New Agile Testing Modes

DISCUSSION

Case description-the background: The answers for the problems listed earlier are explained with the help of a case study that is conducted in an Indian software company.

The case study is framed based on the author’s involvement in an agile software project that has been developed in a software company located in Chennai, India. The software company which the author is referring to is one of the pioneers in handling projects on image and video optimization. As an extension of this work, the software team has developed logic and is developing the beta version of the product to compress the image and retrieve it back without any loss on the original image. They are also leaders in creating solutions for correcting the online competitive examinations. The company has its offices in various locations across India and has its global operations in countries like USA, Japan and Philippines. As per the policies of the organization, the company name and the project names are to be kept anonymous.

Fig. 1:	The project team of the firm where the study has been made

Table 2:	Type of testing and execution status of the concerned

The project team: The below illustration shows the agile cross-functional development team which includes a product manager, developmental team, QA team, user experience team and a project manager. The project team of the firm where the study has been made is presented in Fig. 1.

The project manager supervises the release schedule and helps resolve logistical issues, but otherwise does not participate in the development process. The developmental team, consisting of three to eight developers, implements and delivers to QA a feature or set of features per sprint based on a prioritized backlog determined by product management.

Test strategy: During the test strategy design, decision on the scope of testing such as unit, integration and system testing and types of testing such as performance, load, regression, etc is taken. The acceptance criteria should generally define upfront for each story and should be available in the beginning of each sprint. Based on the skill set available and time, decision on level of automation for the project is also decided. The decision of which testing is done in the sprint and which one is done outside the sprint is also taken. Table 2 shows the types of testing and the responsibilities of the agile team in executing the tests.

Fig. 2:	Scrum team in the linear embedded testing model

Testing techniques: The acceptance testing, unit testing and the TDD are classified under the category of confirmatory testing, which means these are the mandatory testing that has to be performed under a single sprint. The exploratory-based testing, session based testing and the scenario based testing is classified under the broad category of investigative testing, which means certain mining aspects have to be performed while testing. It also denotes testing out of the box.

Apart from testing, the project may be highly successful only if it makes continuous integration with continuous delivery and also gets continuous feedback from the customer end.

Testing modes: The testing modes are broadly classified in to two different groups. They are the linear embedded testing model and the other is the rotational embedded testing model.

Linear embedded testing model: This model is a common model that is been used in many of the software projects, wherein the developer will be involved in coding and the testers will be embedded along with the development team and they work on generating several test cases and executing them. But in this scenario, people that are the developer whoever is involved in coding will always work as the coder till the end of the project and the persons whoever is involved as a tester will act as a tester till the project gets completed. Figure 2 illustrates the scenario.

In such a scenario, there are several chances for both the developers and testers to get fed up with their roles of coding and testing, respectively.

Rotational embedded testing model: In agile projects that deploys a combination of both XP and scrum methodology, the developers whoever is involved in coding can be converted to play the testing role after one particular sprint is completed. Normally, a sprint lasts long for a period between 1 week to 15 days. In this case, both the tester and the developer will be happy in playing multiple roles.

Fig. 3:	Role played by scrum team members using rotational embedded testing model

As well, the developer as he would have played the role of a tester in the same project, he would be doubly careful in coding the task that is assigned to him. Figure 3 illustrate the scenario.

The do’s and don’ts in agile testing: The below guidelines will be highly helpful for an agile developer cum tester in a real-time agile developmental project.

Do’s in agile testing:

Don’ts in agile testing:

Table 3:	Self evaluation questions

Typical activities of an agile tester:

Tester’s agile adoption questionnaire: The answers to the below mentioned sample questionnaire make the traditional tester to get converted to an agile tester. The more the number of Yes he/she gives in answering, the more they can adapt themselves to agile testing. Self evaluation Questions are presented in Table 3.

Debugging: The below flowchart in Fig. 4 explains how to debug a test case and effectively eradicate the bug from a session.

Fig. 4:	Representation of a test case debugger

CONCLUSION

Testing plays a vital role for any project. Testing would be more efficient if a parallel testing could be done in par with the development team. Better quality could be achieved if the project team follows a continuous integration with a continuous delivery and a continuous feedback from the customer.

As a future direction, when the bug has arrived, before directly implementing the test cases, the criticality of the bug has to be inspected at first and then adaptation has to be implemented based on the criticality and priority of the bug. It is the QA team’s responsibility to work in par with the development team and bring out a better qualitative product.