Quality Assurance

Agile Quality Assurance: Essential Best Practices

Summary:

Agile methodology is created to ensure customer satisfaction, uninterrupted feedback, and to acknowledge changes. Quality Assurance (QA) in Agile development has a crucial role in ensuring that software meets the desired quality level until the end of its lifecycle. The traditional methodologies where quality assurance comes after development, Agile integrates quality assurance practices from the start and focuses on continuous improvement and fast delivery of high-quality software. The Agile development methodology is a way to improve the speed, flexibility and reliability of software development. It was developed in reciprocation to the problems faced with traditional software development methods.

Agile Methodology Cycle

Features:

1. Continuous Testing: Quality assurance in Agile requires ongoing testing throughout each iteration or sprint, checking for defects that are caught early and where quality is not compromised.
2. Collaborative Approach: Quality assurance engineers work with developers, product owners, and other stakeholders to identify acceptance criteria and ensure they are aligning with quality goals.
3. Automation: Automated testing frameworks are used to conduct smooth testing processes, providing quick feedback on the quality of each build.
4. Adaptability: Agile QA processes are flexible and adaptable to changes in requirements, enabling teams to respond swiftly to customer feedback and market demands.
5. Speedy delivery: To ensure that the people who use the software receive it as soon as possible and that it is of high quality.
6. Quick changes: Changes in requirements are accepted and carried out quickly, while the goal is to deliver working software often, usually within a shorter timeframe.

Role of QA in Agile:

• Include QA in project planning:During the project’s starting phase, quality assurance is involved throughout. This helps to identify if there are any possible risks, outline the testing requirements, and define the quality goals.

• Increased collaboration between QA and development teams:The quality assurance and development teams should cooperate to create a quality product. Communication between both must be precise and regular. Both teams should work together and must have the same understanding of the testing requirements.

• Create a testing plan:The testing plan should always highlight the features that are to be tested and the types of testing that will be performed, and the tools and techniques that will be used.

• Establish a process for reporting and tracking defects: The process for reporting and tracking defects should be noted down early on so that quality assurance team and development teams can work together to fix those. There should also be a clear guideline to define defects and how they will get resolved.

How an agile methodology or process works:

What is a Sprint?

Each Sprint is made up of the following events:

• Sprint planning: Meeting where the team discusses backlog with the help of the Product Owner’s that focuses and puts those into the current sprint. The team agrees about the Done Criteria and points of each story. They then agree upon a sprint goal and get started.

• Daily standup: Each day the Scrum Master leads the daily standup. Each team member goes around and describes:

• What have you done since the last daily standup?

• What are you going to do until the next daily standup?

• What impediments are standing in your way?

• Sprint Review: At the end of the sprint, the Scrum Team holds a meeting to showcase accomplishments, assess progress against the Sprint Goal, and present to stakeholders

• Retrospective: After the Sprint, Team, Scrum Master, and PO meet and review what went well and discuss improvements for the next Sprint.

• Grooming: This process involves reviewing and prioritizing backlog items to ensure they are well-defined and ready for a smoother Sprint Planning.

Task Board

Once the Sprint starts, you can track progress in Jira. Sprints are divided into stories or tasks, visible as they move through customizable ‘swim lanes,’ including:

1. To Do – Column that includes all the tasks that have been identified, however haven’t been done yet by the team members.
2. In Progress – Tasks that members of the team are working on right now.
3. Ready to Test- tasks that are set up for testing after completion.
4. Testing – tasks that go through testing to make sure they satisfy the requirements for approval.
5. Done- Task that are complete and meet the expectation criteria.

Benefits of QA in Agile:

• Test results are effectively improved with close teamwork among developers, architects, testers, and product managers throughout the entire life cycle.

• The incremental and iterative models of agile save time on specifying test requirements and validating results, ensuring on-schedule, error-free project release cycles.

• In the agile environment, if the right testing tools are used it optimizes utilization and reduces costs for purchase, setup, and maintenance.

• Key aspect of agile is the early discovery of issues and their resolution, that can be accomplished due to close collaboration of developers and testers

• Agile testing recognizes the outcomes immediately and offers visibility of project quality that allows on time correction that would improve the product quality. This helps businesses enhance application quality and performance by preventing critical faults.

• In agile, quality assurance supports development by being in close contact with developers to deliver code that meets client specifications and expectations.

QA Planning for Agile Environments:

QA Planning for Agile Environments

1. Understand the Agile development process:Before creating a QA plan that would be aligned with the Agile development process, you need to understand the Agile development process and its principles, such as continuous integration, collaboration, and flexibility.
2. Identify the testing requirements:Testing requirements should be adaptable, and it should be carried out throughout the development cycle.
3. Determine the types of testing:In agile development, we concentrate on testing early and often to make sure that the software meets the requirements and specifications that our customers or business stakeholders have set. This might include performing Functional Testing, Regression Testing, Acceptance Testing, and Exploratory Testing.
4. Define the testing approach:Agile development involves testing throughout the development process, and this helps ensure that the software is of the highest quality.
5. Determine the testing tools and techniques:The testing tools and techniques that will be used to ensure that the testing is done efficiently and effectively include automated testing tools, performance testing tools, and exploratory testing techniques.
6. Define the testing metrics:To improve the quality of the software development process, agile teams continuously keep track of their work and adjust as needed. Using testing metrics to check how well the software is working and how much time it is taking to fix defects.
7. Plan for continuous improvement:As agile process is built on the principle of constant improvements. Every time there are new changes made to the software, the team members will review their testing plan and make necessary changes. This helps ensure that the software is as reliable as possible.

Ref Link:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/agile066/jira-agile-user-s-guide

https://rubygarage.org/blog/quality-assurance-teams-in-agile

https://scaledagileframework.com/

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Quality Assurance
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