DCT Technology Pvt. Ltd.

Posted on Jun 25

Establishing a Culture of Testing in Agile Engineering Teams

#agile #testing #qualityassurance #devops

You've adopted Agile. Your stand-ups are efficient. Your sprints are on time.
But if your team treats testing as an afterthought — you're sitting on a ticking time bomb.
Bugs will slip. Velocity will drop. Clients will lose trust.

Let’s fix that.

Here’s how to establish a culture of testing in your Agile engineering team — so that quality becomes a habit, not a hope.

🔍 What Happens When Testing Is Not a Priority?

You might relate to these:

QA is only involved at the end of the sprint.
Developers say: "It works on my machine."
Regression bugs creep in every release.
Code coverage exists... in theory.
Devs write code, QA writes tests — no collaboration.

Sound familiar?

Without testing baked into the process, Agile becomes chaos in disguise.

🎯 Shift Testing Left: Make It Everyone’s Responsibility

The earlier you catch bugs, the cheaper and faster it is to fix them.

✅ Encourage TDD (Test Driven Development)
TDD isn't just for purists. It helps write cleaner, purpose-driven code.

Here’s a quick TDD example in JavaScript:

// Test first
test('adds two numbers', () => {
  expect(add(2, 3)).toBe(5);
});

// Then the implementation
function add(a, b) {
  return a + b;
}

🤝 Integrate QA and Dev: Break the Wall

Instead of tossing code over the wall to QA:

Include QA in backlog grooming
Pair devs and testers for test case creation
Use feature flags to test in production-like environments
Empower QA to write automated tests, not just manual ones

Tools like Cypress and Playwright allow both devs and QA to contribute to automation.

🔁 Automate Everything (That Matters)

Automation isn't about replacing QA — it's about giving them superpowers.

✅ Automate:

Unit tests
Integration tests
API tests
End-to-end flows

❌ Don’t automate:

One-off visual checks
Rare edge cases that change often

Here’s a great GitHub repo of real-world test automation examples to get inspired.

📈 Add Testing to the Definition of Done

Your "done" should not mean "dev complete".

Update your Definition of Done to include:

Code is covered by unit tests
CI pipeline passes
Feature is validated by QA
No high-severity bugs open

Make this visible on your team board or sprint checklist.

📊 Use CI to Catch Issues Early

Set up Continuous Integration to run all tests before merging code.

GitHub Actions makes it easy. Here’s a sample config for running Jest:

name: Run Tests

on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - run: npm install
      - run: npm test

Learn more from GitHub Actions for Node.js Projects.

💬 Make Testing Part of Team Culture

Celebrate catching bugs early
Share test failures in retros (and learn from them)
Hold code review sessions that review tests too
Create a shared test coverage dashboard (tools like Codecov help)

🧠 Upskill Your Team

If testing feels like a bottleneck, maybe the team needs training.

Run weekly test dojo sessions
Share short videos like Kent C. Dodds on testing
Recommend reading: “Clean Code” by Robert C. Martin

🔄 Feedback Loop: Learn and Improve

Testing isn’t “set and forget.”

Every sprint, ask:

Which bugs slipped through? Why?
Were our tests flaky? Slow?
Did QA face blockers?
Are tests giving us confidence or false security?

✅ Final Thoughts

Testing isn’t just a task — it’s a mindset.
Start small. Be consistent.
And remember: a culture of testing is a culture of quality.

If you found this helpful, leave a ❤️ or a comment below!
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