Agile Testing vs Traditional Testing

Agile and traditional testing are software testing practices that fulfill the customer's need to provide quality software. Agile testing starts when the development process begins, but in conventional testing, the test starts after the development ends. In this article, we will cover the brief explanation of Agile Testing vs. Traditional Testing.

What is Agile Testing?

Agile Testing is part of Agile Software methodology. Agile testing supports the developers in testing the code quickly. It focuses on the quality of the product through the agile software development process. It also tests complex software and gives efficient results. If the error in testing occurs initially they easily identify and detect which leads to less time and cost. The best thing about agile testing is it breaks the large test elements into small test elements that help developers to test promptly and not wait for the completion of development. It tests every functionality continuously. It follows the approach of iterative and incremental. Agile methodology focuses more on customers to give quality products without missing a deadline.

Benefits of Agile Testing

• It provides collaboration and teamwork to work together.
• It saves time and cost
• It enhances the quality of software product
• Customers are involved during the testing process.

Drawbacks of Agile Testing

• Minimum documentation is required.
• Due to changing the requirements continuously, sometimes it is tough for users to go ahead.
• It is not useful for small development projects.
• Agile testing requires skilled team members there would be challenging for less experienced people

What is Traditional Testing?

Traditional testing is software testing, which tests the software when the development is completed. It is complex and time-consuming because after the development, it tests in that case it takes time to identify and detect errors. In modern software testing every stage and each functionality, we perform testing. As the user feedback is given in traditional testing when the testing is done.

Traditional testing follows a well-versed document that contains unit test cases. This testing takes more time as compared to agile testing because developers wait for the testing results. It focuses on writing detailed documentation. It is also known as manual testing and it is done by step by step-by-step manner. In traditional testing, the product is not released until the error or bugs are fixed.

Benefits of Traditional Testing

• It takes care of software or product quality.
• It found a maximum no. of bugs.
• A less experienced person is good to go for traditional testing who knows documentation.
• It is the step-by-step process that makes the development easier for smaller projects.

Drawbacks of Traditional Testing

• It does not provide flexibility to change the project requirements.
• It is time-consuming.
• It does not process the next step until the previous step is completed. It would be challenging if the clients changed their requirements in that case changes are difficult.
• There is no customer involvement during the development or testing process.

Agile Testing vs Traditional Testing Methods

Here are the methods that used in Agile testing:

1. ATDD

ATDD stands for Acceptance Test-driven development. It provides a collaborative environment where testers, developers, and customer representatives have to work together to write acceptance tests for specific requirements or functionality. In ATDD you first have to write a user acceptance test and then the development starts until the test passes.

Benefits of ATDD

• It promotes a collaborative environment between the tester, developer, business analyst, and customers.
• It improved the functionalities and ensured that the specific functionality should be tested.
• It ensures that the product aligns with customer satisfaction.
• It detects the bugs or potential issues early.

2. BDD

BDD stands for Behaviour Driven Development. It follows the customer-centric approach by designing the product as per the customer's needs. BDD tells the behavior of the feature before the development starts. It tells how the feature works before starting the development part.

Benefits of BDD

• It provides a collaborative environment to work together and understand the project plan.
• It ensures that every feature works well.
• It focuses on meeting customer requirements.
• It is easy to convert scenarios into automated tests.

3. Exploratory testing

Exploratory testing As the word suggests "explore" means learn where testers have the freedom to explore or learn and test the application individually. They first analyze the requirements of the product then test the product and find the defects in the product.

Here are the five phases you perform exploratory testing:

• The first phase is to classify the bug or find what problems occur in the project.
• The second phase is to create a test plan to detect this bug.
• The third phase is to create a timeline of the bug.
• The fourth phase is to review the test results.
• The fifth phase is to compile the result or check if more testing is required.

Benefits of Exploratory Testing

• It provides real-time learning.
• It found complex bugs early.
• It increases the knowledge of the tester because the testers use analytical skills to explore the whole testing process individually because in exploratory testing testers have to self-learn.

4. Test driven development

Test driven development is the process of creating unit test cases before development. If the test cases fail, then developers write or update the code to pass the test cases. The main focus of TDD run the test cases. If the test case fails then the developers update the code until the test case passes.

Benefits of TDD

• It detects the bugs early.
• It encourages the developers to write tests before going to the coding part which helps to clear the requirements of the project.
• It takes less time.
• It improves the code quality.

Methods of Traditional testing

1. Manual Testing

In the Manual Testing, Quality analysts have to manually test the product and functionality. The testers should work individually. It is random testing to find the bugs. This testing is necessary to start with Automation. QA engineers manually test the application to check if all the functionality working properly.

Benefits of Manual Testing

• There is no need for complex tools.
• It provides flexibility in the overall testing process.
• It is cost-effective.
• It is easy to learn for new learners.

2. Automation testing

Automation testing It automates the execution of tests while using software tools and scripts. It reduces the chance of errors. We can perform regression, performing and load testing. It contains two parts functional testing and non-functional testing.

Functional testing checks whether the functionality is working or not and non-functionality checks how the application works. In automation testing, testers write the test script based on the tools and frameworks. Manual testing is required in automation testing when writing test scripts after that the process becomes automatic while testing the bug.

Benefits of Automation Testing

• Automation testing helps to detect the bugs early so that testers give feedback to the developer team early and the developer team can fix it early.
• It improves the quality of the product and saves time and effort.
• By using automation testing, the tester executes the complex script very quickly.
• It resolves the occurrence of errors.

3. Unit Testing

Unit Testing is a test that tests each component or functionality of the software. It also ensures that the product or software works properly as expected before the release stage. It detects the errors promptly. It tests the small to small parts of the application. The unit test ensures that each component, and functionality will work correctly and it also ensures that when the developer writes the code, the code should be well-maintained which is helpful for testers to give the result quickly.

Benefits of Unit Testing

• It helps for improving code quality.
• It reduces the complexity of software or products.
• It also provides well-maintained documentation of the code that helps others to understand.

Agile testing vs Traditional Testing

Below are the differences of Agile testing and traditional testing

Why Is Agile Preferred Over Traditional Software Testing Approach?

Agile is preferred over Traditional software testing approach because:

• Agile does not consume time because the testing starts when the development begins. In that case, it detects the bugs promptly.
• It provides a collaborative environment where all the team members work together to find the bugs. While traditional software testing just targets the testing part, and takes more time and test the product after the development stage.
• In traditional approach, if bugs are more, the resolving time is longer. In that case, there is a lack of communication between the tester and developer because the tester waits until the development part is completed. They start to test the product and the developer waits for the testing results because if the test case fails, it updates the code. That's the reason the users preferred agile testing in place of traditional testing.

Challenges While Transitioning from Traditional to Modern Testing Practices

Here are the challenges faced while transitioning from traditional to modern testing practices-

• The first challenge is to have different responsibilities. In Agile testing, test automation is used for testing the product while in traditional testing the testers who are not familiar with or experienced in test automation face some challenges to learn this skill.
• The second challenge is to difference in culture. In Agile testing, the team members have to work collaboratively on a project while in traditional the testers work individually and it may be challenging to transition from traditional to agile.
• The third challenge is that agile testing focuses on software rather than documentation while in traditional documentation part is more required because in agile there is more software knowledge required in that case it may be challenging to transition from traditional to agile testing.

Here are the examples that faced the challenges while transitioning traditional to agile testing:-

• Without management support will make a challenging transition for new employees who are from traditional testing and want to come in agile testing. Onboarding a management support team will help to support to go from traditional to agile testing.
• Education and Training is the other example. Educating team members about agile will help to make an easy transition from traditional to agile because the training covers various topics such as continuous improvement, iterative development, and many more. Less training and education of new employees will be a challenging factor in the transition from traditional to agile.
• Difficulty in cultural and mind shifts makes the challenging transition. Like in traditional testing, there is no collaboration, not working in teams will make the developer move from traditional to agile. Because in agile the developer, tester, and customers are involved during the development and testing phase.

Which is a Better Model Traditional Or Agile Software Development?

As we learned and seen previously the agile model is more beneficial as compared to the traditional model.

• In the traditional model, detailed documentation is required and does not work in a collaborative environment. It is good for those who do not want flexibility to change the project requirements.
• Agile testing provides flexibility to change requirements and provides a collaborative environment and gives user feedback when each functionality should be tested.
• In the traditional model, when the testing is done then the user feedback is provided. As both of them provide benefits make sure to learn the pros and cons of both the model to select the best.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the difference suggests that Agile is preferable to Traditional Testing. According to the project requirements and budget, you can choose any of the testing approaches, whether Agile or Traditional. If the developer and testers prefer to work individually and do not anticipate changes, and are skilled in documentation, they should opt for Traditional Testing. On the other hand, if the developer and testers prefer to work in a collaborative team and expect changes, then Agile Testing is the more suitable choice.