Agile testing vs traditional testing: what to choose?
Automation Best practices Agile
5 mins read
July 14, 2022

Agile testing vs traditional testing: what to choose?

Evolution is a process that changes everything in our world for the better and adapts to constantly changing conditions, including development and quality assurance.

photo
photo
Olga Ryan
Robert Weingartz

Evolution is a process that changes everything in our world for the better and adapts to constantly changing conditions, including development and quality assurance. Evolution has not bypassed traditional testing as well. However, not everyone is always in a hurry to switch from traditional QA to contemporary approaches, for example, agile in software testing. Why not everyone is in a hurry to do this and what to choose we will analyse in this article. Let’s see what the differences between agile and traditional testing are.

Traditional testing definition

The traditional testing method is probably the most common quality assurance method. Its main difference from more modern methods lies in the incremental execution. Testers perform traditional tests from top to bottom. Having completed one phase, they move on to the next and so on until all defects are eliminated. It is released only after the software has been validated for bugs’ absence. This way of traditional testing can be described as the “step-by-step detection of bugs in ready-made software”.

Features
Advantages
Disadvantages
image

Get a testing strategy template that enables us to release 2 times faster

What is agile testing?

The agile testing method doesn’t isolate software development and testing from each other. Opposite to this, it encourages them to be executed simultaneously. The entire team is collaboratively finding bugs while validating the developing product. Only when both parts of the team agree that the result is satisfactory, they are ready to deploy it.

Features
Advantages
Disadvantages

Finding the all-in-one tool at a reasonable price and with an adequate number of licences might be complicated. However, aqua ALM is a pro in an agile testing approach and does its best to give you everything to start implementing modern methods.

Conclusion

“Agile testing vs traditional testing” is just a general idea of what you can use for development. A comparison of agile and traditional testing is not something that you should take too seriously. As you can see there are definitely more advantages to agile testing. However, it doesn’t mean that this exact method will meet your needs and demands. For example, in government software testing it is more preferable to use a traditional approach as it has better documentation than an agile method.

It is fundamental to understand what sources you have before you map your journey to a better product. The choice of either of the two approaches should be based only on the goals that your project is trying to accomplish. Because the final result is the same — high-quality bug-free software.

Whatever decision you make, it never hurts to implement an effective online test management tool for your development and testing processes. This will greatly simplify the work of your team and make development more understandable and traceable.

On this page:
See more
Speed up your releases x2 with aqua
Start for free
FAQ
What is the difference between traditional and agile testing?

Traditional testing is a single-phase effort of moving through the software’s issues one module at a time after the development is completed. Agile testing runs in parallel with development and uses a combination of planning and prioritisation techniques for delivering the least problematic software possible. 

What is agile testing?

Agile testing is iterative testing done to match the Agile approach to software delivery. It means that a solution is updated (and thus tested) at the end of each sprint that lasts 1 to 4 weeks. 

What is traditional testing?

Traditional testing is a step-by-step approach to testing where QA specialists work incrementally. It happens at the end of the product’s development and thus fits the old-fashioned Waterfall software development methodology better.

closed icon