What is agile QA testing and why you need it in software testing

The survey conducted by Statista proves that Agile methodology is the backbone of modern software development, with 91% of respondents using it in their projects. While speed is everything in Agile development, without QA, it breeds chaos. In a pursuit to meet Agile principles, quality assurance had to evolve — giving rise to Agile QA testing that brings maximum value, speeds up QA processes, mitigates risks, and ensures exceptional software quality in fast-paced environments.

Intrigued? Read on — we have a lot to share about Agile testing.

The concept of Agile QA

Agile testing is not just a practice but a mindset that aligns with Agile software development principles. It emphasizes team collaboration, adaptability, and continuous testing. Unlike old-fashioned testing, which is usually carried out after development as a separate phase, Agile testing is like a soccer player – staying on the field for the whole match. In other words, it is executed throughout the software development lifecycle (SDLC), enabling early bug-catching and fixing. Integrated from the project's outset, Agile testing has an important role in every iteration, ensuring the expected work of newly added features and the software as a whole.

Agile testing focuses on teamwork, flexibility, and ongoing testing throughout the development process. Unlike traditional testing, which happens after development, Agile testing runs alongside it. This helps catch issues early and speeds up feedback. Since testing is part of every development cycle, it ensures both new features work properly and existing functionality stays stable.

Key principles of Agile testing methodology

So, what makes Agile testing truly agile? To understand this, we need to review its key principles in detail.

Involve QA early

Probably, you’ve heard it millions of times, but still – the earlier you engage QA, the better. Ideally, QA involvement begins at the initial planning stages, ensuring a proactive approach to quality. Early bug identification and fixing eliminate the snowball effect, saving you a lot of time, effort, and money. It is much easier to detect and solve an issue in project requirements than to tackle it in code just before release, isn’t it?

Moreover, the participation of QA engineers from the project's outset facilitates a more collaborative atmosphere. QA engineers help a team determine acceptance criteria, review user stories, or sometimes even reconsider architecture. As a result, software is built with quality in mind from the very beginning. To put it in a nutshell, the sooner QA becomes a part of the process, the smoother and more efficient the whole development workflow becomes.

Test each iteration

In Agile, testing should be executed not only early but also continuously to maintain decent product quality throughout the development cycle. Since Agile follows an iterative approach, where new features and improvements are added in short development cycles known as sprints, testing must be an ongoing activity rather than a final checkpoint. This ensures that each iteration delivers a stable and functional software product while preventing defect accumulation.

The testing life cycle in Agile repeats in every iteration. See it for yourself: During backlog Refinement, QA engineers define acceptance criteria and ensure the alignment of their test cases with user stories; throughout Development, they run automated tests to provide immediate feedback on code changes as well as carry out exploratory testing to uncover edge cases; before Sprint Review, they execute regression testing to ensure that new changes haven’t broken existing functionality; and in the Sprint Retrospective, QA engineers for hire share insights into testing outcomes, defect trends, and process improvements, helping the team refine their approach for the next sprint.

Create Agile test cases

In Agile testing, test cases are just as essential as in traditional testing. Yet, Agile test cases are tailored to iterative and incremental software development. As a rule, they are derived from user stories and acceptance criteria, which ensures their alignment with real business needs.

With a strong emphasis on adaptability to changing requirements, Agile test cases are more flexible, high-level, atomic, independent, and concise so that they can be easily updated to reflect new insights and evolving priorities. Also, they prioritize critical functionalities while avoiding unnecessary test bloat.

Catch bugs and fix them collaboratively

In Agile testing, bugs need to be spotted, documented, and fixed fast. How to make this happen? Everything comes down to close collaboration. While real-time collaboration is a key part of Agile testing, proper bug documentation is still essential for tracking, prioritization, and long-term quality improvement. All issues are always logged properly, but their priority can be increased. That's why top prior bugs are fixed almost immediately — no red tape or procrastination. Product owners, in turn, might step in to prioritize reported defects and direct the team's effort based on business needs. Fewer delays, superfast bug resolution, and a more reliable product are benefits a team yields as the result of such cooperation.

Also, It wouldn't be fair not to mention that tools like Jira, Bugzilla, and Azure DevOps are a must in Agile. They ease bug reporting, grouping, and prioritization as well as maintain transparency, allowing everyone on the team to check the current state of affairs.

Source: Jira Atlassian

Review your QA process

One of the fundamental principles of Agile methodology is continuous improvement, and one of the most effective ways to succeed with this is through regular retrospective meetings held at the end of each sprint. In retrospectives, all together, QA engineers, developers, and other stakeholders analyze the problems encountered during a sprint—overlooked bugs, delays in bug resolution, issues with automation, etc. — and come up with actionable solutions.

By regularly reviewing a QA process, Agile teams identify potential bottlenecks, adjust testing strategies, and ensure that applied QA practices evolve along with changes in development. They also foster knowledge sharing, encourage a culture of proactive problem-solving, and drive the efficiency of the whole development process. Want to succeed? Stay relentless in searching for improvements.

Incorporate stakeholder feedback

In Agile, stakeholder feedback is not just acknowledged but actively integrated into the development process. Why? Because it helps to develop software in compliance with real users' expectations and business objectives, spot issues before they escalate, identify areas for improvements, and make data-driven decisions. Continuous input from stakeholders helps ensure that the software meets real user expectations and business goals, allows teams to adjust priorities based on evolving needs, and supports data-driven decision-making. Through iterative feedback loops, stakeholders review deliverables, provide insights, and help refine the product to maintain alignment with business objectives.

With iterative feedback loops, stakeholders regularly review deliverables and provide valuable input. Regular feedback keeps the product aligned with what stakeholders expect. From DeviQA's experience, staying engaged with stakeholders consistently helps build transparency, improve product fit for the market, and ensure that every iteration delivers real value to users.

Implement automation

As mentioned earlier, Agile implies delivering software at lightning speed. Not to lag, QA experts need to automate repetitive QA tasks — especially time-consuming ones. Naturally, smoke and regression testing are at the top of the list. Then, by integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines, teams receive instant feedback on code changes, which leads to faster releases and better product quality.

Luckily, there are plenty of test automation solutions on the market. They enable parallel test script running as well as test self-healing, saving QA engineers a wealth of time and effort. AI-powered tools go even further, tackling such tasks as test data generation, test case writing, and test script development. Among the leading test automation tools are Playwright for web app testing and WDIO for fast, end-to-end testing of modern web apps.

Prioritize team communication

We bet you know that efficient communication is king. So, no wonder that team communication is highly prioritized in Agile testing. Open communication channels enable quick requirement clarification, issue settlement, and adaptation to changes. Due to the active involvement of QA engineers in team discussions, testing becomes an integral part of development rather than a separate phase, leading to faster issue resolution and higher product quality.

Daily stand-ups, sprint planning, sprint reviews, retrospectives, and similar ceremonies make a great contribution to establishing close team communication. Thus, on daily stand-ups, testers can raise concerns early; during sprint reviews, they showcase test results and gather stakeholder feedback; and finally, team discussions on retrospectives encourage continuous improvement. Open conversations result in a more seamless and productive workflow within Agile teams.

Foster collaboration and teamwork

When it comes to the Agile methodology, collaboration and teamwork go beyond simply working together on tasks—a strong, supportive culture should be built within a team. It's important to note that trust and transparency are the foundation of effective collaboration. When team members have confidence in one another, they work together more effectively, share ideas openly, voice problems without fear, and come up with better solutions.

Equally critical to strong teamwork is a sense of collective responsibility for the software product. When everyone is invested in the outcome, accountability for quality improves, and team members become more proactive in making meaningful contributions.

Why does Agile QA matter?

Why has Agile become the standard in the digital world? Why is there so much buzz around Agile testing? Why do you need agile testing for high-quality software? Well, these days, software development isn’t just about creating high-quality, innovative products but also about delivering them quickly and efficiently. In these market conditions, the traditional approach suggesting testers fire on all cylinders just at the final phase of the development cycle is not efficient, leading to delays, costly fixes, and last-minute surprises. Yet, Agile QA, with its concept of integrating QA throughout the development process and right from its start, has been a real breakthrough.

Keeping up with constant changes has always been a headache for teams. Market shift, customer needs evolvement, and pop-up of new technologies — businesses have to constantly adapt. Agile QA makes this a whole lot easier by catching bugs early and helping teams adjust to new requirements without slowing progress down. This results in faster, more reliable releases that meet both business objectives and user needs.

Speed is another critical factor. Software development companies are under constant pressure to release updates and new features as quickly as possible. Agile QA testing makes this possible by embracing continuous testing and automation. Rather than waiting until the end of development to test, Agile teams check things as they go. This is possible with the help of modern DevOps practices, particularly CI/CD, that turn testing into an automated, continuous process enabling almost instant bug detection and fixing. As a result, there are fewer last-minute surprises, deployments are smoother, and the time to market is faster.

Also, Agile QA facilitates delivering a great user experience. Through frequent testing and feedback loops, it helps teams develop software that is functional, intuitive, and reliable. With this user-centric approach, companies gain stronger customer loyalty and hold a real edge over rivals.

Agile QA also brings business value. Early bug detection and QA task automation noticeably cut down development expenses and optimize resources. Moreover, Agile testing ensures the alignment of developed software with business goals and allows teams to focus on what indeed matters. About all of these, the implementation of Agile QA is a smart move that provides you with a strategic advantage.

Best practices for setting a QA process in an Agile environment

Agile testing isn’t a new concept, yet the question of how to implement agile software testing successfully remains relevant. Shifting from traditional testing to a more integrated, proactive, and scalable Agile test strategy is not as trivial as it may initially seem—it requires fundamental changes in mindset, processes, and collaboration. However, QA best practices in Agile can be very helpful in making this transition smoother.

Key agile testing practices to embrace for QA:

We strongly believe that the project’s success, as well as its quality, should be the accountability of each team member. Collective responsibility and a quality-driven culture drive truly remarkable results. Therefore, encourage your developers, product owners, and QA engineers to collaborate closely from day one to embed quality into every sprint. For instance, Spotify integrates QA engineers as quality coaches rather than gatekeepers, and their developers take on more testing activities.

Cross-functional training within Agile teams is a usual practice that helps developers and testers gain a basic understanding of each other’s roles and responsibilities. Incorporate such training to promote mutual understanding and cooperation within your Agile teams.

With an exclusively manual approach to testing, you’ll not get far, especially in the Agile environment, where iterations are rapid and delivery is continuous. Solution? Automate time-consuming tests. This ensures consistency, speed, and accuracy, reducing the risk of human error and empowering QA engineers to focus on more complex or creative tasks. In many cases, the QA process in Agile is efficient, provided automation is implemented.

Go far beyond simple test automation by introducing continuous testing in CI/CD pipelines. With automated tests at every stage of your pipeline — integration, regression, acceptance, and performance—you’ll achieve maximum efficiency and speed. For example, Amazon deploys code every 11.7 seconds thanks to embedding automated testing into its CI/CD pipelines, which ensures rapid but stable software delivery.

Project requirements evolve, and so should an Agile QA strategy. In these terms, we recommend you avoid rigid testing processes that are unable to scale with enterprise needs. Also, implement a risk-based approach to testing that suggests validating high-priority features more extensively compared to lower-risk areas. Take advantage of parallel test execution on cloud-based platforms — BrowserStack and LambdaTest can help you scale cross-browser and mobile testing efficiently.

Track key testing metrics and use gained insights to refine your strategies and continuously improve QA processes. Pay particular attention to the following:

Dashboards in Jira or Power BI help simplify metrics analysis and foster data-driven decision-making by visualizing testing trends. Many large enterprises opt for Microsoft Azure, which uses real-time telemetry to track release health and ensure rapid response to issues.

Set up a QA testing process in Agile in correspondence with these best practices, and you'll receive exceptional outcomes, taking your project to the next level.

Conclusion

An effective Agile QA process is not about testing harder but smarter. Of course, introducing Agile methodology in testing requires certain groundwork, but it eventually results in flexibility, efficiency, speed, top quality, and optimized resource allocation. With the Agile model of testing in place, businesses are armed to drive innovation, pioneer markets, and respond to new demands of users.

If you'd like to establish an efficient Agile testing process, expert advice can make a huge difference. Apply for Agile software testing services from DeviQA today and enjoy unmatched acceleration, sky-high quality, and reliability in your software delivery.