Banks and agile - how does the role of testing change?

As more and more financial services organisations embrace agile, the role of testing and the testing team is definitely changing. There are the obvious facts, such as many testing tasks are being relinquished to the Scrum Master and there isn’t the same requirement for test documentation that there is in waterfall methodology, due to the iterative nature of agile.

But banks and insurers need to be aware that testing still has an integral role to play in helping support the overall test processes for the business. In agile, testing needs to work much more closely with the business than they typically would in waterfall – the team focuses much more on collaborative working. Testing is able to define the organisational test policy and test strategy for agile and define the agile tools strategy. It can help support the overall transition from waterfall to agile.

And testing practices are actively helping agile teams to be more successful, allowing them to keep a focus on speed and performance whilst not jeopardising the software quality. For example, developing an automation framework and regression test pack is key, as is helping organisations to develop their core testing practices. And it is vital to engage testers early on in the process. And Test Driven Development (TDD) is an integral part of helping organisations transition to agile, although, not all tests should be automated.

The question of what type of functional and non-functional testing should be executed entirely depends on the project. Non-functional tests will always depend on the expected performance of the system and includes requirements such as scalability, reliability, security etc. These should be run as early in the project as possible, so it can flag up any problems at the earliest opportunity. Functional should include manual and automated testing, as manual testing will identify specific defects.

It is also important for the team to have clarity on what is considered “done” as this will ensure that each sprint phase and subsequent release is completed successfully.

As financial services organisations accelerate agile take up, it is important they consider the challenges as well as the upsides. Agile is not suitable for all projects – organisations need to carefully consider each implementation to check whether they are "agile appropriate." Testing still has an integral part to play in an agile environment – teams need a clear idea of their objectives, their strategy and then address testing accordingly.