5 Tips to Enhance Your Agile Testing Practices for Web and Mobile Applications

Redesigning mobile or web applications is no small feat; it requires a clear vision, extensive planning, and a major investment. To maximize the success of any redesign project, it is critical to properly test applications before they are launched.

QA testing is the safety net that protects digital products like web and mobile applications from major mistakes such as coding errors. While the importance of QA testing cannot be overstated, it presents two key challenges for many organizations as they develop new applications or update existing ones.

First, Agile, as a software development model, is designed to streamline and speed up the development process; however, it can place time constraints that make it particularly difficult for teams to properly execute test phases.

Second, QA testing requires specific skills, experience, and resources that many organizations do not have in-house. As a result, testing may fall short inevitably increasing the likelihood of bugs in the production environment.

To help you overcome these challenges, we have compiled some of the best testing practices to follow throughout the redesign project to improve your Agile testing practices.

Agile Testing Best Practices

Many organizations apply the Agile methodology when it is time to build or redesign their mobile or web applications, especially when there is a need or desire to introduce new functions and features during redesigns.

Testers and developers face several challenges that can make testing within Agile development projects particularly complex. Below are several best practices for streamlining and enhancing your Agile testing:

1. Work With What You Have

Often, testers working on Agile projects lack clear sets of acceptance criteria. This occurs when product owners, who are responsible for creating user stories, have a general understanding of a feature but are still not fully aware of all of its specifications.

Despite the challenges this poses, it is important to note that testers can begin testing by making advanced scenarios that test the idea of the feature expressed in the user story. Using this approach enables testers to get a valuable assessment of the feature and share relevant information with team members.

2. Adapt to Evolving Requirements

During the course of any digital project, it is not uncommon for requirements to change as the desires or needs of key stakeholders evolve. However, managing changes in the middle of project can be challenging.

The Agile method was designed specifically to help a project team address constant changes. When stakeholders introduce new or alter existing requirements, the Agile method acts as a guide to help testers adapt to these changes.

When changes occur in the middle of the sprint, testers should share as much information as possible regarding the tests they have executed as well as the aspects of the app that have not been tested yet. Sharing this information will allow the team to alter the sprint without sacrificing the quality of the release.

3. Test Continuously

Testing should be viewed as an ongoing process rather than reserving it for just one part of the development process. Following test-driven development is beneficial in promoting testing in a continuous process. With this approach, tests are written before the code for new functions is written. Testers gain more time to create test scripts, as they are essentially developed alongside their functions.

Moreover, this approach frees testers from having to modify or reproduce their test scripts when changes to the software occur. Overall, test-driven development helps make testing more Agile by incorporating it into the early stages of the development lifecycle.

4. Automate Regression Testing

A newly redesigned mobile or web application may come with new features and functions designed to improve the overall user experience. These new additions require the QA team to test for regressions. Although regression testing is absolutely necessary, it can be challenging for testers to manually complete time consuming and repetitive test cases.

Although test automation is not exclusive to the Agile projects, it nonetheless offers significant value to test phases during the development lifecycle. For one, test automation can make executing regression tests more efficient and effective. With automation, regression tests are executed consistently by a programmed testing script that delivers results faster than manual testing. Freed from regression testing, automated testing empowers testers to use their time to focus on other important tasks like exploratory testing.

5. Foster Communication

Open and clear communication is key to the success of any project. Fostering communication between all team members and stakeholders, Agile methodologies help to drive quality and strengthen testing practices throughout the development lifecycle.

For example, using Agile approaches like Behavior Driven Development (BDD) practices and Test Driven Development (TDD) methodologies encourage the collaboration between developers, quality assurance, SMEs, and stakeholder, resulting in a team effort to produce quality apps.

While the BDD and TDD approach the development of an application from different angles, they both require active collaboration and shared understandings between the development team, QA team, and stakeholders to successfully guide the project from start to finish.

To learn more about how to successfully redesign web and mobile applications, check out our latest piece from the CTG Thought Leadership team, 7 Best Practices to Successfully Redesign and Optimize Web and Mobile Applications. For more information on how CTG can help businesses overcome the challenges of building, redesigning, and testing web or mobile applications, check out our Testing Solutions, or contact the CTG team directly.

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