The document discusses the challenges faced in Agile methodology, particularly for QA teams, such as constantly changing requirements, lack of project information, and communication problems. Strategies to overcome these challenges include adapting to changes, focusing on high-level testing scenarios, and fostering clear communication among team members. Additionally, it highlights the need for testers to develop technical skills for effective automation and integration testing.

1. HOW TO OVERCOME AGILE
METHODOLOGY CHALLENGES?

3. Ever since agile development methodologies were presented in software
development, the role of QA in agile projects has changed significantly.
Now there is no team of QA sitting in a corner waiting for the development
team to deliver a piece of work for testing.
One of the most significant elements for QA in agile projects is having a
good understanding of the agile development procedures and processes.
Many agile companies follow the Scrum framework for delivering quality
software.

4. Agile Methodology Challenges:
The biggest benefit of agile development is delivering working software
regularly, each time enhancing a small feature which is of value to the
customer and this produces a lot of challenge not only for testers but also
developers and anyone else involved in the delivery of application. In this
blog I will tell you about how to overcome difficulties which arise during
agile processes.

5.  Constantly changing requirements/Last minute
changes:
Changing requirements in the middle of the project is common in agile
projects. This can be terrifying for the whole team because the work already
carried out might get wasted completely or changes should be made to
which is already half complete which can affect the scope of testing and
can frustrate testers.
To overcome such situation, testers should be able to respond to change
because in agile projects, change is unavoidable. When requirements
change particularly during the end of the sprint when there is not enough
time to test sufficiently, testers should be clear about what tests have been
run and which part of the application hasn’t been tested well so that the
team can make a well-versed decision (possibly based on risk) whether to
release the feature or not.

6.  Not enough information about the project:
Sometimes product owner wants to add a new feature. He will have some
ideas but won’t have all the details about the new feature. In that case,
Product owner will ask developers to create a prototype so that he can
have a clear view and idea about the feature. This will add difficulties for
testers because testers will have to test the prototype without any
significant knowledge of the feature and it gets hard for them to create test
cases.
To overcome this challenge, Testers should start testing by thinking about
high level scenarios that test the concept of the project rather than waiting
to get full details about the feature. By enlisting high level test scenarios,
even when the details change, the context should be the same.

7.  Testing without a break:
In agile process, testing is not a phase, it’s an activity. It starts even before
the development starts. In order to perform testing smoothly QA should
know about every single details of the project to have better understanding.
Giving early feedback to developers is essential and somehow challenging
for testers. As testers we have to make sure that the new feature works as
defined in its acceptance criteria, we have to also make sure that the new
code has not broken existing functionality. It means that we have not
regressed and we have to provide such information quickly.
To overcome such situations, a tester has to start making test cases so that
when the feature is available for testing he should be able to start testing
straightaway. Testers should encourage developers for better visibility by
arranging regularly to the test environment where they can run the tests
rather than waiting for the feature to be built completely. We should
automate regression tests to improve some of the testing effort and liberate
our time for exploratory testing.

8.  Technical/Automation skills:
If a tester is working in an Agile environment, he should be technical
competent to help the developers with API and Integration testing. If a
tester has only manual training then it would be difficult to keep-up with the
pace as they need to test on a continuous testing.
Performance testing is also very important for web based applications
because it measures how much load the website or application can endure.
If your company doesn’t have any specialist of performance testing then
functional testers have to come in the role.
To overcome such challenge, we should start learning how all these tools
work because if you already are familiar with programming and you get
stuck, you can get help from developers. Some of the tools which are very
useful like Selenium and JMeter etc.

9.  Communication problems:
It doesn’t matter how good the process is if there is a lack of
communication among product owner, team members, designers etc.
nothing will work in that case.
To overcome these situations make sure there is good communication in
between the team. There should be Involvement with developers and
product owners on a continuous basis.