What I Learned While Moving From Waterfall To Agile Testing?

I still remember the day when our delivery manager announced that from the next phase, the project is going to be Agile. After attending some training and doing some online research, I realized that as a traditional tester, moving from Waterfall to agile testing team is one of the best learning experience to boost my career. Testing in Agile, there were certain challenges, my roles and responsibilities increased a lot, workplace demanded for a pace which was never seen before. Apart from helping me to learn automation tools as well as improving my domain and business knowledge, it helped me get close to the team and participate actively in product creation. Here I will be sharing everything I learned as a traditional tester moving from Waterfall to Agile.

How Testing In Agile Is Different From Traditional Testing?

The first thing testers learn while moving from Waterfall to Agile project, is the clear-cut difference between traditional testing & testing in Agile. The differences can be clearly seen in project planning, execution and the participation of the tester in the team. Let’s see the differences in details.

Basic Ideology

In the traditional software development life cycle, the main principle of the project is to release the application only after the defects has been fixed. Agile, however, deals with an iterative approach, where at every iteration, the tester has to check the quality criterion. Recently, the adoption of Shift-left testing has been evident to speed up the testing in Agile.

How the Process Works?

In traditional Waterfall methodology, testers work at the beginning of the project for requirement gathering, and once again at the end, when development gets completed. The deadline remains fixed and in case of development team extends their deadline, the testing duration gets shorter, skipping some important testing phases.

However, while testing In Agile, development & testing are incorporated in every phase. Testers work along with developers at every sprint and since it demands faster delivery, manual testing is replaced in many scenarios by automation testing.

How The Team Works?

Waterfall methodology depends a lot on the documents specifying the requirements. Acceptance testing is usually done by the stakeholders or the end users.

Agile, on the other hand, is highly dependent upon he communication across everyone onboard in the project. Acceptance criteria are defined in the user stories and thus, acceptance testing is done by the testers. Testers have to be skilled in multiple domains apart from only manual or automation testing. Here are top 17 skills of highly effective software testers.

How The Software Release Becomes A Success?

The success or failure matrix of software depends on how the testing goes. If in any case, some critical defects arise, the project has no option but to go in the red zone.

In Agile, constant feedback is provided and demos are scheduled with the stakeholders, reducing the scope of any critical dependencies when the deadline gets closer.

What I found Out When I Started Testing In Agile?

Apart from a new work culture and learning lots of new things apart from testing, there were many other things which I found new when I moved to an Agile testing team.

Daily Standup Meetings

In my previous projects, daily or weekly meetings were often carried out regarding goals discussion, any new changes in the team or if the manager wanted to share any information with us. In Agile, the thing on which I was most impressed is daily standup meetings.

• A standup meeting usually takes place for 15 to 30 minute every morning.
• The duration varies based on team size.

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