Ever since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, software demands have increased tremendously. From contactless payments to eCommerce and remote employee management, most companies have adopted a digital-first strategy in their business operations. This sudden explosion of digital transformation along with the advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and several other technologies have significantly enhanced the complexity of software development processes. Over the coming years, the technological integrations required in applications will increase, even more, making it imperative to evolve software testing approaches as well to keep up with the development requirements. The agile testing approach is one such evolution that took place in the traditional testing methodology.
What’s Ahead
The agile software testing approach has helped testers and QA teams in implementing a rather smarter approach in testing, hence speeding time to market, reducing the number of errors or bugs, decreasing product development expenses, and most of all, delivering high-quality software solutions. But before we dig deeper into the several benefits of agile testing, let’s first understand what were the challenges in traditional testing and why were enterprises forced to adopt a more agile testing methodology?
Challenges In Traditional Software Testing Approach
Traditional software testing has always played a major role in the delivery of software solutions and applications. In fact, there are still several businesses that focus on traditional testing methods to deliver solutions. Since the traditional software testing method follows a top-down approach, the next phase of testing begins only after the completion of the previous stage and contains a set of predefined steps to execute the process. Therefore, there are minimal to no interactions between different software testers or among software developers and testers. Because traditional software testing is conducted only after the completion of the entire software development process, testers must wait for the complete project to be executed and then identify the maximum number of defects. This is in fact a time-consuming process and can also be quite expensive in some cases due to the fact that small or minute errors at the beginning of the software development process tend to grow and affect other modules of the software. If such errors were initially identified then software developers could significantly reduce expenses in fixing the solution as well as improve time to market.
This is why the Agile Software Testing method is leveraged.
To overcome these challenges and ensure the quick delivery of high-quality reliable software solutions, enterprises decided that they need a better, more advanced alternative. This was to eliminate software testing from being conducted towards the end of the software development life cycle but rather implement it from the beginning itself. This would give the QA testers and software developers a higher level of collaboration. Therefore the testers would have to provide corrective feedback to the development team from the initial software development cycle itself. This strategy would significantly help the software developers to identify and fix errors in the initial stage itself and testers would not have to wait for the project to be completed in order to test it.
Also Read: What Is Regression Testing and How To Build An Effective Regression Testing Suite?
How Is Agile Software Testing Different From Traditional Software Testing
Nowadays with the increased demand for efficient software applications, development companies are striving to meet the growing customer requirements and ever-changing market trends. Traditional testing will only make matters worse for software developers these days as it will significantly increase the time taken to deploy solutions and increase the expense. Therefore, it is imperative that testing begins at the very start of the development project and that testers and developers collaborate to identify errors, potential defects, etc. and solve these issues on time. This is only possible if software development companies abandon the idea of traditional testing and leverage the more advanced agile testing methodology. As mentioned earlier, agile testing is continuous testing, which goes hand in hand with development work and provides an ongoing feedback loop into the development process.
Moreover, it also helps test automation services providers to completely understand how the tests fit with the Agile process and DevOps teams — especially since they are being involved with the entire software development life cycle. While they may not be involved with the comprehensive spectrum of DevOps processes, it’s helpful for testers to understand what’s happening in the project in order to better deal with any errors or issues that may arise.
5 Benefits Of Agile Software Testing
1. Software Testers Are Involved From The Beginning
We have mentioned this several times in the blog because this is one of the most beneficial solutions for agile testing. It makes testing more efficient, reliable, and less time-consuming as Software Testers or QA teams are allowed to be a part of the complete process throughout the duration of the project and get the inside scoop. This allows the team of software testers to have a better plan regarding the test processes, have more conversations with the developers that can improve the software quality and reduce upcoming bugs as well as bring a collaborative perspective to the team.
2. Bugs Are Easily Identified
Since testers are included in the project from the beginning, they can convey messages directly on time to software developers. With the traditional approach, the application is tested after the entire process is complete, this burdens the developers with a ton of errors and bugs. Identifying and fixing these thousands of errors can be a significant challenge to developers and it will only increase the time taken to deploy the software. With the implementation of agile testing, there is little to no confusion in the understanding of the business perspective hence, it is also said to be client-centric and business-centric along with user-centric.
3. Agile Testing Saves Time And Money
Unlike traditional testing, the agile testing method is product-driven and also very little technical documentation is required. Not just testers but the clients are also included in the software development life cycle. The development and testing process is often streamlined to the clients, hence they can provide regular feedbacks, potential changes, etc. Since the client demands are met from the beginning, the number of iterations can be reduced therefore saving a lot of time and money.
Also Read: Why Chatbot Testing Is Essential and What Are The 7 Features To Check While Testing a Bot
4. Testers Have More Time To Write Test Cases
When testers are included in the development from the beginning and briefed about the software requirements and expectations, they have a good idea about what is coming. They know what to expect in the coming cycles and the functionalities or modules that need efficient testing. This gives them more time to work on test cases and test scripts that precisely analyze each and every section of the software. This method will significantly enhance the product quality and effectively meet not only the client requirements but the public demands as well.
5. Application Maintenance Becomes Easier
Since the development process involves the efforts of a whole team rather than just an individual, there will be much lesser chances of failures in the software, hence making the maintenance quite easier. The agile software testing approach involves multiple developers and testers in the project, this makes error identification and correction a seamless process lessening the possibility of issues in coding or testing.
Final Thoughts
Traditional testing has played a pivotal role ever since the beginning of software development. It helped software developers ensure that reliable and efficient applications are being deployed. But since then, there have been several advancements in technology, languages, development platforms, etc., hence still adopting a traditional software testing approach is not feasible. Enterprises must adapt to the latest trends in software testing such as Agile and continuous testing, codeless testing, test automation, CI/CD and DevOps, AI-based testing, and much more. By adapting to these trends, software developers can efficiently meet the growing market demands and customer requirements.
Also Read: Why is API Testing Better Than Traditional UI Testing & What Are Its Benefits?
Why Leverage ThinkPalm Testing Services
ThinkPalm partners with software developers, product engineers, chipset manufacturers, Wi-Fi service providers, and much more to efficiently test and deploy their software solutions. We offer both manual and test automation services for companies so that you can deliver products faster, gain customer trust, enhance brand reputation and stay competitive. At ThinkPalm, we have the best-in-class test infrastructures, traffic generators, test labs as well as Wi-Fi testing chambers that simulate real-world conditions, so that you can be 100% sure how well your software will work in the real environment. Partner with us to improve product quality, minimize errors, and reduce testing time by 70%.
Author Bio
Ricky Philip is a content strategist, who has an unparalleled dedication to building productive and engaging website content that attracts traffic and increase search engine rankings. If not typing furiously on his keyboard, Ricky is constantly learning ways to enhance search traffic acquisitions.
