Can Agile Testing help you meet your Continuous Testing goals?

Extensive data has been generated around Agile Testing and its benefits, and even global enterprises have validated the growing benefits of adopting the practice. Shorter test cycles, frequent testing, faster testing cycles, and quicker turnaround time have been some of the greatest highlights of Agile Testing. Even industry analysts and development teams have endorsed the practice for the business value it brings for Digital Transformation activities. Hence, when it comes to Continuous Testing (CT), how can Agile Testing add value?

Why are your Continuous Testing goals business-critical?

Updating applications in real time, delivering value for the customers and ensuring constant innovation is impossible without nurturing the practice of Continuous Testing. Enterprises are able to deliver key projects under their Digital Transformation objectives to deliver value and enhanced experience for their customers. This makes it business critical.

Hence, both testing and development teams will continue to explore ways to make Continuous Testing more effective and result-oriented. CT works with clear goals, which are:

• Provide constant and faster feedback related to any business risks, involving a recent release or build.
• Enable the teams to focus on quality to create maximum impact and meet organizational goals.
• Constantly check the release/code and ensure that the expected value is delivered to the consumer.

This makes Continuous Testing absolutely business critical, where new ways have to be explored to make it stronger and better. Agile practices work on similar lines, where the test cycles are shorter and much more frequent. In a way, both the practices complement each other to deliver the expected value.

A study by the research firm MarketsandMarkets estimates, ‘The application testing services market was valued at USD 23.69 Billion in 2016 and is projected to reach USD 50.14 Billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 13.5% from 2017 to 2022. The base year considered for the study is 2016.’ This makes the application testing and development scenario totally demand-driven and active. Continuous Testing has been delivering value for organizations and businesses that need results in real-time.

The question is; how can you embed both the practices to deliver what you want and bring long-term value for your business needs?

Can Agile Testing support you to perform your Continuous Testing activities?

In order to function effectively and deliver the expected results, Continuous Testing needs a supporting environment that boosts the process. Can you expect all this to function smoothly in a set-up that is rigid and less accommodative? Continuous Testing needs business agility, which can be achieved by adopting Agile practices that nurture frequent questioning, constant changes, and continuous feedback.

Enabling better communication

More than anything, Continuous Testing needs open communication channels and complete transparency of the activities. Only when developers, architects, and testers work cohesively the results can be delivered. Agile way of working makes it possible, as in this process the teams are broken up into smaller fragments, where testers and developers work together to deliver the same results. This brings transparency and boosts collaboration, as the responsibilities are shared. Whether it’s testing or development, it’s a joint activity.

Faster turnaround time

As we discussed earlier, Agile enables shorter cycles, which facilitates frequent and faster feedback. Hence, time is not wasted between comprehending the requirements and enabling the activity at hand. Continuous Testing needs to work on this fundamental, as it is expected to deliver in real-time and not just go with the flow. By embedding CT within the Agile Testing model, you would be able to deliver faster and deal with issues at speed.

Offering value for your investments

What is your ultimate objective while delivering on your business goals? It is to garner higher RoI and bring value to your investments. When issues are handled effectively and transparency is maintained, teams are able to deliver quality output and save costs and efforts on rework. Agile Testing helps to focus well on the overall quality of the product by bringing in the needed protocols. In this way, bug fixing is done in time, which cuts down the testing efforts and costs. Ultimately, it helps to validate quality of the application or software.

Streamline the testing activity

It’s not just about bringing transparency or fixing defects in time; all this becomes possible when the required protocols are in place. Moreover, when tools are implemented to enable better tracking and monitoring performance, all the testing and development activities get streamlined. With teams working cohesively and with a single objective, it helps in delivering and performing as expected. Ultimately, the larger focus is to deliver quality even at speed, but in a much more disciplined way that enables better tracking.

Agile Testing brings relevance for all industries, let’s check a case

Any and every best practice must bring value for businesses operating across diverse sectors. Let’s look at this case where Agile QA delivered value for a client that was involved in processing 11 million+ transactions per day across 250,000 locations in the United States. Cigniti’s Assessment Methodology leverages CMMI, TMMI and TPI models to deliver customized QA framework for IT operations that support annual transactions of over $80 billion.

The client’s annual transactions amounted to over $80 billion and demanded high levels of precision and scalability. Cigniti’s ability to model QA framework in compliance with industry standards proved to be a deciding factor. Cigniti began a rapid requirement analysis and presented a roadmap to incorporate and modify the SLAs as per the specifications of the key stakeholders. Leveraging Agile TCoE resulted in standardization and maturity of processes. Amongst many other benefits, it helped the client to improve continuous testing and integration by automatic build deployment, unit testing and functional testing.

Connect with our experts to leverage our Agile TCoE practices and effectively deliver your Continuous Testing objectives.