Worrying about delayed-release cycles? Implementing Test Automation in Agile processes can help speed up your release cycle.

Before adopting Agile development concepts, Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) frequently used the Waterfall Model. As a result, the Waterfall Model was the first widely used model for software development. This methodology linearly approached development, much like a waterfall’s flow.

Steps involved in the Waterfall Model:

• Requirements

• Design

• Development 

• Testing

• Deployment

• Maintenance

Each step in the development process had to be completed before moving on to the next. In the waterfall model, testing comes at the end for all phases of development. Developers must complete the development of a new feature before QA specialists can test it. Then, if bugs appear, testers must go back to the code, evaluate each line, and attempt to locate the errors or bugs. This makes it costly for the developers to go back and fix things that are breaking the product.

Additionally, the entire process must be performed even for the most minor change in requirements. This procedure takes a longer time, delaying market time and failing to stay relevant. Businesses may find it challenging to compete with the fast-paced competition. Agile development makes the process more flexible. For example, to meet user demands, developers can build a simple but fully functional version of the product, after which QA experts can run tests and release the product to the market using Agile methods. 

The product can then be polished by developers further by adding fresh designs, features, and aspects to keep the users engaged. Finally, testing follows each development process before releasing the product. The Agile Technique involves releasing functional software with just the database, business logic, and user interface instead of developing and releasing the entire application. To develop, test, and publish functional apps, developers and testers must have enhanced collaboration. Moreover, testing teams must follow faster, more efficient methods for Testing like Test Automation, to keep up with agile environments. 

Importance of Test Automation In Agile Environments

Accelerated development and coding necessitate accelerated testing, which necessitates accelerated product release. Every application or update released in the market must function completely for every user. 

Testing each feature and updating thoroughly is the best way to guarantee a faultless operation. However, for sophisticated, feature-rich software, it can be challenging to do so with manual testing. Automation testing helps to inspect the product within the available time frame thoroughly. 

When using Agile, QAs can design automation test cases that can be executed each time new code for a specific application is uploaded to the repository. In DevOps, this process is known as continuous testing. It ensures that the new code is error-free before being used in a production environment.

Continuous testing is a stage in the Agile development process where the code transitions from Development to Testing to Deployment, automated by CI/CD.

How To Implement Test Automation In Agile

Agile testing employs a variety of tools and frameworks, like Selenium and Cypress, to implement automation testing. In addition, a specialized collection of tools, such as Jenkins, Travis CI, TeamCity, Bamboo, CircleCI, Azure Pipelines, etc., are also necessary to implement CI/CD. These tools enable QAs to create test cases that align with the current application’s requirements and nature. 

Once the code is built, these test cases are automatically executed for every new line of code introduced to the program. The tests confirm that each line of code is error-free and that freshly developed code does not obstruct or conflict with the functionalities already implemented via regression testing.

To execute their tests, QAs also need access to various genuine devices, browsers, and operating systems. There are countless device-browser-OS combinations that users can employ to access any software. The software must perform flawlessly in each of these scenarios for it to have any chance of succeeding.

Performing manual cross-browser tests on various devices may be challenging. The only option for ensuring cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility is automation testing.

What To Automate?

In many agile process, automation is possible only for few of the test cases. Agile teams frequently make quick modifications and additions to the code base in response to market demands and user feedback, making the code base brittle and unstable. Test automation tools cannot handle these changes, which may necessitate expensive script maintenance.

However, testers can implement test automation while performing regression testing in agile projects. Moreover, automation saves time and money for “fixed” features from earlier developments by maintaining their functionality in case of new changes or updates.

Additionally, APT tests, non-functional tests, and tests behind the GUI are other excellent goals for QA teams to automate in Agile projects. These tests are stable enough for the automation tools to run with continuously changing requirements.

New features are to be tested manually for the new builds. The QA team won’t gain much from automating them initially because they will need to perform routine tests and retests when further modifications happen.

Other scopes of test automation in Agile are:

• Unit tests

• Smoke tests

• Integration tests

• API tests

• Security tests

• Accessibility tests

• Performance tests

Leveraging QAonCloud's Agile Test Automation Services

The competitive advantage of automation stands out as a result of the growing demand for Agile applications from practically all software development teams. QA teams must prepare their automation techniques from the beginning, even though the benefits of automation can only be in the long term.

To implement agile test automation, QAonCloud crafts various automation testing strategies on browsers and devices to keep up with agile environments. To carry out testing techniques that are in line with DevOps, QAonCloud testers use industry best practices and sophisticated tools and experience to run tests for rapid deployments. This enables businesses to meet market demands on time without compromising product integrity.