Agile Testing

When planning a sprint usually, the velocity of the sprint is measured on the basis of professional judgment based on historical data. However, the mathematical formula used to measure the velocity of the sprint are,

• First – completed story points X team capacity: If you measure capacity as a percentage of a 40 hours weeks

• Second – completed story points / team capacity: If you measure capacity in man-hours

For our scenario second method is applicable.

There are various methods present in agile testing such as,

☛ Scrum

☛ Crystal Methodologies

☛ DSDM(Dynamic Software Development Method)

☛ Feature driven development(FDD)

☛ Lean software development

☛ Extreme Programming(XP)

A product roadmap is referred for the holistic view of product features that create the product vision.

☛ Scrum: In the scrum, a sprint is a basic unit of development. Each sprint is followed by a planning meeting, where the tasks for the sprint are identified and estimated. During each sprint, the team creates finished portion of a product

☛ Agile: In Agile, each iteration involves a team working through a full software development cycle, including planning, design, coding, requirement analysis, unit testing, and acceptance testing when a product is demonstrated to stakeholders

Scrum Master key responsibilities involves

☛ Understand the requirements and turn them into working software

☛ Monitoring and Tracking

☛ Reporting and Communication

☛ Process Check Master

☛ Quality Master

☛ Resolve Impediments

☛ Resolve Conflicts

☛ Shield the team and performance feedback

☛ Lead all the meetings and resolve obstacles

A test stub is a small code that replaces an undeveloped or fully developed component within a system being tested. Test stub is designed in such a way that it mimics the actual component by generating specifically known outputs and substitute the actual component.

Sprint Zero: It is introduced to perform some research before initiating the first sprint. Usually this sprint is used during the start of the project for activities like setting development environment, preparing product backlog and so on.

Spikes: Spikes are type of stories that are used for activities like research, exploration, design and even prototyping. In between sprints, you can take spikes for the work related to any technical or design issue. Spikes are of two types Technical Spikes and Functional Spikes.

Agile manifesto defines an iterative and people-centric approach to software development. It has basically 4 key values and 12 principals.

Application Binary Interface or ABI defines an interface for complied application programs or we can say it describes the low level interface between an application and the operating system.

Burn-up and burn-down charts are used to keep track the progress of the project.

Burn-up charts represent how much work has been completed in any project whereas Burn-down chart represents the remaining work in a project.

User Stories:User Stories defines the actual business requirement. Generally created by Business owner.

Task: To accomplish the business requirements development team create tasks.

Epic: A group of related user stories is called an Epic.

► Exploratory Testing:

☛ Pros:

It requires less preparation- Easy to modify when requirement changes- Works well when documentation is scarce

☛ Cons:

Presenting progress and Coverage to project management is difficult

► Scripted Testing:

☛ Pros:

In case testing against legal or regulatory requirements it is very useful

☛ Cons:

Test preparation is usually time-consuming- Same steps are tested over and again- When requirement changes it is difficult to modify

Iterative: Iterative method is a continuous process of software development where the software development cycles are repeated (Sprint & Releases) till the final product is achieved.

Release 1: Sprint 1, 2… n

Release n: Sprint 1, 2….n

Incremental: Incremental development segregates the system functionality into increments or portions. In each increment, each segment of functionality is delivered through cross-discipline work, from the requirements to the deployment.

The advantages are

☛ It helps team to objectively measure progress

☛ It provides a consistent means of measuring team velocity

☛ It helps to establish a consistent pattern of delivery

Anytime applying agile methodology, the testers /developers ensure that the whole process of testing /development is broke into as small steps as possible and just a small unit of code is tested /developed in each of this steps. The team of testers /developers is communicating consistently the results of their work, and change the short term strategy and even the development plan on the go, based on the results of agile testing. Agile methodology encourages flexible and rapid response to change which should lead to a better end result.

This method is focused around "designing & building" features. Unlike other agile methods, FDD describes very specific and short phases of work that has to be accomplished separately per feature. It includes domain walkthrough, design inspection, promote to build, code inspection and design.

When requirement keeps changing, continuously agile tester should take following approach

☛ Write generic test plans and test cases, which focuses on the intent of the requirement rather than its exact details

☛ To understand the scope of change, work closely with the product owners or business analyst

☛ Make sure team understand the risks involved in changing requirements especially at the end of the sprint

☛ Until the feature is stable, and the requirements are finalized, it is best to wait if you are going to automate the feature

☛ Changes can be kept to a minimum by negotiating or implement the changes in the next sprint

Exploratory Testing:

Pros:

• It requires less preparation- Easy to modify when requirement changes

• Works well when documentation is scarce

Cons:

• Presenting progress and Coverage to project management is difficult

Scripted Testing:

Pros:

• In case testing against legal or regulatory requirements it is very useful

Cons:

• Test preparation is usually time-consuming- Same steps are tested over and again

• When requirement changes it is difficult to modify