Exploratory Testing in Agile

 The software development and testing process have undergone multiple facelifts in the past few decades. The market demand and customer expectation to have a user friendly, feature-rich, fast processing, and secured software, drives the need to have a thorough testing process in place.

An agile methodology is a customer-centric approach that delivers a high-quality product in a short period of time. It is a fast, adaptable, and efficient approach that facilitates the early detection of bugs, thereby reducing the cost and efforts by fixing them early in the development cycle.

What is Exploratory Testing?

Exploratory testing is a hands-on approach in which testers are involved in minimum planning and maximum test execution. It involves simultaneous learning by discovery. The testers explore the application and learn about its functionalities by discovery and learning method. However, the tester has to adhere to the exploratory charter that has goals and boundaries for testing defined. For example, one vector to consider in the exploratory test could be focused on new or modified features, since every code change raises the possibility to introduce bugs. Another vector can be a complex module that is an unstable or buggy module of the product.

So where does Exploratory testing fit in iterative and incremental agile approach?

The shared value system of the Agile Manifesto

The Agile development model is iterative and incremental. The agile approach in Software Development revolves around collaboration, transparency, flexibility, and responsiveness to feedback throughout the software development life-cycle.

Exploratory testing shares the same fundamental value system of the Agile Manifesto.

The next few sections will elaborate more on this relationship. Read More about : Exploratory testing in agile

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5 Best Practices for Continuous Testing

 Continuous testing is end-to-end automated testing that is an integral part of DevOps and is conducted at every level of development in various forms. It acts as a catalyst in speeding up the CI/CD pipeline, by incorporating automated processes and tools for testing early and testing often at all points of time.

Organizations need to follow certain best practices and have a sound strategy in place, in order to reap maximum benefits by implementing Continuous testing in their DevOps process.

This article discusses the top 5 best practices that can be adopted for a comprehensive continuous testing process.

The above figure enunciates the best practices involved in implementing Continuous testing in your CI/CD pipeline. Let us discuss these practices further in detail.

1. The cultural shift in the organization

Continuous testing is not just a “technical process”. It is a mindset too. Just having a technical process in place is futile, unless relevant stakeholders are willing to embrace it. For that to happen, a free flow of communication and collaboration is required between the software architects, developers, and QA team. They should be involved from the very onset of the project to understand the intricacies of client requirements and work upon them accordingly.

Continuous testing implies “test early-test often”. In order to implement this, a holistic testing strategy is needed, which can be devised when there is a meaningful collaboration and information exchange is done more frequently so that all the stakeholders are on the same page. Everyone involved in design-development-testing has to be kept updated on user stories and any changes are immediately communicated to them.

2. Trusted Test Automation

Continuous testing involves frequent testing, hence it is a good idea to automate the business-critical test cases in order to accelerate the end-to-end testing. This not only speeds up the whole testing-feedback loop but significantly improves the quality of the build, leading to the overall health improvement of the software. However, choosing the right cases to automate is the key to successful automation. Read more about it on our blog about test case prioritization.

Test automation responsibility must be shouldered jointly by the development and testing team, in order to achieve a holistic approach towards automation. This approach not only expedites the whole development process but also helps in improving feature velocity and aids in achieving shorter delivery cycles.

It is imperative to run smoke tests and regression tests after every build to ensure that new feature inclusions, modifications, or bug fixing have not inadvertently broken any critical business scenarios, and the build is working as per the expectations.

Shift left approach towards performance testing is gaining importance these days. Conducting performance tests early in development cycles also ensures that besides the functionality, the performance criteria have been met too, thus confirming the reliability and robustness of the application under test.

A very important factor to consider is that the automation test results should be dependable. Many times there are false failures, which sends the development and QA team on a wild goose chase, leading to wastage of time and efforts. Incidents like these pose question marks on the automated results.

Webomates has an ingenious AI-based Defect predictor which handles such situations. Click here to learn more about our Defect Predictor.

Shift Left Performance Testing

 Performance testing is a non-functional testing to identify performance bottlenecks and to find any possible conditions that may lead to potential crashes when the software is subjected to extreme testing conditions in a production-like environment.

There is a misconception that it is good to test the software as a whole for performance. This leads to placing performance testing at the end of the development cycle. What if the application’s performance is not up to the mark? In that case, tracing back the origin of the issue adds to the debugging time and efforts, thus reducing the overall development velocity, and increasing the cost.

It is high time to include performance testing from the very onset of the project, and not as an afterthought. Tracing and fixing performance issues just before deployment is an expensive exercise. With shorter delivery cycles, it is prudent to check every deliverable, however small, for performance. Integrating performance tests in the continuous testing process is a great way of ensuring that every deliverable is tested thoroughly for functionality as well as performance.

Shift left testing has been gaining importance recently. As a norm, including performance testing early in the development cycle proves beneficial for everyone, i.e. developers, testers, and business. Read further to understand how we can achieve it.

• Process Explanation Introduce cultural shift in the work process Make developers responsible for testing their code for performance along with the unit tests. This will not only help in maintaining the sanctity of agile philosophy but also add value to the whole development process.

• Shifting left of performance testing means increased collaboration between the testers and the developers. With both teams working together, it will be easy to identify what all needs to be tested for the performance earlier in the development cycle. Defining clear communication protocols will reduce the time needed in the overall testing, debugging, and re-testing cycle.

Identify KPI’s at module/submodule level Usually, KPI’s for performance are defined at the application level. But, defining them for modules and sub-modules will aid in improving the efficiency and performance of the smaller units. Thus, rendering better performance for the application as a whole. Initial time investment is done to identify these KPI’s will reap benefits in the long run.

Mandatory for business-critical changes

Business-critical changes call for thorough scrutiny and testing at a functional level as well as non-functional level. It will be a costly affair to make changes at such unit level for performance and then test them, but it is worth it if we look at the larger picture.

Automate performance tests

Shifting left the performance test means testing the same code numerous times, thus it will be a good idea to automate the tests to avoid errors associated with human fatigue and monotony.

Introduce performance test at build check-in level Smoke testing the builds for performance, with moderate loads in the testing environment, at the time of check-in, can serve as indicators in case of any performance-related issues.

Centralized test result sharing to enable quick feedback

Sharing the test results across the board is the quickest way of solving any problem. It not only saves a lot of time but also the cumulative efforts, resulting in reduced costs.

Selecting the right tool What good will it serve by chalking out a process, and not having the right tool at your disposal to implement it? Having the right testing and reporting tool can be a game changer. That is where Webomates CQ can help you.

Webomates has optimized testing by combining our patented multi-channel functional testing with performance testing where the same functional tests can be used for load testing Read more about this blog : Shift left testing 

Do’s and Don’ts of Automation Testing

 Automated software testing is a technique which makes use of software scripts to simulate the end user and execute the tests, thus significantly accelerating the testing process. It has marked benefits in terms of accuracy, dependability, enhanced test coverage, time and effort saving. Automation aids in reducing the duration of release cycles, albeit at a price. Initial cost of setting up an automated process for testing acts as a deterrent to many cost conscious organizations. However, it does prove beneficial in the long term, especially with CI/CD. Hence, it is important to follow certain best practices and avoid common mistakes while automating the testing process.

Following table gives a quick overview of what to do and what not to do while planning test automation. These points are further elaborated in entailing paragraphs.

Do’sDon’tsRight Team & ToolsAutomate everythingApplication knowledgeAutomate from day oneRight test casesSolely rely on automation toolsShort & independent test scenariosIgnore FALSE failuresPrioritize test automationIgnore Scalability Records of manual vs automation test casesIgnore performance testing Test data managementDelay updating modified test casesTest case managementUse multiple automation platform

What to do for successful Automation Testing

• Choose the team and tools prudently

It is vital to have the right set of people working on the right tools to reap the maximum benefits from test automation.

• Good knowledge of application being tested
  Team selection and testing tool selection will be dependent on the kind of application being tested. Having in-depth knowledge of application will help in making right choices in terms of human, hardware and software resources. Click on this link to read more about this blog : Test Automation

Ad Hoc Testing Vs Exploratory Testing

 In the software testing arena a commonly asked question is whether Exploratory testing is same as the Ad Hoc Testing? They do have some overlap which causes confusion, but in reality they are quite different. Both provide the freedom to the test engineer to explore the application and the primary focus is to find critical defects in the system. They also help in providing better test coverage, as all scenarios are extremely time consuming and costly to document as test cases.

Exploratory Testing

Exploratory testing is a formal approach of testing that involves simultaneous learning, test schematizing, and test execution. The testers explore the application and learn about its functionalities by discovery and learning method. They then, use exploratory test charters to direct, record and keep track of the exploratory test session’s observations. It is a hands-on procedure in which testers perform minimum planning and maximum test exploration.

Webomates has also done extensive research on how to high jump to high quality using exploratory and detailed analysis can be found in the article written by Aseem Bakshi, Webomates CEO.

Ad Hoc Testing

Ad Hoc Testing is an informal and random style of testing performed by testers who are well aware of the functioning of software. It is also referred to as Random Testing or Monkey Testing. Tester may refer existing test cases and pick some  randomly to test the application. The testing steps and the scenarios depend on the tester, and defects are found by random checking.

Comparison is inevitable when it comes to exploring different testing types. It is vital to understand and employ the right combination for a complete multi-dimensional testing. In this article, we will compare Ad Hoc Testing and Exploratory testing to understand them better. Click here to read more : Ad Hoc Testing Vs Exploratory Testing

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TaaS Introduction

 TaaS (Testing as a Service) is a supplement to traditional testing that allows the test team to focus on higher-value activities like defect resolution, quality analysis, etc. It creates test cases and test scripts and keeps them up-to-date.

As the demand for quality assurance and testing automation increased exponentially, TaaS has garnered attention in the software testing world and is being used with more enthusiasm than before, as the underlying AI systems are being increasingly validated by the industry.

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Black box tests

 Testing is a crucial step of the software development cycle because it ensures that all the requirements have been converted to a successful end product. An Ideal software testing process has to be a holistic approach that involves a combination of various testing techniques to achieve high-quality software.

The two most commonly used testing approaches are White Box and Black Box testing.

What is White box testing?

White box testing is used to test the structure and business logic of a program being developed. It requires the tester to know all the functional and design details of the module/code that is being tested. The tester needs to have in-depth knowledge of the requirements, design, code as well as the expected outcome. White-box testing can be applied at the Unit, Integration and System levels of the software testing process. 

White Box Testing is known by several other names, such as Glass box testing, Clear Box testing, Open Box testing, Structural testing, Path Driven Testing or Logic driven testing.

Types of White Box Testing

• Unit Testing: Performed on each unit or block of code as it is developed to identify a majority of bugs, early in the software development lifecycle.
• Testing for Memory Leaks: Essential in cases where you have a slow running software application due to memory leaks.

What is black box testing?

Black Box Testing, also known as functional testing or behavioural testing, essentially requires the testers to evaluate the functionality and usability of the software without looking at the details of the code. It not only verifies and validates the functionality of the software but also checks for any interface issues. 

In this article, we will explore the differences between these two types of testing and analyse how they can be best used for comprehensive testing.

Types of Black Box Testing

There are many types of Black Box Testing but the following are the prominent ones –

• Functional testing – Related to the functional requirements of a system.
• Non-functional testing – Related to non-functional requirements such as performance, scalability, usability.
• Regression testing – Regression Testing is done after code fixes, upgrades or any other system maintenance to check the new code has not affected the existing code. Click here to read more : black box tests

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Test Automation Challenges

Automated software testing significantly accelerates the testing process, thus making a direct positive impact on the fulfillment and quality of software. Its an excellent way to put your testing process on steroids. You program a tool to simulate human behavior in interacting with your software.

Once programmed, its similar to having many robotic helpers that you can create on the fly,that can execute the test cases resulting in massive scalability. This in turn causes a massive speed up in execution time.

Rather than using humans, automation uses  test scripts to simulate the end user behaviour. Test scripts are developed using automation tools like selenium and execute the defined test steps. They then compare the actual results against the expected result. However automated software testing has its own limitations and drawbacks. One of the biggest drawbacks of automation are False Failures or False Fails. In this article, we will dig deeper into what are False Fails and how they can adversely affect the value of automation.

What are False Fails ?

Whenever an automation test suite is executed, the result is a pass or fail report. Pass or Fail depends on whether the actual result matches the expected result or not. 

Failures can be of two types.

• True Fail, which means there is a defect in the system and it is not working as expected.
• False Fail, which means there may be no defect and the system may be working as expected. False Fails means that it is unclear whether the test case has passed or failed. Such cases are termed as false failures or False Fails.
  False failures are one of the major challenges in automation testing. It not only undermines the value of automation, introduces a tremendous amount of effort to triage the failures but also causes loss of trust and confidence in automation. False failures can range from 0% to 100% of the Fails that are seen in an automation execution result.
  There are various reasons that can cause false failures in the automation results. The most common ones are listed below.

1. Script interaction with Browser: 
   To simulate the end user scenario, Test automation tool and scripts have to interact with the browser. In the case of selenium, the selenium webdriver accepts the commands from the script and sends them to the browser. Commands can be of any type, for example, to click on a link/button or to get the text of a specific element. There might be instances when page load speed in a browser is slow depending on the internet speed. By the time the browser receives the command, requested page is not fully loaded. In such cases, the browser will not be able to perform expected action and Selenium will throw a Timeout exception. This is a classic example of false failures in browser based applications.
2. Locator changed: Locator is a unique identifier that helps scripts to identify a specific element on the web page. It is used to send commands to the browser to perform specific actions. Browser can perform action only if it is able to locate a particular element using a unique identifier. Unique identifier can be id, name, css or xpath etc.  While fixing bugs or introducing new html attributes or styles, there is a chance that the developers end up updating the identifiers or introducing new elements whose identifiers are not identified by the automation scripts. This causes automation to fail in identifying the unique elements. In such cases, a failure is reported.
3. Introduction of New features or behaviour : Failure to keep automation scripts updated as and when new features or behaviours are introduced is a sure shot recipe to false failure reporting. Existing test cases may fail in case of outdated script execution, even though they are working as expected. This may happen as direct impact of changes in some intermediate steps. For example, in e-commerce site, original expected result for clicking on search was to show results on the same page. But as a result of modification, the search results are shown in a new tab. If automation script is not updated to reflect this, all the test cases post search results will fail, even though the rest of application may be exactly the same.
4. Dynamic Behavior of application: There are many applications especially in e-commerce world where real inventory is used for testing. For example, in the case of airline booking, while selecting the flight, upgrade options are dependent on the availability of the upgrade. There might be a case where different people opt for same upgrade at the same time. At the time of testing, there is a chance that an end user is able to upgrade and book a flight even when the upgrade was given to someone else. Due to the dynamic nature of data, it may cause false failure. Some complexity level can be handled at script level but correctness can’t be 100%. Read More about : Test Automation

If this has picked your interest and you want to know more, then please click here and schedule a demo, or reach out to us at info@webomates.com. We have more exciting articles coming up every week. 

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