Effective Sprint Management Using Practitest

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

"Effective Sprint Management Using PractiTest

Abstract — Nowadays, more and more teams are focused towards the agile development. This is due to increase the efficiency of their projects and also to meet the competitive requirements of their user. Agile software development is totally different from other forms of traditional software development. Only thing that relates agile with other software development is that agile development methodology will also requires some changes in the testing process. PractiTest is one of the testing processes which help to manage the Agile Testing Process. Agile is considered as the logical development approach which provides faster and better response to the dynamic demands of the users.

Index Terms— Agile software development, Agile Testing, Sprint Management, PractiTest

introduction

Agile Testing is used for execution and test management which aims to increase the QA (Quality Assurance) team’s value by working more in communication and coordination of the organization in order to achieve its long-range and immediate business objectives. Testing is considered as the key element of the software development process. A product will be tested in order to judge about its fitness for specific purpose and for risks and also for completeness (Lyndsay, 2007). Today, most of the teams are shifting to agile software development. Agile development comes in many variations i.e. from Extreme Programming to Scrum and more. Apart from these, agile development follows number of principles such as:

Customer satisfaction will be achieved by the frequent delivery of good software

Regular adaptation will needed in order to comply with changing circumstances

Changes that made in requirements is considered as part of agile software development process

Testing should be aligned with the agile development and so that it is possible to start testing under the development activities. Agile testing will be done in agile sprint. Sprints are the short iterations which are divided from the software development process after high level designs and project scope (Serena (2007). Each and every sprint may contain of some backlog items. Some work that should be completed is the backlog items (Schwaber, and Beedle, 2001). In many aspects, testing followed in agile sprint are as same as the traditional project and apart from that testing in agile require some fundamental process (Díaz & Hilterscheid, 2009). PractiTest helps manage Agile Testing Process with unique approach which is based on the dynamic views instead of rigid folders which have capacity to display graphical information in the Dashboard and also to provide flexibility in customization settings.

Agile may use PractiTest for its testing process which has some easiest and simple steps, such as

Create a test

Run a test

Report a Bug

Edit a test

managing agile testing process using practitest

Managing Agile Testing process is more important than managing any other traditional testing approaches. Agile testing is team effort which requires high communication between the members in team. Agile have a capacity to make the task as more "fluid" and so this makes any critical things to be happened and so testing is more important and also it is very hard to track the things without the proper process.

The main things that to be managed in Agile Testing processes are:

Graphs and Reports

User Stories

Issues (bugs, tasks, etc)

Acceptance and Additional Tests which cover user stories

Coordinating the task around these facts while working with the PractiTest is easy and straightforward. Many features of the PractiTest contribute significantly to the agile testing process which makes testing and testing methodology easy.

CAPTURE USER STORIES WITHIN THE REQUIREMENT’S MODULE:

Traditional testing methods may use the Requirements module in order to describe SUT (System Under Test) which explains how it should work and what should be tested within this module. When the customer working with the agile testing process, it is possible to replace or change the traditional requirements with the user stories through short and exact descriptions of the customers’ needs (PractiTest, 2012). Then, it is possible to organize the user stories by using Custom Views.

Figure: User Stories

Source: PractiTest (2012): A quick guide to Agile testing in PractiTest, retrieved on 10th March 2013 from http://www.practitest.com/blog/2012/02/a-quick-guide-to-agile-testing-in-practitest/

Create an organized backlog with the help of custom views for future user stories and then active stories can be cataloged based upon the Sprint. For doing this activity, just add a single field by defining the sprint for every active story and then group can be created based on the sprints. In addition to these, it is possible to create deeper levels of analysis such as market analysis, risk analysis and functional analysis, etc by organizing the user stories like a parallel tree based on the fields in order to add user story customizations.

CREATE AND SHARE ACCEPTANCE TESTS IN THE TEST LIBRARY:

In test library, an acceptance test facilitates the user to create user stories without any mistakes. Then, the team gets the features of synchronized functionality and behavior through this test library. In Test Library with the help of PractiTest, it is possible to manage and write the acceptance test without any mistakes. It is possible to use comments, notification and history features to allow the users to add their inputs to the PractiTest. It is possible create a test for each and every User Story, where the developers provide their inputs to the testers with some ideas during the coding or design process.

CREATE TEST SETS FOR EACH USER STORY AND ADD OTHER TEST SETS FOR SPRINT HARDENING OR INTEGRATION:

Creating Test Sets for each and every User Story individually is possible. These test sets may include functional tests, acceptance tests and also other additional testing operations which are required for particular User Story. By doing this, the users obtain good sense of coverage and also completion process for all the User Stories. Tractability function can be used link between the User Stories and tests.

Figure: Sprint list in Test Sets

Source: PractiTest (2012): A quick guide to Agile testing in PractiTest, retrieved on 10th March 2013 from http://www.practitest.com/blog/2012/02/a-quick-guide-to-agile-testing-in-practitest/

Individual Test Sets must also taken for Integration or Hardening and also for Pre-Launch or Pre-Release cycle or for any other testing operation that taken in the Sprint. It is possible to use Hierarchical Views to organize Test Sets (PractiTest Support, 2011).

GROUPING ISSUES BASED ON THEIR TARGET SPRINT AND USER STORY:

When reporting the issues, it is essential to make sure that it is directly reported from test runs or it may linked to some User Story. While reporting the issues, custom fields will be used in order to assign them to the sprint which should be solved.

Depending on sprints, it is used to organize tractability report issues such as user stories, modules and tests requirements, etc. A good practice makes use of an Issues Module not available for report bugs and also helps to manage every task of the sprint and user stories. The issue module creates tasks to carry all track activities of user’s project and also contain the status of their individuals.

PROVIDE VISIBILITY USING A SUMMARY DASHBOARD AND ADDITIONAL DASHBOARDS PER USER STORY:

The user should use the dashboard to maintain their team up to date with the sprint status in common and specifically for each user story.

In every module, user can create a dashboard that centralize all information based on sprint with the help of hierarchical views and also create an extra dashboard tabs which contain information for each and every user stories individually.

AGILE TESTS IN PRACTITEST:

Nowadays, there are various features which make PractiTest to be best quality assurance management tool especially for agile testing in the market (PractiTest, n.d).

ORGANIZE YOUR WORK WITH HIERARCHICAL VIEWS AND FILTERS:

During agile testing process, the project is generally organized based on user stories, tasks and sprints. The PractiTest’s hierarchical views or filters are used to maintain the difficult information in the agile project. Filters are useful to display information in various ways such as providing information for every stakeholder.

PRACTITEST’S DASHBOARD CREATES INFORMATION ACCESSIBLE TO ALL WITH STAKEHOLDERS:

The agile testing should make sure an individual is up to date the status of the product and quality of the process. By using dashboard in PractiTest, it provides upgraded, relevant and exact information for the user’s team at anytime. To customize the dashboard and making different tabs for every stakeholder then the user makes possible for each person in their team receive information that helps to work better.

Figure: Information in Dashboard

Source: PractiTest (n.d) Agile Testing, retrieved on 10th March 2013 from http://www.practitest.com/agile-testing/

HELP DEVELOPERS TO BE THE BEST TESTERS!

In agile development, it includes a law to indicate that a person in their team plays different roles based on their requirements; if the team needs many testers for long period of time depending upon every sprint then the user require a QA management tool to helps developers as the best agile testers.

PractiTest is quite simple to learn and contain good features such as compact view or possible to report bugs from runs that is helpful for developers and also, increase the agile team work by using tools to control all work resources.

Source: PractiTest (n.d) Agile Testing, retrieved on 10th March 2013 from http://www.practitest.com/agile-testing/

Conclusion

It is concluded that agile testing is one of the techniques for detecting the errors in the agile software development phase. Agile software development consists of addressing both the project, technical and operations aspects (Debois, n.d). So that testing is an important process that should be done in order to provide successful project. Agile software development processes is accompanied with separate testing but it should be an integrated testing team. PractiTest is the type of testing which plays a main role in agile testing.