CrossBrowserTesting.com

A Design, Development, Testing Blog

  • Product Overview
  • Pricing
  • Back Home
  • Free Trial
  • Design
  • Development
  • Manual Testing
  • Test Automation
  • Visual Testing

Next Steps for Teams Who Want to Move to Agile Project Management

November 7, 2018 By Alex McPeak Leave a Comment

agile project management development

agile project management development

It seems that the companies we all aspire to be more like are moving quicker and releasing faster than ever before. So, how can the rest of us strive to follow in the footsteps of software giants that release innovative software on the hour? While there may be no single, clearly-defined answer, we do know that many are seeing success with agile project management and development methods.

By focusing on feedback from stakeholders throughout the development process, not only is agile found to be a faster development method, it’s also more effective in the way that it allows and encourages changing requirements.

However, as waterfall is the traditional methodology for software development, teams that are stuck in their old ways might find the transition to agile hard to wrap their head around, so here are 7 tips for teams who want to take the next steps and move to agile project management.

  1. Identify what or who is missing to make agile work. In order to move to agile, you first have to recognize that it will be process your entire team will have to get on board with and fully embrace in order to make it work. Identify the roles and people you need on your team to make a successful transition. It might be helpful to onboard a project manager, scrum master, or agile coach to help adjust the current workflow. Look at your current team, as well, to understand where there are silos and barriers to communication. Teams that don’t communicate will find it hard to be successful. Agile project management works best when this is cross-departmental collaboration, so it’s important to work from the inside out.
  2. Prepare to shift left. Agile will require more testing earlier in the software development lifecycle. Because each phase of the SDLC is done in short iterations, rather than long incremental ones like with waterfall, testing shouldn’t wait until the end when new features are fully developed. With a focus on continuous integration and continuous delivery that comes with agile development, continuous testing will be the key to fast feedback and iterative changes that are needed to release high-quality software. Evaluate whether you will need to introduce test automation, additional QA team members, new tools, or something else to help you reach maximum test coverage.
  3. Poke holes in what you’re doing now. Look at your current planning process, and outline how your strategy will have to change in agile development to allow for more feedback and flexibility. Where are the bottlenecks in your current process, and what prevents your team from delivering high-quality software or meeting short deadlines? This will be crucial to shifting to a new way of thinking and transforming your team’s workflow. Familiarize yourself with the different agile methodologies such as Scrum, Kanban, and Extreme Programming. While these all follow agile principles, they achieve it in different ways. Based on the makeup of your team and the objectives you discussed, it will affect the way you carry out agile project management.
  4. Get on board with sprints and standup. No matter which methodology you choose, a few things will probably be the same, and they’ll help you properly implement agile project management in your organization if you take the time to do them correctly. Sprints will be the duration of you planning — usually they’re two weeks long but can be anywhere from one to four — and standups are where you talk about what you’ll be doing in each sprint. Take advantage of these opportunities for strategic planning and collaboration with the entire team.
  5. Backlog issues and tasks. Identify the projects that currently challenge your team and what you’d like prioritize when you transition to agile. Create a backlog of tasks, gaps, objectives that need to be addressed so you can start ranking them on most to least important and having conversations about future goals. Discuss what is needed from each team member, how it will be accomplished, and what information is currently needed to make it as “done”. Once you begin to organize your team and the work that needs to be done, you can start building out detailed tasks and sprints.
  6. Don’t skip your retrospective. As you adjust to agile and the many changes that come along, you’ll be constantly learning about what’s working well and what isn’t, as well as what individuals are successful with and what they’re struggling with. Ensure that everyone has an equal say in each sprint, so it’s not just leaders and managers giving their two centrs. Focus on how you can improve in each sprint. However, don’t just wait until retrospectives to collect feedback from your team — encourage communication and checkins throguhout the sprint.
  7. Be open to change. Requirements change, tasks get de-prioritized, clients and customers change their mind, and feedback will alter the sprint process. The nice thing about agile project management is that it encourages these adjustments. Embrace agile and understand that these frequent changes are improvements that will help your team achieve continuous integration, testing, and delivery. If you feel like you’re getting lost or confused, always resort back to the agile manifesto to realign your team with the principles behind agile.

Finding your groove with agile won’t happen overnight, but there are certain steps your team can take to make the transition more seamless. For more, take a hint from what agile teams can learn from Netflix.

 

Filed Under: Test Automation Tagged With: agile, agile development, test automation

Understanding Continuous Integration Testing

November 27, 2017 By Alex McPeak Leave a Comment

what is continuous integration testing

what is continuous integration testing

As software development practices increasingly trend towards Agile development and DevOps, Continuous Integration and Delivery have become the go-to methods for receiving fast feedback, meeting changing requirements, and optimizing quality.

But what exactly is CI/CD and how does testing fit in? As more organization adopt these practices, some will increase testing, while some will let it fall through the cracks. Find out how teams are including continuous integration testing to balance speed and quality more successfully.

What is Continuous Integration?

Continuous Integration is a practice where a team of developers intermittently merges their code changes into a shared repository. Developers are integrating multiple times throughout the day and ideally committing to changes about once a day or a few times a week.

Continuous Integration is preferred by software teams because it allows daily constant feedback in development from all contributors, while it’s easier to catch and resolve bugs early on in the process.

In turn, this ideally leads to Continuous Delivery — since builds are constantly managed and shipped regularly, new features can be delivered to the end user on a daily or weekly basis instead of a quarterly or yearly one.

Additionally, by integrating small, frequent changes, it’s easier to catch issues early in the SDLC. Teams often find that this CI/CD results in higher quality software with fewer bugs, and when bugs are found, they’re usually much easier to fix.

Where CI/CD and Agile Intersect

Continuous Integration piggy-backs onto Agile development since Agile is often achieved through the continuous integration of features, as it was created so developers could solve issues as they come instead of trying to predict and solve every change up front and only test right before the product launch.

While teams following an Agile methodology strive to support more change throughout the development process, Continuous Integration is a way that developers to do this by making changes multiple times throughout the day or week. Additionally, sprint planning allows for the constant feedback from both customers and developers as well as other team members.

However, though Continuous Integration often works best as part of Agile or Extreme Programming, it can also be leveraged in other environments such as Waterfall or RUP.

The Need for Continuous Integration Testing

Another element of CI and CD that is less commonly acknowledged is Continuous Testing, or the practice of testing for every integration. You may even consider continuous testing a prerequisite for Continuous Integration and Delivery.

It makes sense that Continuous Testing goes hand-in-hand with Continuous Integration to make sure that bugs are found early and are easy to fix. While many changes are made on a daily basis, there’s an opportunity each time for those changes to disrupt a previously working part of the code.

While teams implement Continuous Integration and Delivery to gain a competitive edge, it’s important to acknowledge that ensuring quality is equally important in the eyes of the end user — no one wants to use a new feature that has a bug. Continuous Integration testing is a critical step for organizations that want to differentiate from their competition.

By automating tests to match the speed of Continuous Integration, rapid delivery can be more effectively achieved and acceptable standards of quality can be met simultaneously.

Open Source CI Tools

Utilizing a Continuous Integration strategy is often complemented with the use of one or more open-source tools.

  • Jenkins – Jenkins is the by far the most popular open source continuous integration tool. It’s a Java-based automation server that has hundreds of CI/CD plugins to support building, deploying, and automation. Basically, Jenkins works to check for changes on the server, trigger a build when it detects one to deploy it for testing, and notify test teams of found results. It has a robust, supportive community, easy installation, and numerous integrations that make it a leading Continuous Integration server. Learn about installing and configuring Jenkins here.
  • Buildbot – Buildbot is primarily used to manage and schedule different jobs in the Continuous Integration process. It supports job execution across multiple platforms and monitors source-code repositories while reporting the results. Buildbot can only be configured through a Python script, though it does support all major operating systems.
  • TeamCity – TeamCity allows you to develop in Java, .NET, or for mobile platforms, while giving you additional functionalities and features such as gated commits, build grids, and integrations as well as more than 100 plugin options, while the Open API allows you to create your own plugins. Read about installing TeamCity.

For Continuous Integration testing, open source tools like Selenium and Appium are most popular for automating tests. Additionally, tools like CrossBrowserTesting can also be used to execute test automation and create an environment for continuous testing in the cloud.

Additionally, while automation is essential for keeping up with the speed of a well-oiled CI process, it won’t always be the answer to testing. For brand new features, it’s best to resort to exploratory testing. For other instances where teams should trade in automation for live testing, check out our blog about deciding which tests to automate.

Conclusion

As more QA and DevOps professionals begin to implement Continuous Integration and Delivery, Continuous Testing will have to be quick to follow in order to better meet customer demands, keep a competitive edge, and secure a standard of quality.

As technology advances and web testing trends change, being able to adapt to change and follow faster development cycles will become the differentiator for many software teams. Continuous testing is how those teams will meet demands of agile practices, frequent integrations, and rapid delivery cycles.

Filed Under: Continuous Integration Tagged With: agile development, Continuous Delivery, Continuous Integration, continuous testing

Try CrossBrowserTesting

Everything you need for testing on the web. Browsers & Devices included.


  • Grid In The Cloud
  • Simple CI Integrations
  • Native Debugging Tools
  • Real iOS and Android
  • 2050+ Browser/OS Combinations
  • Intuitive REST API

Start Testing Today

Want Testing Tips?

Want the latest tips & strategies from industry experts right to your inbox? Sign up below.
 

Join Over 600,000 Testers & Developers And Start Testing Today

Learn more Free Trial

Features

  • Live Testing
  • Selenium Automation
  • Automated Screenshots
  • Screenshot Comparison
  • Local Testing
  • Real Devices

Solutions

  • Automated Testing
  • Visual Testing
  • Manual Testing
  • Enterprise
  • Internet Explorer

Resources

  • Browsers & Devices
  • Blog
  • Webinars
  • Integrations
  • ROI Calculator

Company

  • About Us
  • Careers
  • Plans
  • Terms of use
  • Security

Support

  • Help Center
  • API Docs
  • Schedule A Demo
  • Contact Us
  • Write For Us