Agile Test Plan – Do We Really Need One?

As agile project management methods are developed based on the real-life project management experience of software developers, these are effective in overcoming the limitations of traditional methods of project management. Along with responding to several issues, the agile development also provides a lightweight development framework to build robust applications at a rapid pace. However, the innovative project management techniques depend on constant planning and feedback to deliver maximum business value by focusing on customers. A business must realize the customer expectation in the early stages of the project to react to them appropriately and immediately.

So the agile projects need to undergo more frequent changes in comparison to conventional software development projects. Each business has to implement a comprehensive agile test plan to address the frequent changes, sprints or iterations. As the sprints will last only for two to three weeks, the software must be tested thoroughly before being delivered to the client. The traditional and manual methods of software testing are not effective in meeting the amount of speed and flexibility required by agile projects. Therefore, it becomes essential for each organization to make and implement an agile test plan according to the requirements of the project.

Managing Frequent Changes through Agile Test Plan

Clear Product Vision

Most projects are, nowadays, being developed in distributed environments. So a business needs to ensure that each member of the distributed team has a clear idea about the product vision. An agile test plan always considers the relationship and dependencies between different teams and features. For instance, sometimes the test environment used by individual teams may not allow them to coordinate the load testing and performance of the entire application.

Further, the test plan also needs to consider a number of key factors like compatibility and interoperability of the app with different devices, operating systems and web browsers. Each software application also needs to go through a series of additional tests before its commercial release. However, the size and extent of the test plan will vary based on the number of teams involved in the project. The agile test plan also allows organizations to use the latest testing tools to make it easier for developers to implement the product vision.

Clarifying Questions

Often the feature team has to carry out a specific amount of work during the software release cycle. During the release-planning session, individual teams decide how to size the feature and stories in their product backlog. The agile testers make it easier for the developers to determine the size of the features by asking several questions by keeping in mind the whole project. Along with the performance of the software, they also ask questions related to its functionality and security.

The flexible agile test plan also allows testers to incorporate new test ideas to emulate the user behavior exactly. Also, the plan helps in creating a test document that is essential at the product release level. As the plan keeps the document simple and precise, it becomes easier for testers to set the functionality and performance parameters. At the same time, the testers also have option to record the testing risks and assumptions without creating a test document. This aspect of agile test plan makes it convenient for different teams to coordinate and come together to deliver high quality software.

Sharing Test Results

When the product vision is defined clearly, it becomes easier for testers to decide the right test ideas and tools. The story-readiness meetings also help testers in deciding how to prove that the story works in an exact and expected way. The constant coordination between the product owner, programmers and testers also ensure that each member understand his responsibilities clearly. Also, the members of the testing team can keep the exploratory test charters ready as soon as the coding is complete.

At the test results are related to the detailed test planning strongly, the agile project will avail a number of advantages including more visibility and transparency. Further, the agile test results will be available all the time to help in taking managerial decisions. The test results can also be reviewed and monitored without putting any extra time and effort. The testers can further use a set of customized tools to make the results visible.

On the whole, the agile test plans are effective in meeting the needs of rapid software application development projects. Along with saving time and resources, the agile testing methods further contribute towards optimized the quality and performance of the software. However, an organization to make and implement agile test plans by keeping in mind the specific need of the project. If you are planning to hire software testing companies, you must evaluate them to see if they are sufficiently agile or not!

We provide software testing services. If you would like to know more about the expertise of our certified software testers, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.