Agile methodology

What is Agile Methodology?

AGILE methodology is a practice that promotes continuous iteration of development and testing throughout the software development lifecycle of the project. Both development and testing activities are concurrent unlike the Waterfall model

Agile Vs Waterfall Method

Agile and Waterfall model are two different methods for software development process. Though they are different in their approach, both methods are useful at times, depending on the requirement and the type of the project.

Agile Model	Waterfall Model
Agile method proposes incremental and iterative approach to software design	Development of the software flows sequentially from start point to end point.
The agile process is broken into individual models that designers work on	The design process is not broken into an individual models
The customer has early and frequent opportunities to look at the product and make decision and changes to the project	The customer can only see the product at the end of the project
Agile model is considered unstructured compared to the waterfall model	Waterfall model are more secure because they are so plan oriented

There are various methods present in agile testing, and those are listed below:

Scrum

SCRUM is an agile development method which concentrates specifically on how to manage tasks within a team-based development environment. Basically, Scrum is derived from activity that occurs during a rugby match. Scrum believes in empowering the development team and advocates working in small teams (say- 7 to 9 members). 

Scrum Master

Master is responsible for setting up the team, sprint meeting and removes obstacles to progress

Product owner

The Product Owner creates product backlog, prioritizes the backlog and is responsible for the delivery of the functionality at each iteration

Scrum Team

Team manages its own work and organizes the work to complete the sprint or cycle

Process flow of Scrum Methodologies:

Process flow of scrum testing is as follows:

Each iteration of a scrum is known as Sprint

Product backlog is a list where all details are entered to get the end-product

During each Sprint, top user stories of Product backlog are selected and turned into Sprint backlog

Team works on the defined sprint backlog

Team checks for the daily work

At the end of the sprint, team delivers product functionality

Crystal Methodologies

Crystal Methodology is based on three concepts

Chartering: Various activities involved in this phase are creating a development team, performing a preliminary feasibility analysis, developing an initial plan and fine-tuning the development methodology

Cyclic delivery: The main development phase consists of two or more delivery cycles, during which the

Team updates and refines the release plan

Implements a subset of the requirements through one or more program test integrate iterations

Integrated product is delivered to real users

Review of the project plan and adopted development methodology

Wrap Up: The activities performed in this phase are deployment into the user environment, post- deployment reviews and reflections are performed.

Agile metrics:

Metrics that can be collected for effective usage of Agile is:

Drag Factor

Effort in hours which do not contribute to sprint goal

Drag factor can be improved by reducing number of shared resources, reducing the amount of non-contributing work

New estimates can be increased by percentage of drag factor -New estimate = (Old estimate+drag factor)

Velocity

Amount of backlog(user stories) converted to shippable functionality of sprint

No of Unit Tests added

Time interval taken to complete daily build

Bugs detected in an iteration or in previous iterations

Production defect leakage