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Unlocking Agile Testing

Content1. Introduction: Agile as a competitive advantage2. Solving QA challenges3. The road to Agile Testing4. Unlock the power of Agile with Jira5. Complete your Agile toolset with Xray6. How Xray enables Agility in 5 points7. Conclusion: Focus on quality from start to finish2Unlocking Agile Testing

IntroductionAgile as a competitive advantageHarvard Business Review Analytics Services dubbedagile software development as the "competitiveadvantage for a digital age."According to the 13th Annual State of Agilereport, the benefits of adopting agile in testing andthroughout the SDLC have undeniable improvementson the quality of software, time to market, projectpredictability and productivity, cost reduction, andemployee satisfaction.The Promise of Agile DevelopmentAccording to PwC internal benchmarks, agile softwaredevelopment offers big benefits across multiple areas.Development GoalImprovement with AgileQualityDefect escapes rates decreaseTime to marketImproves 18%-20%*ProductivityImproves 14%-95%**CostReduces costs by 7%-29%Employee satisfactionImproves 20%-40%*Wide range reflects industry variations.**Wide range reflects differing types of software being builtSource: PwC, 2014Unlocking Agile Testing3

As teams adopt agile for managing softwaredevelopment, tools like Jira Software provide thefoundation for managing projects in an agile way bypromoting collaboration, transparency, commitmentand flexibility.Agile emphasizes open collaboration and interactionbetween team members. When it comes to testing,agile values testing as an integrated part of theSDLC, and testers are encouraged to work alongsidedevelopers.So what does Agile Testing look like and how canwe increase agility in our teams?In this document, we’ll explore the advantages of agiletesting to meet business goals, the principles of agiletesting, and the tools and strategies you can adopt toembrace full testing agility and speed.“Things are moving so fast and users are so muchsavvier these days that we need to find ways of not onlyshortening the time to market, but also creatingapplications that better fit business needs”Paul Gartner Vice President, Software Engineering at National GeographicSource: Harvard Business Review4Unlocking Agile Testing

2Solving QA challenges

Solving QA challengeswith Agile TestingAccording to Capers Jones survey for AppliedSoftware Measurement, “85% of bugs happen at thefirst stage of the software development life cycle.”640 X85%% Defect injection40 XPercentageof defectsintroduced% Defects foundwithout Agile Testing% Defects foundwith Agile TestingCost to repair defect1XCoding4XUnit Test10 XFunctionalTestSystemTestReleaseJones Capers, Applied Software Measurement:Global Analysis of Productivity and Quality.Traditional models of testing like waterfall, separatedevelopment and testing into two steps. First thedevelopers build the features, then the QA team writesand executes test plans.As the project grows, the amount of work for the QAincreases and testers usually struggle to keep up withtesting. So what happens? Project owners can choose totest less and release with more chances of bugs, or delaythe release. This gives the organization a competitivedisadvantage, and increases their chances of costly repairs,since the cost of catching a bug later in the developmentcycle is 40x the cost of finding it during coding.6Unlocking Agile Testing

This is where agile testing comes in.Testing early and throughout development minimizesthe cost to repair a defect, consistently alleviating bugsby pushing the product through development stagesonly when it is working properly.The goal of an agile development team is tosustainably deliver new features with quality.In an agile workflow, testing is an integrated part ofthe team and accelerates software development withhigher quality. As a result of this, testers are able toidentify bugs sooner and even avoid them from thestart, saving time and effort.PlanDesignDeploy2SPRINTPlanUnlocking Agile TestingDesignDevelopTest1SPRINTDevelopTestIn an agile workflow:. Testing is an integrated part of the team andaccelerates software development with higher quality. Testing happens throughout the whole SDLC. Testing goes beyond finding bugs. Its purpose is to build the right product right fromthe start by having ongoing conversations betweendevelopment and QADeploy7

3The road toAgile Testing

The road to Agile TestingThe key to more agility starts with having people at thecenter of your process and providing them the meansto work together effectively. It’s equally as important toallow them to learn and adapt, both to their needs andto the needs of customers.Being agile requires transparency, continuousfeedback, continuous improvement, and technicalexcellence and ownership, to make sure the teamworks effectively to produce high quality products.In order to have a successful agile process, you needto have these processes/mindsets in place:Successfully scaling agile includes everyoneHaving an agile transformation as an executive-ledinitiative is an important start, but the agile mindsetextends to everyone. Developers, testers, marketersand business intelligence, all need to embrace an agilemindset for it to truly work.Testing throughout over testing at the endTraditional waterfall based teams tend to performtesting only at the end, after coding/implementation.Testers need to be involved in discussing/reviewing therequirements and other issues targeted for the releaseor sprint. By having ongoing continuous discussionswith the team, testers increase the shared knowledgeby providing valuable feedback.Unlocking Agile Testing9

Enabling automated testing and continuousintegrationTo save time and effort on testing, it’s important toimplement test automation and continuous integrationvia a centralized agile platform. This is where a testmanagement tool that supports test automation ishighly important, to have a single source of truth forboth manual and test automation efforts.Embracing a tool for communication andcollaborationAgile teams need tools that support clear andconstant collaboration between developers andtesters. Jira Software is a tool where developers andtesters all work together. This makes quality a part ofdevelopment and doesn’t just leave the testing to thetesters. For example: A developer can review tests ortesters can ask for some clarification on user stories.10Unlocking Agile Testing

4Unlock the powerof Agile with Jira

Unlock the power of Agilewith JiraJira is a project management tool that allows teams tocapture and organize issues, assign work and followteam activity for seamless collaboration. Jira supportsany type of agile methodology, including Scrum,Kanban or your own unique mix.Jira provides the foundation for managing softwareprojects in an agile way by promoting collaboration,transparency, estimation, commitment and flexibility.Jira offers a unique set of features and capabilitiesthat enable agile development:. Ability to create test-related issues as new issuetypes. Link between issues (e.g. bugs and requirements). Automatic and manual issue assignment. Integration with source code repository. Search for and within issues. Issue comments and attachments. Agile reports for improved retrospectives. Ability to import data from other systemsAs you can see, Jira is a powerful tool that supportsagile development, but on it’s own, it doesn’t supportagile testing.This is where Xray comes in.12Unlocking Agile Testing

5Complete your Agiletoolset with Xray

Xray is a test management appnative to Jira4.5 million active users across 5,000 customers useXray to manage over 100 million test cases everymonth. Almost 70% of our customers are alreadyagile or are undergoing an agile transformation bymoving out of traditional waterfall scenarios.Xray uses Jira issues to represent most of the testingrelated entities.Because Xray is a Jira native app, it embracesagile values and principles and keeps softwaredevelopment and testing integrated. Xray helps teamsmanage their testing activities, including test planning,authoring, execution, tracking and reporting, all in oneplace.14Unlocking Agile Testing

6How Xray enablesAgility in 5 points

Complete visibilityComplete visibilityWith Xray, you can see what is happening on yourexisting agile (Scrum/Kanban) Boards or on yourstories, there’s no need to ask other team memberswhat they’re working on.Xray also provides real time testing and coveragefeedback on the issues you’re working on (e.g. Stories,Epics, Tests) providing you with clear insights intoquality. Users can quickly analyze test results orevaluate how a Story is on different versions.16Unlocking Agile Testing

Collaboration and communication within the teamYour QA tool should not be isolated from the restof the development ecosystem, that’s why Xrayintegrates with the software development ecosystem(Jira).Testers can clarify PBI’s (product backlog items),assess risks and provide better testing time estimates.With a unified tool for testing and development,the activities are blended and team members worktogether towards the same goals.Unlocking Agile Testing17

Increased efficiency with Test AutomationAutomation will save testers 20-40% of theirtime spent on catching errors. With Xray, onceautomated tests are properly set-up withintegrations like Cucumber, they can run again andagain. This allows products to glide through testing.With this solution, teams can focus on what’simportant: fixing those bugs and consistentlydelivering quality solutions to their customers.BDD is an approach where technical and nontechnical users collaborate together to have aclear understanding of requirements and theiracceptance criteria by writing concrete usageexamples/scenarios in natural language that canbe later on executed by an automation engine.18Unlocking Agile Testing

Xray has native support for Cucumber and otherGherkin based frameworks (e.g. Behave, SpecFlow,Calabash), allowing customers to collaborate withthe product/development team by writing andreviewing Scenarios.Unlocking Agile Testing19

Encourages team responsibility for overall qualityThe best way to make sure your entire team feelsresponsible for quality is to close the gap betweentesting and development. Team members worktogether in order to achieve common goals: havingfeatures/issues implemented the right way andworking as expected.To make quality a natural step, Xray providescoverage analysis capability, allowing anyone toassess real-time information on whether a user storyis covered with Test cases for example. On agileboards, where team members manage and track theirprogress, everyone can see the status of tests andcontribute to their completion.20Unlocking Agile Testing

Adaptable to changeAdaptable to changeYou can adapt Xray to the process your team findsmost useful and make them more agile. Use yourteam's feedback to embrace changes. Add fields,customize screens, and take advantage of the manybenefits provided by Jira. Use one or more TestPlans per sprint to track independently the progressof different subset of Tests; you can also have TestExecution on a per sprint level, to manage their workas any other task.Unlocking Agile Testing21