Most mobile and web projects are built using an agile methodology. Thus, about 97% of organizations implement this work model. Teams submit updated applications to test new and existing functionality. Automated Testing (AT) helps in development and implementation, enhancing the stability of a digital product. Agile methods help to identify problems early, ensuring the constant interaction of multidisciplinary professionals. We will figure out why automation testing is important and what metrics and approaches are the best to use.
Table of Contents
Testing Metrics: Assessing the Contribution of Agile Automation
Number of Bugs
Bugs to be fixed should reflect actual values. Identification of critical problems is possible during development using automatic checks. For example, the Selenium tool allows you to run tests and multiple validations simultaneously. The correlation between the number of tests and the number of bugs detected is directly proportional. It is an indicator of the correctly chosen technical stack, as well as testing techniques. This answers the question of why test automation is important in agile. The better the testing process is organized and woven into development, the better the final results of the collaboration.
Correction factor
Measured as the ratio of errors (eliminated to detected). The rapid growth of indicators indicates the efficiency of interaction between specialized specialists within the project. AT simplifies and speeds up the bug fixing process. Testers should collaborate with other team members to ensure that all execution scenarios are covered.
Development cycle duration
This indicator depends on the speed of finding critical errors and obtaining guarantees for the launch of an IT product. Testing is one of the main stages, so its automation affects the number of involved specialists and the time of the project team. The concerted actions of the participants lead to a quick transition to the last step, deploying the application.
Maintenance cost
The factor evaluates the AT’s success according to the implementation of a digital product by the customer. Then, it is necessary to collect information about the system’s operation from the technical support staff. Providing testers with effective diagnostic methods helps eliminate the reasons for user requests much faster.
Speed of closing stages
The AT team determines how to increase the number of completed tasks for a particular time. Planning the next iterations and meetings using Agile techniques (Scrum, Nexus, LeSS) helps to improve the work. Automation reduces the time to complete a project.
AT methodologies for agile projects
As a rule, development is based on tests generated for the customer. IT experts use regression AT to get more time to explore a digital product and conduct other types of validation. This is another reason why test automation is important for agile teams.
The earlier and better the software testing process is organized, environments are deployed, and parallelization is set up, the faster teams get results. The number and quality of bugs detected during a single testing cycle and development sprint depend directly on the methods chosen to work on the product.
If the methodologies are inefficient and you will get unsatisfactory results: find unimportant bugs and miss critical bugs. Ultimately, this will lead to problems with the release version, which will entail additional support and optimization costs.
Let’s take a look at techniques that define and simplify testing tasks:
- TDD — Organizing short development cycles by unit, integration, and functional tests. They form the requirements before compiling the source code. Successful passing of the test allows the developer to move to the stage of improvements and fixes and provide testing for bugs periodically.
- ATDD — Verifying a digital product after development and implementation. Initially, the criteria for the correct execution of the work must be formed. Testing is carried out to verify that the application meets the needs and requests of the user.
- BDD — a description of user actions by testers in behavior language. The developers provide the ability to turn such texts into tests. It is followed by the usual AT stages and the product launch.
The successful use of such approaches in a team depends on the qualifications and initiative of the participants. The main goal is the quality of the developed product, not the speed of work.
How Developers and Testers work together
The ideal agile project involves a discussion of the digital product and built-in functionality before starting the main work. The team must understand the technological value of the resulting IT platform and its user-friendliness. Testers are customers of automated test developers. They can contact the team leader to resolve the crucial product issues quickly.
During the product deployment phase, an agile approach allows IT to be more quickly informed about the current state of a digital project. Test cases require regular and repeated checks with accurate results to provide feedback. Creating new functionality should be carried out simultaneously with the testing of individual elements. Agile methodologies help coordinate the work of project team members by scheduling their meetings.
Even close coordination of processes is sometimes ineffective in the collaborative routine of developers and testers. The main problem with this is a poor technical stack. That is, the QA team, focusing only on achieving results, may choose convenient but inefficient tools, reducing the relevance of the data obtained or complicating the process of decoding reports. This negatively affects the quality of performance of direct duties and reduces the validity of tests.
Why test automation is important in Agile: 5 key reasons
Agile approaches are used to develop digital products and accelerate their release to the market. Changes and updates are essential elements of agile models. AT can quickly correct detected errors, ensuring the technological value of the product for the user. In Agile development, it guarantees good performance, reliability, reuse, and more. Let’s highlight 5 main features that will make it clear why test automation is so important.
1. Improving Teamwork
Using agile methods helps to plan the process in detail, divide the project into short chunks, and track results. Employees’ career ambitions are not suppressed, which allows everyone to stand out at the decision-making stages. Agile frameworks offer a system of self-organized teams. Automation technologies are used in conditions of coordinated cooperation and full interaction of multidisciplinary specialists during testing.
2. Conducting Test Cases Iteration
Build execution can take place daily using AT tools and the correct methodology. The results of the checks should ensure that there are no maintenance problems. The development process is continuously linked to the ongoing analysis of the digital product, and all agile team members are responsible for testing. The selected frameworks help to distribute the time and responsibilities of each employee.
3. Speeding up the organization of tests.
The QA engineering team can implement priority tasks by choosing AT. Special tools (Testim, Selenium, etc.) allow you to check errors without a human factor. Agile practices ensure close collaboration between diverse IT professionals. Teams can speed things up with written code and a solid test base to build software.
4. Moving to an early stage of the project
DevOps enables automation technologies to be introduced when coding. The verification phase is shifted to the first steps in developing a digital product, for example, forming project requirements with the customer. This approach helps to avoid high maintenance costs and hasty final bug fixes. An agile team can measure progress more accurately after completing each stage. Customers will receive the final digital product that has passed all validation stages.
5. User Experience Research
Releasing a web or mobile application requires a clear deadline to calculate the development time. Accelerated testing is possible with special tools to detect critical problems. Generating successful audit reports is a guarantee of providing the user with the necessary functionality. Meetings in Scrum, Kanban, or Nexus help get feedback and adjustments to the product.
Potential Agile Automation Issues
Automation is not always a cure-all for QA masters. Despite the fact that it speeds up the process, it often leads to such problems as:
- Skipping a large number of bugs.
- Need to retune the code.
- Irrelevance of the results.
- Reduced speed of testing and development.
- Errors in the work of scripts.
Why test automation is important in agile, according to experts? It’s simple: this methodology is really effective with the right approach. If you combine automation, manual QA, and development in a single tandem, the results will be not only relevant but also of high quality.
Development based on integration and continuous validation can cause several complications with AT:
- Poor product performance. A large number of functions and extensive code can complicate the application, affecting its performance. AT tools will help you find bottlenecks in product performance.
- Frequent crashes in the code. Continuous integration and product launch require continuous AT. Code changes in Agile development cause broken code. CI/CD pipelines can help with this situation.
- Selective testing. Sprints in Agile projects can be miscalculated, leaving time to test only part of the new features. User stories are analyzed partially, which does not guarantee the quality of the technological solution. Regression AT will speed up the testing of old functions.
Automation allows you to update every element of the system within a limited time. The established sprint gives Agile teams an understanding of the time needed for each project stage. New approaches push companies to create perfect opportunities to develop new digital solutions.
So why is test automation so important in Agile development? AT will help ensure continuous testing and accelerate teamwork. Try this methodology by following the latest trends and innovations in Agile projects.
Let’s Summarize
Automation, like manual tests, is an integral component of the complex development process. Its effectiveness has been proven in practice by the experience of industry leaders such as Zapple Tech. Competently written and timely edited test scenarios deployed in a suitable testing environment save up to 90% of the time to re-examine questionable results.
Collaboration with developers further optimizes the QA process, allowing all project participants to quickly coordinate their actions and make timely changes to the code. Accordingly, it has a qualitative effect on the final development results. The final version of the software turns out practically perfect. This also affects the economic component, reducing the cost and time spent optimizing bugs.
If you want to maximize the potential of QA and Agile methodology, implement it in the development process promptly, that is, before you start working on the project directly. When choosing contractors, be guided by their experience and feedback on the team. For example, if you cooperate with Zapple Tech, you get not only a fast and expert approach to the case but also the highest quality results at quite reasonable prices.