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”.
- Not cost- and time-effective process as bugs are discovered and fixed at the late phase of development
- A lack of communication between software development and quality assurance departments affects the process's effectiveness
- Heavy reliance on documentation at the traditional approach leads to costs of writing and maintaining it
- Since the requirements are approved at the initial stage of development, it leads to the inability to modify them to meet changing business objectives
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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.
- Time- and cost-effective approach which gains to simplify and shorten the period of interactions for more efficient output
- Time- and cost-effective approach which gains to simplify and shorten the period of interactions for more efficient output
- It actually doesn't require the comprehensive documentation and requirements are adaptive
- It actually doesn't require the comprehensive documentation and requirements are adaptive
- Agile in testing provides rapid delivery and high-quality software due to collaboration with end-users
- Agile testing significantly reduces the time period from the start to the release to the market
- It also contributes to better risk management (reputational and financial) due to early discovery of defects and lower chance of a released product revoking
- It represents a very structured and thorough though very flexible approach for software development and testing all together
- Even though this approach doesn't require thorough documentation, its lacking causes problems in a case when the project grows or a new team joins to take over
- At the initial stage of development, it is challenging to determine the exact time, resources and efforts required by the project. It can cause a slight digression for the project budget
- Agile testing often demands requirements, workflow, defects and IT product testing management tools
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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.
