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Test Automation becomes a key player in the dynamic world of Agile development, promoting speed, dependability, and quick feedback loops.
The mutually beneficial partnership between Agile approaches and test automation is essential for quickly producing high-caliber software. Naturally, in this common situation, manual testing is not an option.
Agile development, as it is generally known, strives to provide products on short schedules, primarily to meet user expectations.
Users also anticipate perfect, error-free, and consistently highly functional software. Automation testing is the only way to accomplish all of this. Test automation in agile development environments is essential for maintaining dependability and efficiency throughout the software development lifecycle.
The importance of automated testing for agile development will be discussed in this blog.
How Did Things Stand Before Agile?
Software development was mostly done using the Waterfall Model prior to the introduction of Agile. Developers had to follow this linear method, going through phases one after the other and finishing each one before moving on to the next.
It was as flexible as the flow of a waterfall.
Testing was done in this model after every development, which resulted in inefficiencies. When needs changed, the entire process had to be reviewed, which made it a less flexible and time-consuming approach than the agile development methodologies that came after.
How Did Agile Resolve The Problem?
The goal of agile is to release functional software. To do this, teams of developers and testers complete and publish valuable apps.
Rather than developing and releasing the entire application simultaneously, only a portion of the software, namely, the database, business logic, and user interface is needed for production.
Collaboration is essential to completing this quickly (sometimes in a few weeks). Teams must communicate often for members to understand what is being built, their responsibilities, and the group's alignment.
What Is the Automation Approach In Agile?
The term "agile test automation" describes the application of automated testing frameworks and technologies to assist with software development efforts in an agile manner.
Software feature testing can be automated with agile test automation, which helps to increase testing efficiency, accuracy, and speed.
Software is produced in brief iterations under an agile development method. New features are introduced and tested at each iteration.
Agile test automation streamlines repetitive and time-consuming procedures, including regression testing so that the testing team can keep up with the quick development speed.
What Role Does Agile Automation Testing Play?
Accelerated testing necessitates accelerated coding, which in turn requires accelerated product release. An application (or upgrades to the application) must work flawlessly for every user from the moment it is released onto the market.
If not, customers will move to a rival app and leave many bad reviews, making the application seem less trustworthy.
The only way to guarantee faultless operation is to test and upgrade every feature thoroughly. It is hard to manually accomplish this within constrained timeframes for intricate, feature-rich applications.
Your only option is to automate.
Quality assurance specialists can design test cases that are set to execute automatically each time a new version of an application's code is sent to the repository by utilizing agile testing with CI/CD and automation tools.
In DevOps, this procedure is known as continuous testing, and it makes sure that the new code is error-free before it is deployed into production.
Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment, or CI/CD, is a development system that includes the Agile stage of constant testing.
Code flow automation from Development to Testing to Deployment is made possible by CI/CD. In Agile, automation testing is carried out using a variety of frameworks and tools, including Cypress and Selenium.
A particular collection of devices, such as Jenkins, Travis CI, TeamCity, Bamboo, CircleCI, Azure Pipelines, etc., is also necessary to implement CI/CD.
QAs can create test cases that are appropriate for the requirements and characteristics of the current application by using these tools.
These test cases are automatically made and applied to every new line of code introduced to the present application. Regression testing ensures that every line of code is error-free and that freshly written code does not harm or interfere with already-existing functionalities.
Four Essential Elements Illustrating The Value Of Test Automation In Agile
Reusability Of Test Scripts
Automated test scripts can be reused, allowing them to be run multiple times in various configurations. The test reusability will significantly decrease maintenance expenditures.
Applying reusability reduces expenses and gets rid of human mistakes.
Ideal Coverage Of Tests
Test coverage is essential to increase the effectiveness of software testing operations. Automated testing operations expand the breadth and depth of tests.
This is so testers don't have to perform each task by hand. Alternatively, each feature of the application, including internal programs, data tables, and memory contents, might have its test suite created by the testers.
Automation testing can automatically execute complex test cases, guaranteeing greater and quicker test coverage.
This lessens the workload for the manual testers, freeing them up for other crucial duties.
Quicker Execution Of Tests
The test automation approach dramatically increases the development process's efficiency. Testing is done with development to guarantee that all defects and problems are fixed as soon as possible.
This type of testing is also referred to as the "Fail Fast" method because it saves a tonne of time by allowing faults to be detected early in the SDLC and rectified accordingly.
Defects may typically be identified early and rectified rather than addressed later if automated testing starts at the initial unit testing phase.
Furthermore, implementing continuous testing significantly shortens a software product's time-to-market. Time may be saved, and developers and testers can guarantee a high-quality product faster.
Cost-Effectiveness
Test automation will initially cost more because it requires investment in tools, training, and setup to achieve successful automation.
On the other hand, once test automation is established, the cost factor will decrease because the automation process will run for a more extended period. Additionally, test cases can be executed multiple times as needed without incurring extra expenses, which boosts the overall effectiveness and speed of software testing operations.
Advantages Of Integrating Test Automation Within An Agile Setting
- It is possible to conduct parallel testing by executing the same scripts on many devices.
- The dependability factor increases to an entirely new degree when testing is carried out with test scripts.
- Test automation can be strategically applied to accelerate the development of agile software.
- The initial costs of integrating test automation into Elegant are significant.
Still, with time, the return on investment is more important.
- A customized test script can be created and used multiple times to check for problems in the program.
- An inventive solution for implementing agile approaches effectively and economically is test automation.
Thus, providing a high-quality product in a shorter time with faster releases helps optimize the total software testing efforts.
What Is Automated Functional Testing In Agile?
Agile software development processes use automated testing frameworks and tools to test the functioning of software features.
This method is known as automated functional testing in Agile. Software is produced in brief iterations under an agile development method. New features are introduced and tested at each iteration.
By automating the testing of time-consuming and repetitive functional tests like regression testing, automated functional testing helps the testing team to stay up with the quick speed of development.
Automated functional tests are made to test certain software aspects or operations, like data processing, output verification, and input validation.
The tests can be completed quickly and effectively and are usually written in a scripting language. Automated functional tests can be incorporated into the continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline to automate the testing process and can be run often to ensure that new software modifications have not introduced any problems or errors.
Agile's automated functional testing can increase the testing process's speed, accuracy, and efficiency.
This will enable the development team to find and fix problems more rapidly, delivering higher-quality software to users.
Which Tests In Agile Can Be Automated?
- Unit tests
- Smoke tests
- Integration tests
- Regression tests
- API tests
- Security tests
- Accessibility tests
- Performance tests
Tools For Agile Automation Testing
Typical agile automation testing tools include the following:
- Selenium
- Cypress
- Playwright
- Puppeteer
- Cucumber
- Appium
- Espresso
Conclusion
The complicated network of device-browser-OS combinations that users navigate highlights the critical role that Agile test automation plays.
A comprehensive testing approach is required because of the immense demand for perfect software performance. Automation is the only way to guarantee flawless cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility because manual cross-browser tests on this scale are impossible.
It is imperative to stress that, in this case, real devices are non-negotiable. While helpful in some situations, emulators and simulators cannot accurately replicate the real-world conditions needed for software verification.
Automation is the key to successful Agile development. With it, reaching the necessary speed for a genuinely agile product is possible.
Automation can make life easier for developers and testers and help create better software. Through adherence to Agile principles, automation plays a pivotal role in upholding velocity, guaranteeing quality, and ultimately cultivating user contentment with your product resulting in a notable 20% increase in productivity.
