous learning, establishing a feedback loop with developers, providing visibility of testing progress, and actively participating in retrospectives to continuously improve the testing process.

You should consider learning Docker and Linux. In the new world the applications would be dockerized, so as a tester you would be able to run that application on local machines by pulling code from dev feature branches. You would be able to run those apps and run automated tests on your local machines without having to wait for an environment deployment. This can accelerate the feedback loop and deployment process for the whole organization and get you ahead of the competition.

As QA's role isn't just to test code and verify functionality. QA represents both the vision of the Product team and the expectation of the Customer or Player. Conversely, test teams don't exist to simply break builds and cause mayhem for other members of the dev staff. Providing both quantitative (bugs / failed tests) and qualitative (feedback / suggestions) helps drive the push for high quality releases. My favorite joke about QA is that it's one of the few professions where you are paid to tell people their children are ugly. Just don't rub it in too much.