Navigating Through Testing Challenges in Scrum and SAFe

Quality assurance plays a crucial role in the delivery of high-quality software products, but working with agile frameworks like Scrum and SAFe can bring unique challenges for QA professionals. In this blog post, we explore some of the most common challenges software testers face when working with agile frameworks and look at how testers navigate these challenges effectively and adapt their practices to ensure project success.

But before we dive into the challenges, let's take a quick look at what each framework represents.

Scrum 

Scrum is a project management framework that allows teams to solve complex problems while creating and delivering high-value products. It is used to break down product development processes into small, manageable tasks that are distributed to different cross-functional teams to complete within a given timeframe. Stakeholders frequently review the output of the small iterations, receive feedback, make changes, and incorporate features according to customer requests. This continuous feedback loop ensures that changes and updates are integrated into the product as quickly as possible. Scrum's flexibility makes it ideal for handling evolving requirements, ensuring teams can adapt and respond effectively.

SAFe

The SAFe framework, on the other hand, is designed for scaling Agile in large enterprises or big teams, working on the same project. Essentially, SAFe implements Scrum at enterprise level, impacting multiple teams rather than just one. While it offers a structured and professional approach, it can be somewhat rigid and less flexible. It addresses the needs of the entire organization, incorporating all the elements, and can be used for all work processes across the organization. Key principles of SAFe include transparency, alignment, built-in quality, and program execution.

Testing challenges in Scrum and SAFe 

1. Tight deadlines 

Testers often face the challenge of working under tight deadlines. With shorter sprint cycles, there is limited time available for thorough testing, making it essential for testers to prioritize and focus on the most critical aspects of the application. To overcome this challenge, testers can adopt risk-based testing techniques, concentrating on the most impactful features and using automated tests for repetitive tasks to save time.

2. Learning development processes and programming languages 

Development teams often use different tools and languages, which can be a challenge for testers who are not familiar with these technologies. To effectively carry out their testing activities, testers need to invest time in learning these tools and languages and be able to quickly adapt and familiarize themselves with the development process. This can be a challenge, as it requires QA engineers to not only understand the technical aspects of the project but also implement effective testing strategies. To enhance your technical knowledge, we suggest looking into courses available at TDL School.

3. Excellent coordination between teams 

Testing requires seamless collaboration between various teams, including development, testing, product, and business teams. Effective communication and goal alignment is crucial, but can be challenging when teams work at different paces and have different priorities. Ensuring everyone stays in sync requires strong coordination and constant communication. Testers can facilitate coordination by using collaboration tools and participating in regular cross-team meetings to ensure everyone is aligned on objectives and progress.

4. Unstable test environment 

Frequent changes and updates in development can lead to an unstable testing environment. Testers must be able to quickly adjust their test cases and strategies to address any environment instability that may arise during the testing process. Implementing continuous integration and deployment practices can help create a more stable environment, allowing testers to adapt their strategies proactively rather than reactively. Document all changes made to the testing environment to maintain clarity and consistency.

 5. Testing documents created by others 

Testers often rely on documentation, such as test cases, user stories and requirements created by other teams or QA engineers. This can create challenges for testers, as these documents may be incomplete, unclear, or inaccurate.  

To navigate this challenge, testers must carefully interpret and collaborate with document creators to fully understand and execute test cases, ensuring nothing is overlooked. 

6. Friday releases 

Releasing software on Fridays can be particularly challenging for testers. This is because any issues or bugs identified late in the day leave little time for resolution before the weekend. This can result in potential disruptions or delays in fixing critical issues, increase the risk of unnoticed defects slipping through, and can impact the overall quality of the product.

To mitigate this risk, teams can establish a "no new features" policy for Fridays, allowing for focused testing and bug resolution before the weekend.

Additionally, sanity testing may be performed if the product has an established CI/CD pipeline. Since the release candidate will have the most recent branch cut, potential issues can be identified a day or two prior to the Friday release.

7. Inaccurate testing estimation 

Accurately estimating testing efforts can be challenging in agile environments where requirements are constantly evolving. Testers may struggle with estimating the time and resources required for testing, which can lead to potential delays, incomplete testing, or compromised quality.

Using data from previous sprints can help testers make more accurate predictions about the time and effort required for testing.

While estimating the testing effort, always factor in additional time. This way, the deadline will be met and, if completed early, the client will receive the results sooner.

8. Fixing bugs during testing 

Software testing often involves identifying and fixing bugs in real-time during the testing phase. However, the challenge with this is that when developers fix bugs mid-testing, it can disrupt the tester's workflow. Namely, testers must retest and validate the fixes, ensuring they do not introduce new issues.

To minimize disruptions, testers can advocate for a dedicated testing phase where all bug fixes are addressed beforehand, allowing for more efficient and uninterrupted testing.

Testers will isolate the defect and evaluate its impact on the testing process. Then they will determine whether it’s a critical blocker that prevents further testing or a minor issue that can be deferred. This assessment will help prioritize effort, allowing testers to continue testing other areas while the defect is investigated. 

9. Last-minute changes to requirements 

Agile methodologies are designed to accommodate evolving requirements throughout the development cycle. However, last-minute changes can disrupt the testing process, requiring testers to quickly adapt their test cases, test data and overall testing strategy to accommodate the changes effectively.

Testers can overcome this challenge by maintaining a backlog of test cases that can be rapidly adapted or reprioritized in response to changes.

10. Different browsers/devices 

Ensuring compatibility across different browsers and devices adds significant complexity to the testing process. Testers may need to test the same functionality across multiple platforms, which can be challenging due to variations in behavior and performance on different browsers and devices.

To streamline this process, testers can utilize automated testing tools that support cross-browser and cross-device testing, allowing for quicker identification of issues across platforms.

Scrum vs. SAFe

Now that we’ve explored the testing challenges, let’s look at the specific roles of QA within Scrum and SAFe methodologies. Both frameworks emphasize collaborative approaches in defining the Definition of Done (DoD) and implementing automated testing, including regression testing. However, the approaches differ based on the scale and complexity of the projects. 

In Scrum, testers work closely within a single team, focusing on collaboration and ensuring quality within that team’s scope. In contrast, SAFe requires testers to collaborate across multiple teams to ensure quality at a larger scale. SAFe highlights automated testing at scale, involving designing and implementing test suites to validate large-scale systems. 

Additionally, SAFe incorporates "Inspect and Adapt at Scale" events, enabling testers to contribute to continuous improvement across multiple Agile teams within the Agile Release Train (ART). Overall, the main difference between Scrum and SAFe lies in the scale, level of coordination, and additional responsibilities that come with managing quality within a larger Agile program in SAFe compared to the more team-focused approach in Scrum.

The table below provides clear, side-by-side comparison of how the QA role differs between Scrum and SAFe across various aspects.

Conclusion

We can see that the role of QA in both frameworks is quite similar, but can Scrum and SAFe work together? Yes.

While Scrum and SAFe are two different approaches to Agile, they can be used together. Teams can follow the Scrum Guide for day-to-day practices and add SAFe concepts, like program increment planning, when managing larger projects. Stick to the Scrum Guide as your main rulebook, using SAFe for extra guidance. 

Regardless of the framework, adaptability, clear communication, and a strong focus on quality are key for success in Agile environments. Whether you're working with Scrum, SAFe, or both, ensuring high standards in testing and QA is critical.

Looking for expert software testing and QA services? Our team can help you navigate the complexities of Agile frameworks and ensure your product meets the highest quality standards. Reach out to us to learn more about how we can support your testing needs.