Category: blog

‘Co-opetetion’ Among Agile Team Members

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

Agile focuses on motivated individuals acting together toward a common goal. Consequently, agile needs people to collaborate and requires complete transparency, communication, and cooperation, within and across teams. But at the same time, individuals instinctively try to outperform others in order to stand out in their teams.

This transition from individual responsibility to collective ownership is often the hardest part of the cultural shift that teams face when adopting agile. I have looked at ways to encourage healthy competition, more cooperation, and a sense of community among agile teammates in my latest article for Gurock – TestRail blog, the main points being-

  • Showing People the part they played
  • Have Co-workers appreciate each other
  • Measuring personal growth
  • Motivating with extra initiatives
  • Encouraging Collaboration and healthy competetion

Check out the complete article at – https://blog.gurock.com/agile-co-opetiton/ to find ways to encourage healthy competition and better team dynamics in your agile teams!

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Using Mind Maps for Agile Test Planning

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

Mind maps are a creative way of gathering ideas around a central theme and categorizing them in concrete branches. Mind maps can be useful for both personal and professional life as an organization and visualization technique. They’re descriptive, easy and even fun.

In my latest post for Gurock blog, I showcase the usage of mind maps as a technique for test planning and test design. This tool’s capabilities make your documentation leaner and ideas more visual, which benefits the whole agile team.
https://blog.gurock.com/agile-mind-map/

Be it test planning in an agile team which needs entire team’s insights and collaboration, or categorization of product features, test areas and backlog, Mindmaps can be used for all aspects and phases of the project.

Testers can generate their test ideas and have them categorized in a mind map around the central theme of the feature. The visual nature of a mind map helps them find more scenarios, see which parts are more heavily tested, and focus on main areas or branches. Once done, they can have other stakeholders take a look at it and get their opinions. This fosters brainstorming together and gathers the maximum number of ideas from the entire team.

Find useful tips to create your own mindmaps, as well as some samples for your reference in agile test designing as well as test planning. Read the complete article here ->
https://blog.gurock.com/agile-mind-map/

Share your thoughts!

Making the case for Usability Testing in Agile

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

My first experience with usability testing was on an agile team where the product we were building was being designed with the help of an in-house usability expert. He helped design the user interface (UI) of the application and conduct usability study on the beta version of the software to determine the ease of use of the application.

Though the experience was limited in terms of the interaction we had with the user representatives and the sessions conducted, the feedback we received opened up lots of new avenues for the tester in me around the learnability, understandability and attractiveness of the application I was testing.

Usability has matured a lot over the years. It’s now an essential software characteristic in today’s web and mobile applications. In my article published at the TestRail blog, I discuss ways of performing Usability tests and developing a mindset for Usability in an agile context.

https://blog.gurock.com/usability-testing-agile-projects/

We also discuss about Usability Study , how to set it up and achieve maximum benefits from it.

To read the complete article — (opens in a new tab)”>Click here –>

Prevention is the Best Cure- for Defects in Agile

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

The agile methodology focuses on building in quality from the very beginning of the software lifecycle. That is why we aim to find and fix defects early on: A defect found and fixed in an earlier lifecycle phase is a multitude cheaper than the same defect at a later stage.

But how can we more easily make it possible to prevent defects from percolating deeper in the software development lifecycle by fixing them in their nascent stages?

This is the main theme of my latest article for @Gurock TestRail blog – where I explore and explain ways to foresee, analyze and thwart defects in an agile context.

The main points discussed are-

Communication

Conduct Reviews

Demonstrate Often

Static Analysis and CI

Click Here to read the complete article –>

Please support by liking / commenting and sharing the article!

Cheers

Nishi

Look Back to Plan Forward – Learnings from 2018

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

Every year we see the software industry evolving at a rapid pace. This implies changes in the way testing is conducted within the software lifecycle, test processes, techniques and tools, and the tester’s skill set, too.

I’ve been into agile for more than a decade, and I’m still learning, changing and growing each year along with our industry. Here are five of my key lessons and observations from 2018. I hope they help you in the coming year!

https://blog.gurock.com/lessons-for-agile-testers/

In my article published on Gurock blog, I talk about the 5 key learnings for Agile testers from the past year and how they will be key in planning your road ahead in 2019. The key learning areas discussed are —

Testing Earlier in DevOps

Getting Outside the Box

Increasing Focus on Usability Testing

Enhancing Mobile and Performance Testing

Integrating Tools and Analyzing Metrics

Click Here to read the complete article — >

https://blog.gurock.com/lessons-for-agile-testers/

The 12 Agile Principles: What We Hear vs. What They Actually Mean

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

The Agile Manifesto gives us 12 principles to abide by in order to implement agility in our processes. These principles are the golden rules to refer to when we’re looking for the right agile mindset. But are we getting the right meaning out of them?

In my latest article for Gurock TestRail blog, I examine what we mistakenly hear when we’re told the 12 principles, what pain points the agile team face due to these misunderstandings, and what each principle truly means.

 

Principle 1: Our Highest Priority is to Satisfy the Customer Through Early and Continuous Delivery of Valuable Software

What we hear: Let’s have frequent releases to show the customer our agility, and if they don’t like the product, we can redo it.

The team’s pain points: Planning frequent releases that aren’t thought out well increases repetitive testing, reduces quality and gives more chances for defect leakage.

What it really means: Agile requires us to focus on quick and continuous delivery of useful software to customers in order to accelerate their time to market.

Principle 2:

Check out the complete post here —- Click Here to Read more–>

 

Do share your stories and understanding of the 12 Agile Principles!

Cheers

Nishi

My interview with Thomas Cagley featured on SPaMCAST

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

I recently had a chance to chat with Mr. Thomas Cagley in an interview for his wonderful Podcast channel SPaMCAST. We talked all about Agile Testing, its differences from the traditional approach of testing, Agile Pods and the upcoming trends in the testing world!

It was a wonderful experience and I am grateful for having the chance to talk to one of the people I so look up to in the industry. Here is the link to the podcast show notes and info

http://spamcast.libsyn.com/spamcast-516-agile-testing-and-more-an-interview-with-nishi-grover-garg

Here is the link for Direct Playback: bit.ly/2QKvPvm

 

Hear it out and do share your thoughts!

Cheers

Nishi

 

A Day in the Life of an Agile Tester

Nishi Grover Garg1 Comment

An agile tester’s work life is intriguing, busy and challenging. A typical day is filled with varied activities like design discussions, test planning, strategizing for upcoming sprints, collaborating with developers on current user stories, peer reviews for teammates, test execution, working with business analysts for requirement analysis and planning automation strategies.

In my article for Gurock TestRail blog, I have explored a typical day in the life of an agile tester and how varied activities and tasks keep her engaged, busy and on her toes all the time!

agile tester.png

Let’s sneak a peek into a day in the life of an agile tester — > You will go through the daily routine of an agile tester and will experience their complicated schedule in real time.

Read full article

https://blog.gurock.com/agile-tester-work-life/

 

Using a Combination of Scripted, Automated and Exploratory Testing for Optimum QA Coverage

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

Most test teams today are struggling to find better ways to handle their testing. With the advent of Agile in our software development processes, teams are perennially under pressure to provide faster releases without lowering their standards of quality. This, in turn, adds load on the in-house test teams to ensure finding more and crucial issues and to prevent defect leakage. For this reason, testers look at strategies and practices that can help them achieve their goals and add more value to the product’s quality.

In my opinion as a hands-on agile tester, there is no single silver bullet to quality, but a combination of different types and approaches to testing that can help us get closer to our quality goals. Test teams need to strategize and plan the usage of a combination of scripted tests, automated tests as well as exploratory tests for achieving an optimum coverage and best quality software.

Here is my latest article for PractiTest QA Learning Centre where I discuss the need to have a combination of scripted, automated as well as exploratory tests for an optimum QA coverage–

https://www.practitest.com/qa-learningcenter/thank-you/exploratory-testing-optimum-qa-coverage/ 

Scripted Tests

When we look at the typical test approach, it begins with test scripting and designing tests as per software functionality. These are created using requirement analysis and test design techniques and also using common sense and skills by our skilled testers. These scripted tests form the starting point of testing a new feature, change or addition in the software.

Automated Testing

In addition to running the scripted tests manually, testers also rely on automated tests. These tests are scripted using various test automation tools and test automation, i.e. ability to write these automated test scripts is, thus, a much-wanted skill nowadays for all test professionals. The ability to run some tests using automated scripts helps repeatability and saves a lot of time and effort on part of the test teams. But most importantly, by automating the drudgery away, it saves the tester from repeated manual laborious tests and frees up their time for more creative thinking and exploration around the application.

Exploratory Testing

Exploration of software is basically looking at the feature/functionality/change and overall behavior from a learning as well as a critical standpoint. Exploratory Testing is a crucial aspect of software testing, which almost every tester performs knowingly or subconsciously.

Cem Kaner coined the term Exploratory Testing in his book “Testing Computer Software” and described it as:

“Simultaneous test design, test execution and learning with an emphasis on learning”

https://www.practitest.com/qa-learningcenter/thank-you/exploratory-testing-optimum-qa-coverage/ 

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Is ‘testing’ holding you back? Stop being a bottleneck for software quality assurance

Nishi Grover Garg1 Comment

Why ‘testing’ might be holding back the quality of your software

Testing or Software QA, has traditionally been the last piece of the software delivery puzzle. Testing and finding bugs at the end of a release cycle was the norm.  However, fixing those defects, changing designs and redeveloping the features lead to more work done twice, more time spent on retesting and loads of regression. So, this approach meant testing held you back from your final goal of software quality assurance.

Being the last phase of the development process and mostly being stretched for time and resources, testing has been seen as a hold up for final delivery to market.

With the advent of Agile and DevOps the thought process has changed and the focus now continues to be more on software quality assurance throughout the development lifecycle. Testers today need to focus more on assuring quality than finding bugs.If testing prevents you from delivering on time and you become a bottleneck at the end of a release, you need to focus your efforts on other quality assurance activities, which may or may not be a 100% testing but are surely related to overall quality of your software.

In my article for PractiTest QA Learning Centre, I talk about how to overcome this. https://www.practitest.com/qa-learningcenter/thank-you/software-quality-assurance-bottleneck/

Training Developers how to test their code better

Reviews as checkpoints

Customer Focus Groups

Change in team’s Mindset

Tool Support

To read the complete article – Click here –>

Summary

If you feel testing is holding you back from right time deliveries and turning your team into a bottleneck at the end of the release, you need to focus your efforts more on quality assurance activities that are related to the overall quality of your software – and less on the actual execution of your tests. Hope the tips shared here will help out you and your team achieve the quality levels we dream of!

Thanks for reading!
Nishi