Agile Testing (STLC)
Software Testing is not just a single activity. It consists of series of activities carried out methodologically to help certify your software product. These activities or stages constitute the ALTECiSyS’s Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC). Each of these stages have a definite Entry and Exit criteria, Activities & Deliverables associated with it. The different stages in Software Test Life Cycle we follow at ALTECiSyS are: Requirements Analysis, Test Planning, Test Case Development, Environment Setup, Test Execution and Test Cycle Closure.
During the Requirements Analysis phase, our test team studies the requirements from a testing point of view to identify the testable requirements. Requirements could be either Functional or Non-Functional. The QA team may interact with various stakeholders to understand the requirements in detail. Automation feasibility for the given testing project is carried out in this stage.
Test Planning phase is known as Test Strategy phase as well. Typically, in this stage, we determine effort and cost estimates for the project and would prepare and finalize the Test Plan.
Test Cases Development phase involves creation, verification and rework of test cases & test scripts. Test data, is identified / created and is reviewed and then reworked as well.
Test environment decides the software and hardware conditions under which a software product is tested. Test environment setup is one of the critical aspects of testing process and can be done in parallel with Test Case Development Stage.
During Test Execution phase, our test team carries out the testing based on the test plans and the test cases prepared. Bugs are reported back to the development team for correction and retesting will have to be performed. This is an iterative process involving a maximum of 3 test cycles with fixing of reported bugs in each test cycle.
During the Test Cycle Closure phase, testing team will meet, discuss and analyze testing artifacts to identify strategies that have to be implemented in future, taking lessons from the current test cycle. The idea is to remove the process bottlenecks for future test cycles and share best practices for any similar projects in future.
At ALTECiSyS, we practice Agile Testing process while implementing Software Testing Lifecycle (STLC).
- Test Agility Strategy
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We conduct Test Agility Planning Meeting for critical projects. In this meeting, all the stake holders come together to plan the testing schedule, frequency of meetings, deliverables to test at each state and hence we establish Agile Strategy for the projects under development at ALTECiSyS.
- Daily Scrums
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We conduct Daily Standup Meetings to decide upon Daily Activity. These daily standup meetings which typically happen at the beginning of the day help us catch up on testing status for the previous day and set the course for the rest of the day and to set goals for the next day.
- Agility Review Meeting
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We conduct weekly Agility Review Meetings, which are periodic review meetings that are typically performed once at the end of the week where larger group of stake holders meet and assess the progress of current week against the set milestones for the week. This helps us in verifying weekly status on projects and to plan ahead for the consecutive weeks.
- Release Readiness
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This is a final review we conduct to take Go / No-Go decision; if our incremental features that have been developed are ready to go live or else we go back to previous stage in the cycle. This meeting facilitates us in time to market our products and solutions.
- Impact Assessment
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We gather inputs from customers, users and the stake holders. This assessment provides a learning curve for us and acts as feedback for the next deployment cycle.