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The use of agile methods in the testing and development of software applications is growing rapidly. More and more companies are adopting agile methods in their application development cycles. This is why most test teams focus on improving and enhancing agile management.
Agile methods allow teams to develop software throughout the SDLC so that errors can be detected in the early stages of development and developers can fix them immediately. Some people say that when agile development and testing are combined, speed becomes the main concern of developers and testers. This is true, because continuous delivery in agile development requires continuous testing in DevOps.
The main goal of every DevOps team is to facilitate a continuous delivery process so that they can deliver innovative and improved versions of their applications faster. However, while focusing on accelerating the development life cycle, most organizations often monitor the testing process. With continuous development, continuous testing is also essential for faster delivery of reliable products.
When submitting a patch or release through the CI/CD pipeline, you need to ensure that there are no regression defects that may affect the production environment. Performing this operation manually can take a lot of time. Therefore, automated testing is the only way to overcome these challenges.
Today, we will discuss why continuous testing is important in agile development and how automation is the only viable option for continuous testing. But before that, let us first understand the difference between automated testing and continuous testing.
Test automation is not the same as continuous testing!
Test automation or automated testing is a process of automating specific factors of a software product, and this process takes the time and effort spent in the manual testing process. Execute to confirm whether the actual result actually matches the expected result.
Continuous testing is the process of performing automated testing in an agile development pipeline to obtain feedback on the risks involved in software release as soon as possible. It not only focuses on business risks, but also provides valuable insights to check whether the software can be released.
When implementing test automation in continuous testing, it can be extended and supported through various practices, such as prioritization and risk-based test case design, test-driven service virtualization, continuous integration in the DevOps tool chain, etc.
Continuous testing and automated testing of agile SDLC must go hand in hand
Agile methods are used to build high-quality applications while reducing the risks involved in development. Moreover, because agile methodology requires frequent changes, having a test automation process on hand is very helpful for resolving regression defects. A continuous testing process that includes test automation can help you speed up the agile release cycle.
Early vulnerability detection, lower cost
Continuous testing can change the rules of the game in the agile development process, and test automation can help basic authorization and inspection of software defects to achieve continuous delivery. Therefore, if you find a defect at an early stage, you can quickly fix it, which will reduce costs for the enterprise.
Easy to automate
If you want to deliver products continuously, you need a continuous testing process, which can only be achieved through test automation. With an effective automated testing strategy, you will be able to easily and quickly conduct early testing and automate the process at each stage of development.
Reduce testing effort
No matter which agile method you use in application development, one thing you can't deny is that automation is the only possible way to reduce testing effort. Automation tools provide a wide range of functions for quality inspection teams, so they can focus on continuous product development and agility.
Challenges related to automation in agile continuous testing
Using automation for agile continuous testing is not so simple. QA professionals face many challenges throughout the development process. However, these challenges can be overcome by automated testing techniques. Some of the major challenges facing quality assurance are:
Improve speed and performance
With automated testing, testers can easily increase speed and performance in the test environment. In addition, the movement of the testing cycle has also become faster, while allowing developers to obtain feedback and insights early. Although automating each test model is tempting for testers, in some cases of UI-level regression and exploratory testing, manual testing is still required.
Incomplete test scope
If you need to make frequent changes in the web application, and this has not been considered before, it will lead to insufficient code changes. However, using automated regression testing can help you ensure the functionality of the existing version.
increase productivity
It requires professional technical knowledge and energy to build a test environment and configure an automation framework. The larger challenges of increasing test automation coverage include the time and cost associated with establishing a useful automation framework. Having an extensive test management platform helps to simplify the process of successful test automation projects.
In addition, it is difficult to find automation experts with rights protection skills, so most companies really have to face it. Automated agile continuous testing requires proper coordination between developers, testers and other team members.
Unqualified API test
Implementing complex APIs is always complicated, so most testers often ignore API testing. With automated tools, you can easily test such APIs without having strong coding skills.
Choose the right test automation tool
When we talk about automated testing in agile, we cannot ignore the need for automated tools. This is the most complex task for developers. For example, traditional test automation tools with record and playback capabilities require the test team to wait for the software test to complete. Moreover, they are not ideal for agile development.
Most of you probably know that implementing automation in the early stages of agile development is very challenging, but over time it becomes very appropriate. Therefore, having reliable testing tools is essential to obtain the efficiency and quality advantages of agility. For example, if you want to perform automated browser testing, then an online Selenium Grid with thousands of real browsers and integration with third-party CI/CD tools will be the right choice for continuous testing.
Manage resources
For agile development, you need mixed testing skills. For example, you need test resources to verify fuzzy scenarios and test cases, perform manual tests with developers, write automatic regression tests, and execute tests.
In addition, as the project progresses, experts are required to cover specific testing areas, including performance testing and integration. Therefore, the domain experts who can plan and collect requirements should be appropriately combined.
Strong planning and execution
By contacting the right automation experts, the company can help the development team gain faster insights without increasing internal quality inspection resources. In addition, if you have experienced automation experts, you can plan and execute successful automation scripts. In addition, automating certain basic workflows during testing will allow you to significantly reduce costs and time.
Considering the above points, we can say that automation is the only possible way to provide continuous testing in agile development. By implementing continuous integration in agile, it can help QA turn around faster, certify daily build execution, and ensure high-quality products at the end of the agile development life cycle.
in conclusion
For testing, many factors are similar, such as continuous delivery and continuous integration of products. Now, automation provides speed, reliability, reusability, and more functions for software development, as does agile development. However, the importance of automated testing in agile testing far exceeds that of software development, which is why automation is an excellent way to deliver continuous testing agility. We hope this article will eliminate most of your doubts about automated continuous testing agile.
Finally: test the welfare
In the technology industry, you must improve your technical skills and enrich your practical experience in automation projects. This will be very helpful for your career planning in the next few years and the depth of your testing technology.
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