Agile Testing Methodology: Life Cycle, Techniques, & Strategy

Agile development and testing work closely together to optimize the development process, helping teams deliver software more efficiently and on time. In agile development, projects are broken down into sprints. Similarly, agile testing subdivides larger feature developments into smaller, manageable tasks that align with these sprints.

Types of agile testing

Agile testing involves various types of tests to ensure comprehensive coverage and flexibility throughout the development process. Here’s a breakdown of key testing types and how they fit into agile workflows:

1. Unit testing

• Purpose: Verify that individual pieces of code work correctly.
• How to implement: Write unit tests as you develop new features. Use these tests to catch and fix issues early, before they affect other parts of the application.

2. Integration testing

• Purpose: Ensure that different components of the software work together smoothly.
• How to implement: Run integration tests after merging new code to check for issues that arise from interactions between different parts of the system.

3. Functional testing

• Purpose: Confirm that the software meets user requirements and behaves as expected.
• How to implement: Test new features during each sprint to ensure they fulfill business requirements. Use both automated and manual testing methods to cover all functional aspects.

4. Regression testing

• Purpose: Verify that new changes haven’t broken existing functionality.
• How to implement: Use automated regression tests to quickly check that previously working features still function correctly after updates or bug fixes.

5. Acceptance testing

• Purpose: Validate that the software meets end-user expectations and requirements.
• How to implement: Conduct acceptance tests with input from stakeholders or end-users at the end of each sprint or release cycle to ensure the product is ready for delivery.

6. Exploratory testing

• Purpose: Discover unexpected issues through real-time testing and exploration.
• How to implement: Perform exploratory testing by designing and executing tests on the fly, based on your knowledge of the product, to uncover issues that formal test cases might miss.

7. Performance testing

• Purpose: Evaluate how the application performs under various conditions.
• How to implement: Run performance tests to assess speed, responsiveness, and stability under different workloads. Use these tests to identify and address performance bottlenecks.

8. Smoke testing

• Purpose: Quickly check if the basic functionalities of the software are working after a new build or update.
• How to implement: Conduct smoke tests at the start of each testing cycle to ensure the system is stable enough for more detailed testing.

The agile testing life cycle

In agile testing, the lifecycle is an ongoing cycle that repeats with each sprint. Think of it as a continuous loop where each stage is revisited and refined in every sprint.

Impact assessment

Start by diving into user stories and gathering insights from stakeholders. This helps ensure everyone is on the same page about what needs to be tested. Once you’ve got a clear understanding, break down user stories into manageable tasks that can be tackled individually.

Test planning

In the test planning stage, collaborate with stakeholders to map out test schedules, plans, and processes. Your test plan should detail your approach, objectives, and scope. Keep it flexible to adapt to any changes in requirements. Also, plan for test automation, specifying how it will be applied throughout the project.

Within this stage, focus on:

1. Test design

Create detailed test cases and scripts based on your requirements and data. Work closely with developers to understand the application’s functionality and expectations.

2. Test development

Develop and execute both manual and automated tests. Agile testing methods like Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) can be utilized before the code is fully developed. Meanwhile, exploratory and session-based testing will follow as the code evolves throughout the sprint.

Daily scrum

Hold a brief daily meeting with your team to review progress, discuss upcoming tasks, and address any issues or confusion. This keeps everyone aligned and on track.

Release readiness

Evaluate whether the software is ready for release. Conduct thorough tests, review results, and fix any bugs. If the software isn’t quite ready, it might need to go back through earlier phases of development and testing.

Deployment and monitoring

Once the software meets all criteria, it’s ready for release. Depending on your setup, deployment might be automated or require final human checks. After deployment, keep an eye on the software to ensure it performs as expected in the production environment.

Testable acceptance criteria: What defines “ready” or “done” in agile testing?

How can you determine if a feature has passed its test and is ready to move forward? And how can you be sure that the software is ready to be released to users?

The answer lies in your acceptance criteria.

Acceptance criteria are the key conditions that determine whether a software feature is ready to advance through the development stages. They play a crucial role in the final stages of the software development life cycle (SDLC), particularly when deciding if an application is ready for public release.

These criteria specify the functionalities the software must demonstrate to be accepted by customers or third-party systems. They are unique to each project, typically derived from user stories, and describe the desired behavior from the end-user’s perspective.

For example, imagine you’re a QA Lead testing a feature for an online bookstore that allows users to search for products by ‘Categories’. The developers have implemented a search bar where users can select a ‘Category’ and enter keywords. However, this doesn’t match the requirements document, which specified that users should be able to view all categories before performing a search.

Even though the search function works, it doesn’t meet the acceptance criteria because users can’t see all categories in one view before searching. The acceptance criteria in this case are that “users should be able to access and view all ‘Categories’ in one interface before performing a search.”

Since this expectation isn’t met, the feature doesn’t fulfill the acceptance criteria, meaning it isn’t ready for release.

By clearly defining and understanding these criteria, you can ensure that each feature meets the required standards before moving on to the next stage or releasing it to users.

Continuous delivery and continuous deployment in agile testing

In agile testing, Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) are vital practices that streamline and automate the development and release process.

Continuous delivery

Continuous delivery involves thoroughly testing code changes before they’re considered ready for release. Although the testing process is automated, the final release still requires human approval. This means that someone with the appropriate access reviews and approves the changes before they are pushed to production.

Continuous deployment

Continuous deployment on the other hand, takes automation a step further. In this approach, the code changes that pass all tests in the CI/CD pipeline are automatically released to production without any manual intervention. This ensures that new features, improvements, or fixes are delivered to users quickly and efficiently.

Key differences:

• Continuous Delivery: Code is tested and prepared for release but requires human approval to go live.
• Continuous Deployment: Code is automatically released to production as soon as it passes all automated tests.

Why it matters:

• Speed: Both practices enable faster delivery of updates and fixes.
• Consistency: Automation reduces the likelihood of human error and ensures consistent quality.
• Feedback: Rapid deployment helps teams receive user feedback more quickly, allowing for faster iteration and improvement.

By integrating CI/CD with agile testing, teams can ensure that software is always in a deployable state and can quickly adapt to changes or new requirements.

How to create an agile testing strategy

Creating an effective agile testing strategy involves leveraging frameworks like the Agile Testing Quadrants to guide your testing efforts. These quadrants help you determine which types of testing are most relevant based on your project’s context and stage. While there’s flexibility in how you apply the quadrants, they provide a structured approach to planning your testing activities.

Understanding the Agile Testing Quadrants

Quadrant 1: Technology-Facing Tests (Supporting the Team)

• Purpose: Verify the functionality of individual code components and ensure they integrate correctly with the existing codebase.
• Examples: Unit tests, component tests.
• Scenario: Imagine your team is developing a feature for real-time account balance updates in a mobile banking app. Here, you’d write unit tests to check if balance calculations—such as deposits and withdrawals—are accurate. These tests are automated and run with each code update to maintain core functionality.

Quadrant 2: Business-Facing Tests (Supporting the Team)

• Purpose: Evaluate the software against business requirements and customer expectations.
• Examples: Functional tests, story tests.
• Scenario: Suppose your new feature allows users to categorize their transactions. You’d create functional tests to ensure these categories are applied correctly and reflect the intended business logic.

Quadrant 3: Business-Facing Tests (Supporting the Customer)

• Purpose: Ensure the software meets user needs and expectations, often involving manual testing and user feedback.
• Examples: User Acceptance Testing (UAT), exploratory testing.
• Scenario: Before launching the new balance update feature, conduct UAT with a group of bank customers. They use a test version of the app to verify the balance updates in real-time and provide feedback. This helps ensure the feature meets user needs and works as intended in real-world scenarios.

Quadrant 4: Technology-Facing Tests (Supporting the Customer)

• Purpose: Perform non-functional tests to assess aspects like security, performance, and scalability.
• Examples: Performance testing, security testing.
• Scenario: Run performance tests to check how the new feature handles high user loads and security tests to ensure data privacy is maintained.

Image: The Agile Testing Quadrants were developed by Janet Gregory and Lisa Crispin, based on Brian Marick’s ‘Marick Test Matrix’

Using the quadrants

1. Identify the focus: Determine whether your testing work is more business-facing or technology-facing.
2. Determine the goal: Decide if the testing is meant to guide development (Quadrants 1 and 2) or evaluate the product’s quality (Quadrants 3 and 4).
3. Apply the quadrants: Use the quadrant that aligns with your current development stage to guide your testing activities for that sprint.

Example in Action: Mobile Banking App

• Quadrant 1: The team writes unit tests to ensure real-time balance updates work correctly.
• Quadrant 3: Conducts user acceptance testing to validate that users can see accurate balance updates and provide feedback for any necessary adjustments.

By integrating Quadrant 1’s unit tests with Quadrant 3’s user acceptance testing, you ensure both a solid technical foundation and alignment with user needs, leading to a higher-quality product.

The components of an agile testing strategy

Creating a solid agile testing strategy means focusing on flexibility and adaptability, as opposed to the rigid documentation of traditional approaches. Agile testing thrives on delivering results and adapting to change. While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, here are key elements to consider for an effective agile test strategy:

Documentation in agile testing

In agile, documentation should strike a balance—enough to be useful without being overwhelming. An agile test plan is dynamic, evolving with each sprint and new feature. Here’s a streamlined example of a one-page test plan template:

Image: A test management platform like TestRail can make it faster and easier to record, store, and reuse test documentation.

Planning sprints

Effective sprint planning is crucial for maintaining rhythm and progress in agile development. Here’s how to approach it:

• Test objectives: Define goals based on user stories.
• Scope and timeline: Outline what will be tested and when.
• Test types and techniques: Determine the methods, data, and environments to use.

Test automation in agile testing

Automation is a game-changer in agile, enabling teams to keep pace with fast development cycles. Key benefits include:

• Faster regression testing
• Quicker feedback on code changes
• Support for continuous integration and delivery
• Reduced manual testing load
• More efficient test execution
• More time for complex scenarios

Which tests should you automate first?

Effective and scalable agile testing relies on automation, and it’s important to approach automation strategically. The first and most important task is deciding which tests to automate. 

Here are some questions to help you prioritize what you should automate next:

• Is the test going to be repeated?
• Is it a high-priority test or a high-priority feature?
• Do you need to run the test with multiple datasets or paths?
• Is it a regression or a smoke test?
• Can you automate this with your existing tech stack?
• Is the area of your app that this is testing prone to change?
• Is it a random negative test?
• Can these tests be executed in parallel or only in sequential order?
• How expensive/complicated is the architecture required for this test?

Unsure what tests or test suites to automate? Download our interactive automation scoring model to help you prioritize what to automate next and guide your test automation strategy.

When should you automate tests during sprints?

Decide whether to:

• Automate concurrently: Develop and automate tests in the same sprint for immediate feedback.
• Automate later: Focus on automation in the following sprint, after the feature development is complete.

Each approach has benefits and challenges. Concurrent automation offers quicker feedback, while sequential automation may reduce distractions but could delay test availability. Choose based on your team’s dynamics, project needs, and complexity.

Managing risks

In agile, balancing speed and risk is essential. Focus on high-risk tests that require more attention. Prioritize tests based on their impact and the importance of features within your sprints.

For additional insights, check out our video on What Agile Testing is NOT to clear up some common misconceptions about agile testing and get a practical understanding of how to apply agile testing within your team’s existing workflows.

How to manage agile testing with a test case management tool

To streamline your agile development and testing pipeline, selecting the right test management tool is crucial. A good tool supports collaboration across cross-functional teams—testers, developers, and other stakeholders can work together on test case design, execution, and reporting.

Image: Orchestrate your agile quality assurance process easily in one centralized platform. With TestRail, you can trace, manage, and update tests from a single dashboard.

Here’s what to look for in an effective test management tool:

• Collaboration features: Ensure it facilitates seamless teamwork among testers, developers, and stakeholders.
• Integration capabilities: It should work well with test automation frameworks and agile project management tools like Jira.
• Centralized repository: The tool should act as a single source for all test-related information.
• Traceability: It should make tracking test progress and results straightforward.

TestRail is specifically built for agile teams, making it an ideal choice for managing your agile testing pipeline. Here’s how TestRail can enhance your testing process:

• Intuitive UI: A fast, user-friendly interface helps testers become productive quickly.
• Dashboards and Notifications: Stay updated with project dashboards and email notifications that keep you informed throughout the test cycle.
• Centralized management: Manage all key agile testing artifacts from a single dashboard, ensuring everything is organized and accessible.
• Version-safe archiving: Keep detailed histories of your testing activities and results with version-safe archiving, allowing you to review past test results anytime.
• Cross-project reporting: Compare test activity across various projects, milestones, test plans, and runs with robust reporting features.
• Integration: Connect seamlessly with popular tools like Jira, Jenkins, Selenium, and more for a cohesive testing experience.

To get started with agile testing and make the most of TestRail’s features, check out our free TestRail Academy course on Agile to streamline your agile testing adoption today!

Agile testing FAQs

What are the principles of agile testing?

Agile testing is grounded in several key principles that differentiate it from traditional approaches. These principles help teams deliver high-quality software while staying adaptable and efficient.

Start testing early

In traditional development cycles like waterfall, testing happens late in the process, often making bugs harder to detect and fix. Agile testing, on the other hand, starts from the very beginning. Testing teams should be involved in the brainstorming and planning phases, ensuring that testing is integrated throughout the entire Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Every new or revised piece of code should be tested before it’s merged, minimizing the chance of critical bugs slipping through.

Deliver frequently

Agile works in short cycles, or sprints, which usually last a few weeks. At the end of each sprint, the testing team delivers reports summarizing their findings. This frequent delivery ensures that testing happens continuously, preventing a backlog of bugs and issues from building up.

Embrace automation

Automation is essential in agile testing. Given the frequent releases and tight deadlines, relying solely on manual testing is inefficient. Incorporating a robust test automation strategy—such as Mike Cohn’s test automation pyramid—helps teams run tests quickly and frequently while maintaining high quality. Automation accelerates the process without compromising thoroughness, allowing manual testers to focus on more complex scenarios.

Consistent collaboration

Agile thrives on collaboration. Daily stand-ups, weekly stakeholder meetings, and constant communication tools keep teams aligned. Developers, testers, and business analysts all share responsibility for software quality. With a whole-team approach, collaboration tools, and a supportive work culture, everyone plays a part in delivering quality.

Involve customers

Customers should be an integral part of the testing process. Their real-world insights can reveal usability issues that teams might overlook. Engaging customers early and throughout the testing phase—by inviting them to review meetings, sprint demos, and feedback sessions—ensures the product meets their needs. Regular feedback after each sprint helps refine the product iteratively.

Prioritize quality and adaptability

In agile testing, every team member must prioritize quality at each stage. This requires a flexible mindset and the ability to adapt to changes in customer requirements or project goals quickly. Agile teams must be prepared to adjust their testing approach as needed, ensuring they can respond to shifting priorities without sacrificing quality.

Why agile testing matters

Agile testing isn’t just a shift in when testing happens—it’s a transformation in how teams approach quality, collaboration, and responsiveness. By embracing the agile mindset, teams can quickly adapt to changing requirements, identify issues early, and maintain a continuous focus on delivering value to the customer. Whether you’re releasing software every week or tackling complex projects, following agile testing principles helps ensure you’re delivering high-quality, reliable software at every stage.

Agile testing Vs. Continuous testing

Continuous testing is a very specific process within the agile SDLC that essentially sets up automated tests within a CI/CD pipeline. Every time new code is pushed by a dev, it must go through a series of automated tests to be accepted into the software’s larger codebase.

Continuous testing has been a wildly successful technique, with noted success in reducing business risk and technical anomalies. 

Continuous testing requires collaboration between individuals, teams, systems, and services. These sets of tests stand as guardrails against bugs passing into the application, especially as it grows in size and features. 

Shift-left testing Vs. Shift-right testing

First, think of the software development lifecycle as a straight line. The steps in the SDLC start from the left and move towards the right. 

Shift Left Testing

Shift Left Testing involves moving testing to the “left” of the SDLC line. In other words, testing starts earlier in the pipeline. 

Teams plan, build, and test software as early as possible. Testers are involved in brainstorming conversations to understand the requirements. Then, they start designing tests simultaneously with developers coding said features. Tests are created even before or along with actual coding. 

The big advantage here is that teams can predict changes that show up during development. 

Consequently, they can course correct tests immediately, without waiting for all the code to be written first. 

Shift left testing prioritizes verifying APIs, container configurations, and interactions between microservices. It has become increasingly popular because of its high efficacy levels. 

Shift right testing

Shift right testing, on the other hand, involves testing software for quality & performance in real-world conditions.

Generally, “real-world conditions” refer to testing in production environments of some kind. The ideal practice is to test the software on real browsers and devices. If the software works well on an actual smartphone, for example, it’ll probably do well after release. 

When tests shift to the “right” of the SDLC, the priority is to test if the software can deal with real user traffic without messing with quality. Can the app serve 1000 users as well as it does for 100 users?

Shift right testing prioritizes performance, reliability, and resilience. It focuses on finding bugs, runtime issues, and anomalies that would usually not show up during development. 

The test pyramid model

The test pyramid simplifies the scheme for agile testing by creating a visual metaphor for the different layers of testing. The test pyramid also helps QAs decide how much testing needs to be accomplished on each level. 

The test pyramid is generally comprised of three layers:

• Unit Tests — at the bottom
• Service Tests — in the middle
• User Interface (UI) Tests — at the top

While the traditional three-layer test pyramid might seem overly simplistic for modern SDLCs, the foundational concept of layering tests remains effective. Remember these actionable tips while designing tests using the pyramid:

• Create test scripts with different levels of granularity
• Tests should become fewer in number, with more coverage for each test as you move to “higher levels” in the SDLC
• Write small and fast unit tests
• Keep high-level tests for end-to-end testing of the application
• Adapt the pyramid to your specific project requirements (for example, replace the Service Testing layer with other tests if that fits your project requirements best.)