What is agile testing in software testing?

Agile testing follows the agile development methodology in software testing. To understand agile testing, we must know what agile is, its methodology, and its work.

Agile is an incremental approach that breaks up the whole program into smaller modules or chunks. Breaking up the system into pieces helps us manage each part of the software more feasibly.

What is agile testing?

Agile testing in software testing focuses on the test-first approach, rather than the test-at-the-end approach of traditional development. Agile testing follows the principles of agile development methodology.

We perform agile testing at the start of the project with constant integration between the testing and development of the software.

To implement agile testing properly, we have predefined agile test plans that include the paths and types, and describe which part to focus on as well.

Agile test plan

A typical test plan in agile testing includes the following points, demonstrated in the figure:

Advantages of conducting agile tests

Software testing includes various techniques and tools to test the quality and performance of a software product. In agile testing, we use different approaches related to other testing strategies.

Hence, agile testing has its own advantages and usages.

1. Agile testing reduces the workload on the quality assurance team.
2. It reduces the cost allocated for paperwork.
3. It reduces test documentation.
4. We get feedback from the client with every completion of a cycle, thus reducing the communication gap.
5. Agile testing includes standup meetings every day. This eases the flow of work, and everyone knows where to continue the testing.
6. In terms of code cleanup, agile testing removes bugs, errors and warnings.

How to conduct agile testing

Agile testing is rigorous and iterative work. A tester has to test each module/phase of the software program thoroughly.

In agile testing, we have to follow a test cycle, which is demonstrated in the figure below.

Four quadrants in agile testing

This cycle continues until no segment of code is left.

Brian Marick introduces four quadrants of testing, which are:

1. Automated
2. Automated and Manual
3. Manual
4. Tools

Each quadrant has its own specifications and purpose in an agile test. Consider the following diagram for these four quadrants: