Why is automated regression testing so challenging in Agile

1. Why is automated regression testing so challenging in Agile?

2. What is regression testing? Agile development is focused on developing and making changes to the software frequently. To add value to a customer, small improvements are done to the software in an agile development scenario. For this specific purpose, proper planning needs to be done to perform automated regression testing in an agile environment that is constantly changing. In this article, you will get to know about the five reasons that depict the challenges of performing automated regression testing in an agile environment.

3. Following are the five key factors that depict the challenges of performing automated regression testing in an agile environment: The necessity to streamline scrum meetings on a daily basis: One of the important activities to leverage the agile process is the conduction of daily scrum meetings. It is a meeting where teams stand up and conduct 15-minute sessions wherein they discuss the progress of the project. The key challenge is to evaluate the value of these meetings. Another key aspect is to ascertain whether these meetings are helping automation developers or not. 2. Incoherence in the communication activity: There are a few instances where the communication channels are not up to the mark when it comes to constantly communicating with other team members belonging to different teams. There should be a proper communication c channel set up between stakeholders, business analysts, developers and the automation testing team. Collaborative interaction between the delivery team and client must take place. If a client is involved throughout the project, then changes need to be made as per the client’s suggestions as and when required. The communication bandwidth is broadened. The key challenge is to capture the process and implement all the changes effectively while retaining the needs of data integrity.

4. 3. Providing a structure to script development: Kick-off meetings are where project stakeholders, business analysts, developers and automation testers discuss about the “User-stories” that need to be selected for the next sprint. Once the selection of “User-Stories” is done for the sprint, they can be used as the basis for a set of tests. As with each iteration, functionality grows, regression testing is conducted to make sure that the new functionality that has been introduced in each iteration cycle has not affected or altered the existing functionality. 4. Managing resources: A mixture of testing skills is required by the agile approach, which means for defining test cases and unclear scenarios, test resources will be required. Manual testing needs to be conducted alongside developers, automated regression packages need to be executed and automated regression tests need to be written. As the project is being progressed, there will be a requirement for specialist skills, so that further test areas can be covered which might include performance and integration testing. 5. Picking up the right tools: For an agile context, traditional test automation tools do not work because those traditional problems are solved that are different from the challenges being faced by agile automation teams. Carrying out the automation activity in the initial stages of the agile project is considered to be quite difficult. But, as the system evolves and grows, there are some aspects that are being settled and thus a platform is provided to deploy automation. To reap benefits out of an agile context and maximize the efficiency the right testing tools need to be selected for deriving productive results.

5. Conclusion If you are looking forward to implementing regression testing for your specific project, then do get connected with a professionally acclaimed software testing services company that will provide you with the right testing strategies and solutions that are in line with your project specific requirements.