What is the major hurdle in Software Testing in an Agile Environment?

In Agile projects, test levels are often defined in definition of done document which are logically related to each other and indicates the broad test coverage area. Since, testing in agile is no longer a separate phase by itself, all test levels overlap with each other.

Agile Testers face lot of challenges when they are working with Agile development team. And they should be able to apply Root-Cause Analysis when finding severe bugs so that they unlikely to reoccur. While Agile has different flavors, Scrum is one process for implementing Agile. Some of the challenging scrum rules to be followed by every individual are,

 - Obtain Number of Hours Commitment Up Front - Gather Requirements / Estimates Up Front - Entering the actual hours and estimated hours daily. - Daily Builds - Keep the Daily Scrum meetings short - Code Inspections are Paramount

In order to meet the challenges, an agile testers needs to be innovative with the tools that they have. And here is some important keys for innovation:

 - A good Agile Tester needs to be extremely creative when trying to cope up with speed of development/release. For a tester, being creative is more important than being critical. - Testing professional must be highly talented and strives for more learning and innovating new ideas. Talented Testers are never satisfied with what they have achieved and always strives to find unimaginable bugs of high value and priority. - An Agile Tester should not be afraid to look at a developer’s code and if need be, and in extreme cases, to correct it. - He must have a comprehensive vision to client’s expectations and delivery of the good product. - He must be empowered to work in Pairs. He will be involving in Pair Programming to bring shorter scripts, better designs and finding more bugs. - Tester should be passionate and contributes something unique that may be in terms of their innovative ideas or the way they carry day-to-day work.

And finally, Agile Tester must have multiple skills like, Manual, Functional, Performance testing skills and soft skills like Leadership skills, Communication skills etc. As in this new world Testing Professional will be concentrate on adding value to the business and the software development life-cycle and will operate in a new and elevated position where the combination of their structured driven approach, creativity and ability to articulate and define quality and testing criteria in to the new models will be critical to the success of the business implementation of technology.

1. In Agile, the requiemnet changes constantly, due to which you continuoulsy have to maintain your test cases to make sure that no requirement is bein missed. Any miss in the requiremnet could lead to eluding the testing of critical area.

2.With the change in requirement, code also gets changed, that increases the likelihood of breaking the existing functionality.

3. Sometimes you dont get enough time to prepare the test cases.