We interviewed Angela Christian-Pye, Senior Quality Engineering Manager at Roq to discuss the key testing techniques that deliver value. This initiative aligns with the upcoming National Software Testing Conference in London on July 23rd, 2024. Angela has over 25 years of experience in Quality Engineering, specialising in regulated financial environments. Angela has a wide breadth of experience within the UK financial services sector having worked with The Co-operative Bank, Atlanta, and Swinton.
Learn more about it below:
In today’s fast-paced, technology-driven society, maintaining the quality and reliability of applications is more critical than ever. Modern testing techniques have evolved to keep up with the demands of rapid software development cycles, continuous integration, and deployment practices. Here, we explore five Quality Engineering techniques that are delivering substantial value to development teams and organisations.
- Shift-Left
Shift-left testing is a proactive approach in software development that involves integrating testing activities much earlier in the development lifecycle. This contrasts with traditional testing methods, which often only consider quality towards the end of the development process.
Value Delivered:
- Early Detection of Defects: By testing early and often, defects are identified when they are easier and cheaper to fix
- Enhanced Collaboration: Encourages collaboration between developers, testers, and business stakeholders from the outset. This leads to a better understanding of what quality means to the project and closer alignment on requirements
- Faster Feedback Loop: Provides immediate feedback on code changes, facilitating quicker iterations and continuous improvement.
By adopting shift-left testing, development teams can improve the quality of their software, reduce costs associated with late-stage defect fixes, and foster a more collaborative and efficient development process.
- Continuous Testing
Continuous testing is an essential practice in modern software development, particularly within Agile and DevOps frameworks. It involves executing automated tests at every stage of the software delivery pipeline to ensure that code changes do not introduce new defects. This practice ensures that the software remains in a deployable state at all times. It is a fundamental aspect of continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) practices.
The value of continuous testing is significant:
- Improved Quality: Ensures that code is always in a deployable state by continuously validating it against predefined requirements
- Reduced Risk: Minimises the risk of last-minute failures by identifying and addressing issues as soon as they arise
- Speed to Market: Supports faster release cycles by enabling teams to deploy with confidence, knowing that the software has been rigorously tested throughout the development process.
By integrating continuous testing into their workflows, development teams can enhance the reliability and quality of their applications, ultimately delivering better products to their users in a faster and more efficient manner.
- AI-Driven Testing
Something Roq is expanding its offering in is AI-driven testing, which leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to optimise and automate various testing processes. This can include intelligent test case generation, test data creation, and test automation code snippet generation.
The advantages of AI-driven testing:
- Enhanced Efficiency: Accelerates test preparation tasks, freeing up testers to focus on more complex and creative testing activities.
- Predictive Insights: Uses historical data to predict potential defects, quality issues and focus areas of high risk, enabling proactive mitigation.
- Smart Test Coverage: Automatically identifies the appropriate and most critical tests to run based on requirements, ensuring optimal coverage with minimal effort, including complex ones that human testers might miss.
By incorporating AI-driven testing, development teams can significantly improve their testing efficiency, predict and address potential issues before they become problematic, and maintain high-quality software with optimal test coverage.
- Exploratory Testing
Exploratory testing is a dynamic approach to software testing that emphasises simultaneous learning, test design, and test execution. Rather than following predefined test scripts, testers actively explore the application, investigating its functionality and behaviour to identify defects, issues, and potential improvements. It often works alongside and complements automated testing by uncovering issues that may only be discovered through human intuition.
Value Delivered by Exploratory Testing:
- Human Insight: Leverages the tester’s intuition and experience to discover subtle, complex issues that automated tests might overlook.
- Adaptability: Allows testers to quickly adapt their focus based on findings, exploring areas that may require more attention.
- Enhanced User Experience: By thinking and acting like end-users, testers can identify usability issues and ensure a smoother, more intuitive user experience.
By incorporating exploratory testing, development teams can uncover nuanced issues, improve testing strategies, and deliver higher-quality software that provides a better user experience.
- Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD)
Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) is a software development approach that enhances collaboration between developers, testers, and business stakeholders. BDD focuses on creating a shared understanding of how software should behave through the use of natural language descriptions, typically written in a “Given-When-Then” format. This approach although not a testing technique helps ensure that all team members have a clear and common understanding of the requirements and that the software meets business needs.
The benefits of Behaviour-Driven Development:
- Improved Clarity of Requirements: Ensures that everyone has a shared understanding of the desired behaviour of the application.
- Better Test Coverage: Encourages comprehensive test scenarios that reflect real-world usage, leading to higher test coverage and more robust applications.
- Business Value Focus: Keeps the focus on delivering features that provide real business value rather than getting bogged down in technical details.
By adopting BDD, development teams can enhance their collaboration and ensure that the software they build meets both technical and business expectations, resulting in higher-quality products and more satisfied stakeholders.
It’s clear that modern testing techniques are vital to organisations’ technology development strategies as they ensure the delivery of high-quality software at a rapid pace, which is clearly essential in today’s competitive market. Techniques such as the ones we’ve discussed in this article enable early defect detection, continuous quality assurance, and a collaborative approach to development. These methods consider quality at every stage of the development lifecycle, providing real-time feedback and allowing for quick iterations. By doing so, organisations can reduce the cost, stress and time associated with fixing bugs, improve overall product quality, and enhance user satisfaction. Embracing these advanced testing practices is crucial for maintaining agility, driving innovation, and achieving business goals in an ever-evolving technological landscape.
To learn more about key strategies that deliver value in software testing, attend the National Software Testing Conference in London on 23rd of July.
Edited by: Vaishnavi Nashte
For media enquiries, please contact vaishnavi.nashte@31media.co.uk
