The recent cloud computing revolution has raised the technology bar to a higher standard. While the incorporation of cutting edge technologies into business processes has improved the efficiency of software products, shrinking IT budgets have resulted in optimized software development strategies.
The new innovation in the software development segment is DevOps. This innovative software development methodology integrates the development teams with operations. This approach envisages the performance of the end product at the developing stage to minimize bugs and bring agility to the development cycle. However, agile software development poses certain challenges to the testing guys.
In a traditional software development segment, organizations either follow a waterfall method or an incremental method.
In this traditional software development setup, the product passes the development stage and reaches the testing phase as the last stage. After extensive testing is done, errors are documented and the product is again sent to the developers for editing purposes. With this approach, testers get the flexibility to enjoy ample time in testing the product. In addition, the entire product is designed and the testing team has a clear vision of the performance of the product. So, the testing procedures are effectively performed.
When it comes to agile software development, the project is broken into smaller units. At the same time, developers team up with operations and testing teams to bring agility to the project.
Challenges for An Agile Tester
As the development is done in smaller increments, modules are delivered in, frequent intervals. This poses a substantial challenge for testers coming from a traditional SDLC model since the time to perform testing in each cycle is short, hence testers have to generally work under strict deadlines.
Secondly, adequate specifications are not available, unlike the traditional development setup where testers get the full project report and enjoy the luxury of conducting tests.
Agile testing environment requires you to proactively work on tasks and show greater levels of adaptability to situations. Testers have to intuitively work on smaller test modules and still perform at a higher level.
In addition, the agile development environment draws a thin line between the roles such as developer, admin, tester etc. While the development team creates their own testing code and implements it to measure the performance of the application, testers also have to provide suggestions on how the product can be effectively developed.
In other words, the testing team needs to visualize the performance of the product at the end-user level and incorporate ideas for the effective development of the product, let alone the test planning or execution
Well not all is too challenging in ‘agile world’, there are advantages too. As the testing team closely works with developers, they have an idea of actual requirements, system implementation and development progress.
This makes testing procedures more efficient and reliable. The integration of testing practices into the development improves the efficiency of the product before it leaves the development segment. Another notable benefit of agile software testing is its concept of a whole team. Gone are the days when each department in a software development project works individually.
Today, all domains related to software development are integrated in such a way that every member of the organization has something to offer in the product development phase. This is how a great team spirit is built and maintained. By integrating various segments together, employees are motivated, team spirit is uplifted and the attrition rate is considerably reduced.
Growing business demands pose great challenges for every segment and the testing industry is not excluded. Today, testers need to develop communication skills and leadership skills along with functional aspects to add value to the business. Being adept to these changing trends is the need of the hour.