Software you develop in an agile environment should be robust and stable. You can measure that through stress testing. Stress testing is a form of software testing that evaluates a software application’s stability and dependability. Stress testing is used to evaluate software’s resilience and error handling skills under extremely high load circumstances, as well as to ensure that software does not crash in critical scenarios. It also goes beyond standard operational settings to see how software performs in severe situations.

The purpose of stress testing is to examine how the system reacts following a failure. A system should provide an acceptable error message when under high conditions for stress testing to be effective. Massive data sets may be utilized to conduct Stress Testing, which may become lost throughout the process. While stress testing, testers should not lose this security-related information.

Your software would be subjected to lot of stress during certain instances. For example, the level of stress will increase during festive seasons. Stress testing can help you to ensure that the system will not crash during such situations.

Multiple approaches are available for you to do stress testing. They include application stress testing, transactional stress testing, systematic stress testing, and exploratory stress testing.

Before stress testing, you should plan it carefully. You should analyze the system and gather system data. Then you should create the automation scripts. Along with that, you can proceed with executing the scripts. You can then do a result analysis. This will help you to discover bottlenecks that exist. You can then tweak and optimize the system, so that you can end up with receiving benchmark results. Some popular tools that you can use for stress testing include Jmeter, LoadRunner, Neo Load, and Stress Tester.

— Slimane Zouggari

Agile software development consists of both functional testing as well as non-functional testing. When it comes to non-functional testing, load testing is one of the most prominent tests that you need to do. Load testing is a type of non-functional software testing in which a software application’s performance is evaluated under a specified load. It controls how the software program acts when several people access it at the same time. Load testing is used to identify performance bottlenecks and assure the stability and smooth operation of software applications prior to deployment.

You do load testing to determine maximum operating capacity of a software and to determine whether existing infrastructure is sufficient enough to launch the application. You will also determine the overall sustainability of the application with related to peak user load via load testing. On top of everything, load testing can help you to understand the total number of concurrent users, which the application can support at a time.

If your software gets more users than it is supposed to, it will crash. Hence, you should ensure that desired number of users can access the system without encountering any problems. That’s where you should do load testing. You will ensure performance and reliability of the system with load testing.

You can do load testing through multiple approaches. They include manual load testing, using open source load testing tools, or using enterprise level load testing tools. Before you do load testing, you should create a test environment. Then you need to create load test scenarios. After that, you can prepare data for each and every transaction, and execute the test cases. Upon analyzing the results, you can fine-tune the system to accept desired load, and retest.

— Slimane Zouggari

At the time of developing software in an agile environment, you should pay special attention to performance testing. Performance testing is a software testing method for evaluating a software application’s speed, reaction time, stability, dependability, scalability, and resource use under a certain workload. The basic goal of performance testing is to find and remove performance bottlenecks in software applications. It is also known as “Perf Testing” and is a subset of performance engineering.

During performance testing, you will be paying attention to three important features of software. They include stability, scalability, and speed. Performance testing is carried out to offer information to stakeholders about their application’s performance, stability, and scalability. Performance Testing, moreover, reveals what has to be addressed before a product is released to the market. Without performance testing, software is more likely to have issues like slowness when several people are using it at the same time, inconsistencies across various operating systems, and poor usability.

You can do multiple types of performance testing on a software. They include load testing, stress testing, volume testing, spike testing, endurance testing, and scalability testing. These tests can help you to overcome common performance related problems, including poor scalability, poor response time, long load time, and bottlenecking.

To begin performance testing, you should prepare the testing environment and discover performance acceptance criteria. Then you can plan the performance test and configure the test environment accordingly. The next step would be to implement performance testing design and run the rest. You can analyze the results, tune, and continue to retest. You should continue this until you end up with getting desired results.

— Slimane Zouggari

After you develop a software in an agile environment, you should test and confirm whether it is stable or not. This is where smoke testing can help. Smoke Testing is a software testing technique that verifies whether a software package has been delivered and is stable. Smoke testing allows the QA team to continue with the rest of the software testing. It is made up of a small number of tests that are run on each build to verify program functionality. “Build Verification Testing” or “Confidence Testing” are other terms for smoke testing.

To put it another way, we’re checking to see whether the essential features are working and if there are any show-stoppers in the build we’re testing.

It’s a quick and dirty regression test of main features. It’s a straightforward test that verifies that the product is ready for testing. This allows you to see if the build is faulty, preventing you from wasting time and money on further testing.

The smoke tests indicate that the structure is ready for further formal testing. The primary goal of smoke testing is to discover serious problems early on. Smoke tests are used to show that a system is stable and meets the criteria.

When new software functions are built and integrated with an existing build in the QA/staging environment, smoke testing is performed. It verifies whether or not all key functions are operational.

The development team deploys the build in QA in this testing technique. Testers execute test cases on the build after taking selections of test cases. The application’s essential features are tested by the QA team. The purpose of this set of test cases is to expose construction errors. If these tests pass, the QA team will move on to Functional Testing. QA engineers/QA lead do Smoke Testing after delivering the build to the QA environment. Whenever a new build is released, the QA team determines the application’s primary functionality in order to do smoke testing. The QA team looks for show-stoppers in the application being tested.

— Slimane Zouggari

Acceptance testing, which is also known as User Acceptance Testing, is where the end user would verify the functionality of a system before accepting it. As you do software development in an agile environment, you will continuously offer new developments to the system. At every release, the user will do acceptance testing and confirm that you have developed the system as per the initial requirements of the client.

The primary goal of UAT is to verify the end-to-end business process. It is not concerned with aesthetic flaws, misspellings, or system testing. User Acceptance Testing is performed in a separate testing environment with data that is similar to that used in production. Two or more end-users will be participating in this type of black box testing.

User Acceptance Testing is done by the client and end users. However, there are situations where the development team does a demonstration of the developed functionality and show it to the client.

After software has undergone Unit, Integration, and System testing, the need for User Acceptance Testing arises because developers may have built software based on requirements documents based on their own understanding, and further required changes during development may not have been effectively communicated to them, so user acceptance testing is used to determine whether the final product is accepted by the client/end-user.

There are multiple steps in a user acceptance test. They start from analyzing business requirements and creating test plan. Then you will discover the test scenarios and create testcases. Along with that, you will also prepare test data. The next step is to run all test cases and record results. As you run the test cases, you confirm business objectives as well. Clients and end users do this and verify that software is developed as per the initial requirement.

— Slimane Zouggari

System testing is a type of testing that verifies a software product’s completeness and integration. A system test is used to assess the end-to-end system requirements. Typically, software is just one part of a bigger computer system. The program is eventually interfaced with various software/hardware systems. System testing is a collection of tests whose primary goal is to put a computer-based system through its paces.

For example, let’s assume that you are developing a booking system in an agile software development environment. The booking system will have the inventory management module, reservation module, admin module, and many other modules. All these modules combine together to create the final system. Once you develop the final system, you test it as a whole to determine whether intended functionality is working or not. That’s where system testing can help you.

There are two main approaches to do system testing. They include white box testing and black box testing.

You should understand what you are trying to achieve in system testing, before getting your hands on it. During system testing, you proceed with testing fully integrated programs, including external peripherals, to see how components interact with one another and with the entire system. This scenario is also known as End to End testing. Then you need to check for intended results by thoroughly evaluating each input in the program. The application’s user experience is being tested as a part of system testing as well.

Multiple types of system testing are available for you to follow. They include usability testing, regression testing, load testing, functional testing, migration testing, software testing, and hardware testing. It is important to have a proper plan and then proceed with testing the system. This will help you to verify the functionality of the system at the end of the day.

— Slimane Zouggari

As you develop software in an agile environment, you will come across the need to integrate multiple systems to achieve desired functionality. Upon integrating different systems, it is important to test the functionality of the entire system as well. This is where integration testing comes into play. You will be testing all the integrated systems as a group.

For example, assume that you are going to integrate a Point of Sale system with a CRM to store customer information. You can do the integration via an API. After you create the link, you should do integration testing and see whether the integration is successful or not. This will help you to ensure the overall functionality of your system.

There are multiple approaches to do integration testing. If you have a small system, you may try big bang testing approach. This is where you integrate all modules and proceed with testing the entire unit. If the system is large, you can try incremental testing. This is where you integrate two or more modules at a time and proceed with integration. Likewise, you may also try stubs and drivers testing approach. This is where you use dummy programs for integration and proceed with testing. Another approach for testing is bottom-up testing. This is where you will test the integration of lower modules at the beginning, and then continue to test higher level modules. The opposite of it would be top-down testing, where you test higher level modules first.

No matter how you do integration testing, it is important to determine the best test strategy. Based on that, you can create your test cases. If you have a good understanding about the architecture of the system, you can get a helping hand to proceed with integration testing. You should never ignore the importance of test data, as you do integration testing.

— Slimane Zouggari

As you develop software in an agile environment, you will have to perform numerous types of testing. Vulnerability testing holds a prominent place out of them. Vulnerability testing is where you understand and classify the security vulnerabilities that exist within IT infrastructure. There are multiple tools, which you can use for vulnerability testing.

Multiple stages are there to follow as you do vulnerability testing. The very first step is to define goals of vulnerability testing. Then you can gather all information that you need for testing. After that, you can go through the vulnerability testing process. This is where you will be using specifically designed vulnerability scanners to detect vulnerabilities of the system. In case if there are complex flaws, you might have to do penetration testing along with vulnerability testing.

All the outcomes of vulnerability testing are documented and reported accordingly. You will need to have a deep analysis of the security vulnerabilities, so that you can detect causes as well as the potential impact caused by them. The next step would be to rank vulnerabilities based on severity and proceed with fixing them. In case if an issue cannot be resolved immediately, you should at least attempt to go for a virtual patch and fix it.

You should never ignore the importance of vulnerability testing. It will ensure the overall security of your IT infrastructure. Along with vulnerability testing, you can overcome customer loss, financial damage, and experience numerous other similar benefits. You can also refrain from encountering attacks as a result of vulnerability testing. While keeping this in mind, you should plan both automated and manual vulnerability tests accordingly.

— Slimane Zouggari

A penetration test, often known as a pen test, is an attempt to assess the security of an IT infrastructure by exploiting weaknesses in a safe manner. These defects might be found in operating systems, services, and applications, as well as incorrect settings and dangerous end-user behavior. These tests may also be used to verify the effectiveness of defensive measures and end-user compliance with security rules. When it comes to agile software development, you should pay more attention to PenTests as well. Then you can ensure that software applications you develop are secure against hacking attempts.

Penetration testing is used to systematically compromise servers, endpoints, online applications, wireless networks, network devices, mobile devices, and other possible sources of exposure using human or automated methods. Once a vulnerability has been successfully exploited on one system, testers may attempt to use the compromised system to launch subsequent exploits on other internal resources, specifically by using privilege escalation to gain incrementally higher levels of security clearance and deeper access to electronic assets and information.

Information about any security vulnerabilities successfully exploited through penetration testing is generally gathered and provided to IT and network system administrators to assist them in reaching strategic conclusions and prioritizing repair activities. The primary goal of penetration testing is to assess the likelihood of a system or end-user breach, as well as any potential repercussions for the resources or activities involved.

When it comes to penetration testing, you will be working as an ethical hacker. This is where you will evaluate the overall security of your IT infrastructure and exploit vulnerabilities. You will not just be focusing on few areas, but you will be focusing on the entire IT infrastructure, including mobile devices, web applications, networks, test servers, and other potential entry points to detect weaknesses. At the end of penetration testing, you can keep the peace of mind.

— Slimane Zouggari

White box testing is where you test a software, while taking its design, code, and internal structure into consideration. In other words, you will be verifying the input, flow of data, and the output to verify that the system is working correctly. The main objective of white box testing is to improve usability, security, and design of software. As a tester, you will be aware of the code.

There are numerous reasons available for you to go ahead with white box testing. For example, if you want to discover internal security holes, poorly structured paths, or to understand the behavior of specific inputs that you pass through code, you should do white box testing.

White box testing is quite complicated when compared to black box testing. You should initially understand the source code. This is the main reason on why not every tester can proceed with white box testing. You should have the understanding of a programmer to proceed with testing. Then you should create the test cases and execute them.

There are multiple techniques to follow as you do white box testing. For example, you should do statement coverage, where you test each and every statement within code. Then you get into branch coverage, where you check all possible paths in the code.

There are few types of testing that you perform in white box testing as well. Unit testing holds a prominent place out of them. This is where you test each block of code or unit in order to verify its intended functionality. In agile software development environments, you also test for memory leaks. To improve security of the application, you do penetration testing. On top of that, you even do white box mutation testing, where you try to discover whether best coding practices have been used.

— Slimane Zouggari