Agile Methodology: What is Agile Model in Software Testing?

ByThomas HamiltonUpdatedFebruary 19, 2022

What is Agile Methodology?

Agile Methodology meaning a practice that promotes continuous iteration of development and testing
throughout the software development lifecycle of the project. In the Agile model in software testing,
both development and testing activities are concurrent, unlike the Waterfall model.

Agile Methodology

What is Agile Software Development?

The Agile software development methodology is one of the simplest and effective processes to turn a
vision for a business need into software solutions. Agile is a term used to describe software
development approaches that employ continual planning, learning, improvement, team collaboration,
evolutionary development, and early delivery. It encourages flexible responses to change.

The agile software development emphasizes on four core values.

1. Individual and team interactions over processes and tools

2. Working software over comprehensive documentation

3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

4. Responding to change over following a plan

In this Agile project management tutorial, you will learn-

 What is Agile Methodology?

 Agile Model Vs Waterfall Model

 Scrum

 Product Backlog

 Scrum Practices

 Process flow of Scrum Methodologies:

 Extreme Programming (XP)

  Phases of eXtreme programming:

 Crystal Methodologies

 Dynamic Software Development Method (DSDM)

 Feature Driven Development (FDD)

 Lean Software Development

 Kanban

 Agile metrics

Agile Model Vs Waterfall Model

Agile and Waterfall model are two different methods for software development process. Though they
are different in their approach, both methods are useful at times, depending on the requirement and
the type of the project.

Agile Model Waterfall Model

 Agile methodology definition: Agile methodologies propose  Waterfall Model: Development of th

incremental and iterative approach to software design sequentially from start point to end

 The Agile process in software engineering is broken into individual  The design process is not broken int
models that designers work on models

 The customer has early and frequent opportunities to look at the  The customer can only see the prod
product and make decision and changes to the project the project

 Agile model is considered unstructured compared to the waterfall  Waterfall model are more secure be
model plan oriented

 Small projects can be implemented very quickly. For large projects, it

 All sorts of project can be estimated
is difficult to estimate the development time.

 Only at the end, the whole product

 Error can be fixed in the middle of the project. requirement error is found or any c
made, the project has to start from

 The development process is phased

 Development process is iterative, and the project is executed in
much bigger than iteration. Every p
short (2-4) weeks iterations. Planning is very less.
detailed description of the next pha

 Documentation is a top priority and

 Documentation attends less priority than software development training staff and upgrade the softw
team

 Every iteration has its own testing phase. It allows implementing  Only after the development phase,
regression testing every time new functions or logic are released. executed because separate parts ar
 functional.

 In agile testing when an iteration end, shippable features of the

product is delivered to the customer. New features are usable right  All features developed are delivered
after shipment. It is useful when you have good contact with long implementation phase.
customers.

 Testers and developers work together  Testers work separately from devel

 User acceptance is performed at th

 At the end of every sprint, user acceptance is performed
project.

 Developer does not involve in requi

 It requires close communication with developers and together
planning process. Usually, time dela
analyze requirements and planning
and coding

Also Check:- Agile Vs Waterfall: Know the Difference Between Methodologies

Agile Process

Check the below Agile methodology process to deliver successful systems quickly.

Agile Process Model

There are various Agile methods present in agile testing, and those are listed below:

Scrum
SCRUM is an agile development method which concentrates specifically on how to manage tasks within
a team-based development environment. Basically, Scrum is derived from activity that occurs during a
rugby match. Scrum believes in empowering the development team and advocates working in small
teams (say- 7 to 9 members). Agile and Scrum consist of three roles, and their responsibilities are
explained as follows:

Scrum Method

 Scrum Master

 Scrum Master is responsible for setting up the team, sprint meeting and removes
obstacles to progress

 Product owner

 The Product Owner creates product backlog, prioritizes the backlog and is responsible
for the delivery of the functionality at each iteration

 Scrum Team

 Team manages its own work and organizes the work to complete the sprint or cycle

Product Backlog

This is a repository where requirements are tracked with details on the no of requirements(user stories)
to be completed for each release. It should be maintained and prioritized by Product Owner, and it
should be distributed to the scrum team. Team can also request for a new requirement addition or
modification or deletion

Scrum Practices

Practices are described in detailed:

Scrum Practices

Process flow of Scrum Methodologies:

Process flow of scrum testing is as follows:

 Each iteration of a scrum is known as Sprint

 Product backlog is a list where all details are entered to get the end-product

 During each Sprint, top user stories of Product backlog are selected and turned into Sprint
backlog

 Team works on the defined sprint backlog

 Team checks for the daily work

 At the end of the sprint, team delivers product functionality

Extreme Programming (XP)

Extreme Programming technique is very helpful when there is constantly changing demands or
requirements from the customers or when they are not sure about the functionality of the system. It
advocates frequent “releases” of the product in short development cycles, which inherently improves
the productivity of the system and also introduces a checkpoint where any customer requirements can
be easily implemented. The XP develops software keeping customer in the target.
Extreme Programming

Business requirements are gathered in terms of stories. All those stories are stored in a place called the
parking lot.

In this type of methodology, releases are based on the shorter cycles called Iterations with span of 14
days time period. Each iteration includes phases like coding, unit testing and system testing where at
each phase some minor or major functionality will be built in the application.

Phases of eXtreme programming:

There are 6 phases available in Agile XP method, and those are explained as follows:

Planning

 Identification of stakeholders and sponsors

 Infrastructure Requirements

 Security related information and gathering

 Service Level Agreements and its conditions

Analysis

 Capturing of Stories in Parking lot

  Prioritize stories in Parking lot

 Scrubbing of stories for estimation

 Define Iteration SPAN(Time)

 Resource planning for both Development and QA teams

Design

 Break down of tasks

 Test Scenario preparation for each task

 Regression Automation Framework

Execution

 Coding

 Unit Testing

 Execution of Manual test scenarios

 Defect Report generation

 Conversion of Manual to Automation regression test cases

 Mid Iteration review

 End of Iteration review

Wrapping

 Small Releases

 Regression Testing

 Demos and reviews

 Develop new stories based on the need

 Process Improvements based on end of iteration review comments

Closure

 Pilot Launch

 Training

 Production Launch

 SLA Guarantee assurance

 Review SOA strategy

 Production Support
There are two storyboards available to track the work on a daily basis, and those are listed below for
reference.

 Story Cardboard

 This is a traditional way of collecting all the stories in a board in the form of stick notes
to track daily XP activities. As this manual activity involves more effort and time, it is
better to switch to an online form.

 Online Storyboard

 Online tool Storyboard can be used to store the stories. Several teams can use it for
different purposes.

Crystal Methodologies

Crystal Methodology is based on three concepts

1. Chartering: Various activities involved in this phase are creating a development team,

performing a preliminary feasibility analysis, developing an initial plan and fine-tuning the
development methodology

2. Cyclic delivery: The main development phase consists of two or more delivery cycles, during
which the

1. Team updates and refines the release plan

2. Implements a subset of the requirements through one or more program test integrate
iterations

3. Integrated product is delivered to real users

4. Review of the project plan and adopted development methodology

3. Wrap Up: The activities performed in this phase are deployment into the user environment,
post- deployment reviews and reflections are performed.

Dynamic Software Development Method (DSDM)

DSDM is a Rapid Application Development (RAD) approach to software development and provides an
agile project delivery framework. The important aspect of DSDM is that the users are required to be
involved actively, and the teams are given the power to make decisions. Frequent delivery of product
becomes the active focus with DSDM. The techniques used in DSDM are

1. Time Boxing

2. MoSCoW Rules

3. Prototyping

The DSDM project consists of 7 phases

1. Pre-project
 2. Feasibility Study

3. Business Study

4. Functional Model Iteration

5. Design and build Iteration

6. Implementation

7. Post-project

Feature Driven Development (FDD)

This method is focused around “designing & building” features. Unlike other Agile methods in software
engineering, FDD describes very specific and short phases of work that has to be accomplished
separately per feature. It includes domain walkthrough, design inspection, promote to build, code
inspection and design. FDD develops product keeping following things in the target

1. Domain object Modeling

2. Development by feature

3. Component/ Class Ownership

4. Feature Teams

5. Inspections

6. Configuration Management

7. Regular Builds

8. Visibility of progress and results

Lean Software Development

Lean software development method is based on the principle “Just in time production”. It aims at
increasing speed of software development and decreasing cost. Lean development can be summarized
in seven steps.

1. Eliminating Waste

2. Amplifying learning

3. Defer commitment (deciding as late as possible)

4. Early delivery

5. Empowering the team

6. Building Integrity

7. Optimize the whole

Kanban

Kanban originally emerged from Japanese word that means, a card containing all the information
needed to be done on the product at each stage along its path to completion. This framework or
method is quite adopted in software testing method especially in Agile concepts.

Scrum Vs Kanban

Scrum Kanban

 In scrum technique, test must be broken down so that they can be

 No particular item size is prescribed
completed within one sprint

 Prescribes a prioritized product backlog  Prioritization is optional

 Scrum team commits to a particular amount of work for the

 Commitment is optional
iteration

 Burndown chart is prescribed  No particular item size is prescribed

 A Kanban board is persistent. It limit

 Between each sprint, a scrum board is reset
items in workflow state

 It cannot add items to ongoing iteration  It can add items whenever capacity i

 WIP limited indirectly  WIP limited directly

 Timeboxed iterations prescribed  Timeboxed iterations optional

Also Check:- Kanban Vs. Scrum: What’s the Difference?

Agile metrics:

Metrics that can be collected for effective usage of Agile is:

 Drag Factor

 Effort in hours which do not contribute to sprint goal

 Drag factor can be improved by reducing number of shared resources, reducing the
amount of non-contributing work

 New estimates can be increased by percentage of drag factor -New estimate = (Old
estimate+drag factor)

 Velocity

 Amount of backlog(user stories) converted to shippable functionality of sprint

 No of Unit Tests added

 Time interval taken to complete daily build

 Bugs detected in an iteration or in previous iterations

 Production defect leakage