Employing Automation Testing A Smart Move When Adopting Agile Software Development Methods
Employing automation testing a smart move when adopting agile software development methods
By sdnadmin | July 16, 2010
With adoption rates of agile development steadily increasing, more and more test managers must now cope with the unique testing requirements of the agile process, according to a report from ITWeb Business Applications.
As development teams move away from the traditional waterfall model, the tools and strategies designed to fit within that model become increasingly obsolete. In the area of testing, manually running datasets becomes inefficient when the testing phase occurs numerous times during the course of development. The problem requires automation, the report argues, and managers must take this into account when composing a test strategy at the outset of a project. Automation is no silver bullet, however, and automated tests applied without careful planning may create more work than they save. Managers must balance introducing new tools and methods with evaluating and retaining current tools when appropriate in order to avoid needless switching costs. Additionally, testers new to automation tools must resist the temptation to create an automatic test at every opportunity. Such an approach will only "create a maintenance nightmare", the report states, resulting in a waste of both time and resources.
The best agile testing strategies will focus on incorporating automation for immediate, short-, and long-term benefits. On the immediate scale, it may be beneficial for testers to work alongside developers during certain development cycles, designing test scripts as the code is written and freeing the developer to fix bugs as soon as they are identified. This type of partnership plays to the flexibility of the agile process and allows testers to put tools directly in the hands of coders so that future tests can be executed quickly and without passing code between disparate teams. In the short-term, testers can develop tests alongside each cycle to validate the major functions implemented during that period and ensure the code meets the standards of usability recommended by the agile manifesto. In the long-term, those tests can be incorporated into full regression suites to monitor the health of the overall codebase as new features are added. Testers can also add vertical test suites to test smaller functions in greater depth before release.
Agile is growing in popularity, and testing procedures must keep pace if the new methods are to be fully effective. Automation is key when developing a testing strategy in such a fast-paced and cyclic environment, and should be a required tool in the repertoire of today"s testing managers.
by: Kerry Brooks