Integrating a Third-Party QA Team into an Agile Development Environment

Given the popularity of agile development, it is no surprise that many businesses wonder if third-party quality assurance teams can keep up. Often, clients will express concern about how well third-party quality assurance can integrate into an agile environment. However, over the years we at Beta Breakers have learned that we can seamlessly and successfully integrate our quality assurance services into an agile development environment.

In order to do so, it’s important to keep the following tips in mind:

Do not sacrifice thoroughness for speed

One of the hallmarks of agile is the decreased build iteration time. This schedule has a tendency to put people in a “hurry-up” frame of mind. Testers need to resist the temptation to cover their quality assurance objectives in a manner faster than that which they are comfortable. The allocated time to test each build is less. However, that is because there is generally less to test (or should be). Sometimes it is up to the third-party quality assurance firm to advocate for sufficient time to provide thorough testing.

Select the tester wisely

Agile testers need to be flexible, focused and able to work and participate well with others. Working in a more conventional “non-agile” environment, there is rarely much need for face-to-face communications, especially when an assigned Project Manager is on the team and assigned to those types of tasks. In an agile environment though, it is difficult for a tester to avoid the frequent and regular conference calls or office meetings where they will be expected to participate verbally. You’ll want to choose your testers wisely and ensure you and they are comfortable with frequent communication.

Be prompt, succinct and prepared

Participants of agile environments focus on efficiency. Taking a casual or verbose approach to meetings and QA tasks can easily put you behind schedule, not to mention earn you a lot of frowns from other team members.

Perhaps not too surprisingly, some of the benefits of third party quality assurance come into play on agile projects. An agile environment has a lot of moving parts and requires more flexibility from its team members than a traditional environment. Such flexibility is nothing new to third party QA providers. The nature of our services dictates a schedule that is constantly adapting to one client’s schedule one day and another client’s schedule the next. Scaling test teams up and down is routine for us. We are set up to achieve agile milestones without missing a beat.

At the end of the day, it all boils down to a tester sitting in front of a screen, evaluating software. That is the same, whether the development methodology is traditional or agile. Either way, Beta Breakers is expertly capable of fulfilling all software quality assurance goals. Contact us today to see how we can take part in your agile development environment.