Quality assurance teams have a wide range of expertise to draw from during project testing, but they cannot do it all by themselves. Collaboration with developers, stakeholders, and end users has further enabled capabilities, but there are other benefits to be had. To be truly effective, QA teams have to choose the right agile testing tools for their needs and ensure that it has the required features to ensure quality and bolster testing efforts. Here are a few things to consider as you search for the best solution for your QA team.
A suite supports legacy, but does it foster innovation?
Organizations have long relied on systems that come with all features within a box. For example, if you purchased Microsoft Office, you and thousands of other users got the same products, functionalities, and capabilities. With testing tools, suites are much the same in that they offer a set of features that are most commonly used by QA teams. A suite will help support legacy processes through integrations with critical systems and a deep understanding of traditional coding dependencies. However, it's these very same reliances that make it significantly more difficult to innovate operations and support new approaches like agile.
Teams looking to leverage agile software testing methodologies must understand that a suite likely won't meet all of their needs. TechTarget contributor Randy Rice noted that a tool must be able to easily scale to handle increasing testing volumes and maintenance. Many legacy systems won't have these capabilities, and it's important to pursue the right tool to ensure you scale alongside user requirements.
Hybrid environments are an option.
For many organizations, especially larger ones, it's not feasible to change everything all at once or to go all-in on agile when there are a number of mission-critical programs that are still relying on legacy systems. In this case, the QA team may seek to keep a rational tool that supports legacy solutions, while also pursuing a next generation tool that can integrate. In an interview with StickyMinds, industry expert Prasad Mk noted that this journey to find a hybrid solution can be challenging, but it isn't impossible. Identifying needs across the entire lifecycle and establishing clear tool evaluation criteria will help narrow down the choice to the best assets for the job.
"In such organizations, change is not easy, as IT and testing teams have usually grown from legacy systems and hence already have a set of tools in place," Mk stated. "There is also a lot of capital invested in existing tools and allied infrastructure, frameworks, and environments. So they are cautious and rather reluctant to make any switch. In such a situation, the right consultant who can help optimize the existing toolset, prioritize new investments, reskill existing resources, and map out a complementary organizational change management strategy assumes importance."
Let the team decide.
Ultimately, the decision should be left up to the individuals that are actually going to be using the tools. TechTarget contributor Lisa Crispin noted that although QA teams may want to use a test management tool for documenting test cases with mind maps, programmers should be brought into this decision since they use test cases to plan out what code to write. Cross-functional teams, as are common in agile setups, should feel free to work together and experiment on how to improve processes, but it does require everyone's involvement. Feedback from these trials can yield imperative information on which solution will be best for testing and development efforts.
Agile testing tools can help QA teams bolster their capabilities, but only if they have the solution that's right for their needs. By following these tips, QA management will have a better understand of how to choose the best tool and how to reap the most benefits.
