Agile QA: What are the advantages and how to implement it?

Due to the constantly changing world, every company needs to adapt to the changes and agile methods have been shown to be effective. This is a flexible method of management teams of software developers that proposes solutions faster and with the ability to react to changes.

The most common approaches in this methodology are Scrum, Kanban, and Scrumban. Every one of them has its own principles and frames.

In general, agile has many advantages:

1. Detection of ineffective approaches. Since you monitor the working progress every day, you can easily understand the main mistakes and correct them fast.
2. Fast decision-making. The team works on decisions every day. If some question appears, colleagues discuss it together.
3. Motivation. Considering that managers and workers in this approach have the same responsibility, they both are interested in the result.
4. Flexibility. Agile is friendly to changes.
5. Higher quality of the code.

One of the methods of increasing the effectiveness of software development in an agile team is to implement Agile QA. It will help to have constant feedback. Today, we are going to consider them in detail, compare them with standard methods, and give some recommendations for implementing these principles in your work.

Classical testing and Agile QA: main differences of approaches

Firstly, let’s describe what it means.

The traditional understanding of this process requires attention to the quality of every step of the process. For example, you need to create a plan, use different types of tests, create test examples and lists, and do a lot of other actions.

The classic approach is associated with a lot of problems. Let’s describe them and how agile testing proposes to solve them.

Difficulties in setting priorities because of constant changes. Projects are unstable due to changes. It can affect the success of the project.

Special instruments for managing changes.

Agile has recommendations on how to make projects more flexible.

Increasing risks for the quality of the project.

Standard approaches to risk management make testing less quality.

Instruments for reducing risks.

Agile is flexible and takes into account the situation. It guarantees that risks will be removed.

Difficulties in transferring from Non-Agile to Agile.

If you change the methodology of management to Agile, the effectiveness can become lower from a short-term perspective.

The full instructions.

Using Agile QA you will get ready instruction on using this methodology. You don’t need to destroy an old system if you want to build it from a blank.

Separate testing.

The team of testers works separately from the developers.

Testers on the team.

Testers are part of a team.

Testers are not part of the development of requirements.

Testers may not be engaged in the process of creating requirements.

Testers participate in the development of requirements.

It helps to adapt them to real life.

Testing is skipped sometimes.

Testing is an important and regular part.

As you see, Agile QA proposes another approach that is innovative and flexible.

Agile QA: how to implement this approach

First of all, Agile QA is very strictly thoughtful. It includes advice that has been created on the basis of a lot of empirical data. It certainly will help you reach the goals of your project and make this process more flexible.

Agile QA is used for extending the list of tools that Agile specialists can use for testing.

Why is this approach so good? Because QA members can be part of this process, be flexible and ready for any changes. It also allows them to have an entire vision and understand how to help a team complete its common tasks.

QA engineers can also adapt themselves to the changing world. To do it, they need to use instructions for each step of the development process.

Let’s name this advice “Golden recommendations”. What answers do you need to get according to them?

1. What affects the length of the iterations? Can it be changed?
2. How can you make these meetings more important for people?
3. Which meetings, discussions require QA?
4. What does QA engineer need to have if they want to use Agile methodology in the project?
5. How to plan in a changeable and friendly environment?
6. What are the important rules and how can we control how people follow them?
7. How can you make the process of app development more clear for everyone?
8. When do we need to implement QA in the project? Is there a real need for it?
9. What are the most important skills required?

If you understand the fundamental steps and events in the cycle of development using Agile methodology, the teamwork will become more clear, its efficiency will grow. That’s why the process will also become successful.

Agile QA steps

Do you want to learn how to increase the efficiency of your team? First, you need to learn how to launch and finish projects as an Agile QA. There are these basic steps and for every one of them, there are the following problems that you need to solve:

1. How to integrate a person into a complicated environment. This task is important for the on-boarding step.
2. How to avoid unuseful planning and adapt the project to the changes that occur constantly. This task is a characteristic of the project initiation step.
3. How to plan iterations correctly. It is about a step of iterations planning. You need not only use your theoretical knowledge, but also use empirical data to do everything correctly in this step.
4. Ending of the iteration. During this step, you need to understand how to finish it correctly and get good lessons from the experience. You need to apply this useful information during the next iteration.
5. Release. This step is associated with release, reducing risks, and effective support.
6. Synchronization. During this step, you need to not lose connection with your team and not waste time on unnecessary things when you do daily synchronization.
7. Closing of the project. During this step, it is important to close the project correctly.
8. Finishing the work on the project. If you exit the project, you need to share your knowledge with your group.

Is there a difference in Agile implementation in the project with small and big teams?

If you have only 3-4 professionals working on the project, you don’t need to implement agile. You can organize work without it. If the team consists of more people (up to 7-9), you can use SCRUM to organize the work of this company.

The biggest focus is on big teams consisting of more than 9 people. You need to evaluate actions made by them to increase the effectiveness of the entire team. An Agile QA solution helps with this task.

Also, you need to reduce the number of feedback cycles. But it is easy because constant feedback decreases defects when they appear.

What may you expect?

Such detailed instructions for every step of an Agile project help everyone create a detailed plan for everyone. However, this approach isn’t very easy at first. Only regular training can make this process automated.

Fortunately, it isn’t a problem because you just need to follow the instructions above and monitor all the aspects described previously. Every step has its own specifics. That’s why you need to understand what it is in your team.

We described methods of how to correctly implement Agile QA in your organization or project. You need to adapt them to your tasks. You can do it together with your team.

About the author:

Ivan Kolesnikov

Experienced professional in programming.