The Pitfalls of Traditional Testing Approaches
Traditional software testing strategies often follow a linear, waterfall approach, where a project is split into discrete phases, with testing occurring at the end of the development cycle. This method has its roots in the past, when software development was a more linear and predictable process. However, with the shift towards Agile, DevOps, and continuous delivery, it's time to rethink our testing strategies and adopt a more adaptive, human-centered approach.
Limitations of Traditional Testing Methods
- Isolationism: Traditional testing focuses on isolating defects, treating them as isolated issues to be fixed, rather than looking at the bigger picture of how software affects the entire ecosystem.
- Detection-based: Traditional testing focuses on detecting flaws, often relying on evidence-based techniques that prioritize finding defects over ensuring overall quality.
- Fragmentation: The need for a comprehensive understanding of how various components interact with each other gets lost in the fragmentation of testing processes.
Collaborative and Continuous Testing Strategies
In contrast, a collaborative and continuous testing approach values human-centered design, ensuring that software is usable, efficient, and effective. This requires working closely with cross-functional teams, involving stakeholders, and understanding user needs and pain points.
Merits of Collaborative Testing
- Improved quality: By focusing on collaboration and continuous improvement, teams can spot issues early and prevent defects from becoming costly problems.
- Increased efficiency: Teams are forced to work together to identify issues early on and address them in a timely manner, resulting in quicker cycle times and overall improvements in productivity.
- Enhanced usability: Collaboration helps teams create applications that meet user expectations and skill levels, and allows for user feedback that can identify usability defects throughout the development cycle.
Continuous Improvement through Adaptability and Feedback
How to Adopt a Collaborative and Continuous Testing Approach
To achieve a collaborative and continuous testing strategy, you can:
- Rotate testing responsibilities within the development team: This helps build diversified skill sets among developers and ensures that everyone has a deeper understanding of the entire software lifecycle.
- Implement a continuous integration and delivery pipeline: This makes it easier to catch and fix issues as close to the source of the problem as possible.
- Conduct user testing at every stage: Constant testing and collaboration lead to better results in the end product and make the continuous integration and delivery pipeline more efficient.
Real-World Example
Imagine implementing a traffic routing app for emergency services. The key to success depends on the app's ability to navigate users to the right destinations quickly efficiently and accurately. With a collaborative testing approach, it helps the team to catch potential issues and help inform design and development decisions proactively. Through quick and effective iteration and debugging cycles, the team can ensure the quality and the internals of the app are far better than if they had followed the traditional testing methodology.
A leading emergency services app company tested the app they were building by executing a continuous combinatorial test automation plan. This gave them the flexibility to try a quick alongside the traditional set of test cases, and the plan allowed to test with frequencies of both long (IT team checklist, load, transactional, etc.) and small iterations throughout the entire end-to-end testing phase. the team put emphasis on improving its functionality, distinctiveness, and usage patterns.