Agile methodology is a way to manage a project by breaking it into several phases. It involves constant collaboration with stakeholders and continuous improvement at every stage which focuses and ensures to achieve the business goals and end-user goals.
Overview
Implement the Agile methodology in QA to test the application in each phase and to provide a product that meets all quality standards.
Agile methodology is a way to manage a project by breaking it into several phases. It involves constant collaboration with stakeholders and continuous improvement at every stage which focuses and ensures to achieve the business goals and end-user goals.
Mendix Platform
Mendix is an all-in-one, low-code application development platform that allows you to create, deploy, maintain, and improve mobile and web apps.
Mendix has been designed to support companies in fast-tracking the process of application delivery across the whole lifecycle management process, from ideation all the way to deployment and maintenance. As a cloud-native solution, it also enables you to deploy the created apps on-premises or on any cloud with ease.
The platform allows businesses to achieve true agility or the next level of agility by streamlining the development and Testing process.
“Agile teams produce a continuous stream of value, at a sustainable pace, while adapting to the changing needs of the business.”
Shift Left Testing
A shift-left testing is a prominent agile testing trend currently, and it would become the most predominant testing approach in Mendix mainstream applications.
In the shift-left approach, testing is moved towards the formative stages of development rather than incorporating testing after development.
Usually, testing enters the picture at the very end of the pipeline, but the Shift Left Testing literally pushes testing to the earlier stages of the pipeline. The shift left approach intends to identify and resolve bugs/defects as early as possible in the development process. This improves the Mendix application’s quality and reduces the time spent on resolving issues at a later time.
Shift Left Testing approach
- Testing New Code
- Testing Every Build
- Testing Every Deployment
- Testing Production
My mantra has always been “Test Early, Test Constant to provide quality work”.
Implementing Agile methodology in Mendix QA
Agile is a step-by-step design approach performed sequentially. Testing is done in several sprint iterations.
As mentioned in the above Agile diagram, it has different stages like Plan, Design, Build, Test, Review, and Deploy.
Implementing Agile methodology to develop software, requires the involvement of all the Mendix developers and testers working on a project to closely collaborate with the other stakeholders until the project is completed. We have to ensure that business requirements of the customer are met on schedule.
Planning Sprints
Sprints are the core of Agile methodologies, an approach that takes large, complex projects into smaller manageable pieces. Sprints are the pre-agreed time period in which the team has to work on the set of requirements agreed upon with the stakeholders and conclude within the duration.
Designing Test Cases/Scenarios
The testing team designs the test cases as per the requirements provided by the product owner. Test Cases/Scenarios are important for the testing team to verify that the application requirements are tested thoroughly and they work fine. The documented test cases are then handed over to the QA manager and Developers for review which helps in Defect Prevention.
QA Testing in Mendix Platform
In Agile methodology, testing needs to happen early and often. So, rather than waiting for development to be done with, testing begins early. Hence the QA (Quality Assurance) engineers provide early feedback/raise defects to the developers to fix the defects/bugs quicker. Mendix platform has a debugging facility which is the process of finding and fixing errors or bugs in the source code of any software. The developers will debug and fix the issue faster and simultaneously when the other sprint/module is in the development/Testing phase.
QA lens on each phase of application
The QA Tester always writes the test cases/scenarios for a Mendix application which covers both the positive and negative scenarios. This helps in the accurate estimation of user stories of each sprint, based on the clarity after identifying the positive and negative flows of the application.
Testing involves verification of all the functionalities of the Mendix application by executing test cases on all applicable devices. Mendix provides debugging option to find the root cause of inconsistent issues. Testing also concentrates on the cross-browser testing to understand problems faced by end-users before application is deployed to Live environment. Main goal of Testing is to avoid critical issues/bugs and any inconsistent issues in the Live Application.
Achieve Business goals
Setting up early goals for your company is essential to keep yourself on track for your overarching targets. By having conversations with stakeholders across the organization and understanding what their teams are trying to achieve, we can get the bigger picture of how Mendix application quality impacts business success.
Hence the main goal of any Agile QA process is to test the Mendix application as thoroughly as possible to provide a quality product to the client.
Achieve End user goals
Quality work is what a customer desires the most and customer satisfaction is the most important in any business. Testers’ main goal is to test the Mendix application from the end users’ perspective and ensure that the application is easy to access, and also works according to their expectations without any errors.
My motto has always been - “The way to succeed in anything and everything is always to try just one more time”.
Conclusion
To achieve business goals and end-user goals by delivering high-quality products to clients and end users, organizations must concentrate on understanding the needs and expectations of their customers and work to meet or exceed them. This is extremely attainable by using the Agile methodology.
