Aspects to consider when implementing an agile test factory

One of the most common mistakes when starting out in the world of software development is to treat our product, whether it is a program or application, as a traditional product. Specifically, evaluating its quality in the same way.

For example a pair of pants, the quality control that will be done to this will be to visually verify that it does not have any damage, that the color corresponds to the model and that it does not have any type of wear. Taken to the world of software, we would verify that the user interface works correctly, that the buttons work and that the screens display correctly; then we could check that the program fulfills its objective, if it is a calculator, for example, that the output values correspond to the operation that was performed.

This is an extremely inefficient way of working with software, considering that nowadays we have agile methodologies that have demonstrated their benefits in productivity and agility when working with software development and that can be perfectly applied to the agile test factory for its correct quality control.

That is why we will tell you some of the aspects that you should consider making a correct implementation of an agile test factory either within your company, or to offer this service.

Iteration

Software is not a conventional product for a very simple reason, it is not static. When a software is proposed as a long-term tool, it will be constantly improving, this is what we call iteration, where we will be constantly looking to implement features, fix bugs or optimize its performance.

This is not a minor aspect, since we want our software product to maintain its quality throughout these iterations, we must ensure that the quality evaluation is also iterative, and by this we do not mean exclusively that it is repetitive over time, but that we are constantly trying to evaluate the software in a more comprehensive way, adding in the evaluation elements aspects such as load time, connection efficiency, user interface design, and all those elements and functionalities that are added version after version.

Consider your workflow

Today there are many companies that already use agile methodologies within their workflows, the most used by far is SCRUM, as it seeks constant communication between teams, furthermore in this way they can complement each other, making the work much more agile and of better quality.

Within this methodology much relevance is given to the elements and inputs necessary for a team to carry out its work, for example, if for the creation of the user interface the frontend team needs before the mockup made by the graphic design team. This is important because just as you are constantly searching for the necessary elements to keep the work moving forward in an agile way, the agile testing process has to be conceived in the same way.

If you already work with SCRUM, it would be an excellent idea to combine this methodology with continuous testing, considering that you already have effective communication channels between teams, where you can analyze metrics of the automated tests, new elements to evaluate and of course where you can talk about how to correct and improve the necessary elements.

Divide and conquer

Finally, testing is not only a stage in the software development process, it is a constant and transversal task to the different stages of such development. This in order to make this evaluation process much more efficient and faster.

Remember that it will always be much easier to evaluate small elements of our program, than to evaluate it as a whole. This is because if there is a problem with our software, and we have not implemented a continuous testing during its development, in the first stage it will take us more time to realize the failure, which can mean an increase in costs; besides, if we do it this way, it will be more difficult to identify where the problem of our program is.

We recommend that you always give the necessary importance to testing within your processes, especially through agile testing, which allows you to generate value in each iteration and consequently a successful product in production.