Automated Agile Testing in the BFSI Sector

Introduction

Applications used in the BFSI industry are one of the most complex apps in the current software industry. As the banking industry has been witnessing fast-paced growth, the business priority of banking and financial organizations is changing rapidly. Also, many changes have been happening in the banking industry, like technological advancements and customer interactions. Even remote working also accelerated the demand for a more seamless and personalized banking experience. Global banking enterprises are mostly relying on development and testing teams to offer flawless banking experiences. Agile testing has become imperative for BFSI organizations to deliver best-in-class customer experiences. With agile testing gaining importance in the banking industry, it is very important for companies to adopt this testing method to reduce the time to market.

Importance of Agile Testing in the BFSI Industry

Agile testing involves the software development activity and a constant feedback loop into the development cycle. Compared to other testing methods, where testing is another step after software development, in agile testing, QA processes also start at the very beginning of the development process. In the banking industry, many organizations face the challenge of accelerating the testing process and reducing the cost involved. With agile testing methodology, banking and financial companies can leverage automated tests to perform regression tests, reduce time to market, and adjust priorities flexibly. By reducing misunderstandings and improving team alignment with agile testing, BFSI companies can improve team productivity and visibility. 

Check Out: How Does Continuous Testing Accelerate DevOps?

Challenges Faced by BFSI Enterprises in Agile Test Automation

The main problem faced by banking companies with agile testing is the lack of vision of why they need agile testing. This can lead banking companies to fail in delivering the business value they expected. The adoption of agile test automation tools is a difficult process for large BFSI organizations, as they have to coordinate various teams working independently on one product component, like design, analysis, or testing. The problem gets even worse when these teams are located in different parts of the world. Maintaining transparency and coordination between large teams can be a massive challenge while adopting agile testing practices.

Also check: Why is E2E Testing Crucial for Banking Apps?

Another important reason why banking organizations are reluctant to adopt agile test automation tools is that even the smallest error in the banking system can result in the loss of huge amounts of money from the organization side. As the security of transactions and customer data is the utmost priority of BFSI organizations, they are not ready to risk their systems without a secured testing platform. 

As a lot of sensitive data is involved in the banking sector, there are many rules and regulations created by financial organizations to secure the transactions and data of customers. To comply with these rules and regulations, many BFSI organizations continue using traditional software development methods, where documentation is highly comprehensive. Even the nature of financial software systems, which interact with various systems and interfaces, necessitates the meticulous design of these interfaces. So, some of the testing processes involved in the BFSI industry require the traditional testing method or a hybrid approach rather than entirely switching to agile testing.

Read: Know everything about testing banking domain apps

Even with these challenges, financial companies are looking to adopt agile test automation tools to accelerate their testing cycle and reduce the huge cost involved in traditional testing methods. 

HeadSpin’s Role in Agile Testing of BFSI Apps

Banking and financial apps are becoming financial institutions' most critical customer channels. Banking apps with weak security or a poor user experience can lead to poor customer satisfaction ratings, lower brand reputation, litigation, and even loss of customers. With HeadSpin's banking testing solution, organizations can perform automated agile testing of their apps without any security concerns and with 100% efficiency. Given are some of the features of the HeadSpin Platform that help financial organizations overcome the common challenges they face while adopting agile test automation tools.

‍1. CI/CD Integration to Automate the App Testing 

CI/CD and agile testing go hand in hand. Also, agile testing is impossible to perform without automation. HeadSpin's banking testing solution supports all open test frameworks available in the industry. With the HeadSpin Platform, BFSI companies can automatically check new builds, perform tests and gather insights into the performance regression of apps. This process will help financial organizations improve their time to market and proactively identify even the smallest bug.

‍2. Performance and ML Module for Data Insights

With the performance and ML module, the HeadSpin Platform can enable financial companies to collect insights about their applications' performance and user experience. These insights can help BFSI enterprises to understand the requirement of agile testing in their DevOps. Insights provided by the HeadSpin Platform, such as issue cards, time series, session videos, and packet-level details, can support the BFSI companies in improving applications' performance and digital experiences.

‍3. Automation of Customer User Journeys

Banking companies can use the HeadSpin Platform to integrate test automation platforms such as Appium or Selenium and automate different customer user journeys. With the automation of customer user journeys, BFSI enterprises can identify minor and major challenges that users may face while using their apps and fix these errors proactively. This feature will help banking organizations to achieve 100% testing efficiency while performing agile tests.

Also read: Tips for Testing Mobile Banking Apps

4. Global Testing

HeadSpin's global device infrastructure will help BFSI organizations remotely perform agile testing on real devices in 90+ locations worldwide. With HeadSpin's global testing, banking companies can coordinate various teams working independently from different parts of the world.

‍5. Secured Testing Platform 

HeadSpin's AI-based testing platform is a SOC 2-compliant platform. A third-party security validator performs a security assessment on the Headspin network, and the Platform is certified in passive reconnaissance, automated vulnerability scanning, and manual testing. Using the fully secured HeadSpin's banking testing solution, BFSI organizations can gain confidence to perform agile testing for their systems without the risk of data theft and security issues.

Please Check: Functional Test Automation 101: How & When to Start

How HeadSpin Helps BFSI Companies Perform Agile Testing

Some of the important features of HeadSpin’s banking testing solution that help BFSI companies to deliver secure and high-performing apps include:

• The HeadSpin Platform supports multiple device types/forms, including low, medium, and high-end devices.
• It offers audio-enabled and multi-gesture-supported devices and automation APIs for accessibility testing.
• HeadSpin enables biometric SDK without any app instrumentation.
• It captures device, network, and automation logs in the performance UI.
• The Platform allows for the automation of Webview test cases.

Conclusion

Software automation testing in the BFSI industry supports the QA team to be agile. With the agile environment, testing teams can perform tests faster and identify errors proactively. Agile test automation can make the testing environment more efficient with short test cycles and less cost.

HeadSpin can play a crucial role in automating the tests in an agile environment. With HeadSpin’s banking testing solution, banking companies can enable software automation to enhance test coverage by up to 30% and achieve up to 15% faster test execution. Choose the best testing platform, HeadSpin, to run the testing of apps effectively in an agile environment.

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FAQs

Q1. What do you mean by refactoring?

Ans: Refactoring is the process that involves the alteration or modification of the internal structure of software/app without any change in its external behaviors or functionality. Refactoring makes the code more readable, understandable, and clean. 

Q2. What is the red-green refactoring in the agile methodology?

Ans: Red-green refactoring is one of the most popular and widely used refactoring techniques in agile software development. It utilizes very short development cycles to minimize leap-of-faith assumptions. 

Q3. What is a zero sprint in agile testing?

Ans: A zero sprint is the first step before the first sprint. It includes all activities, like setting a development environment and preparing a backlog.

Q4. Which are the three main agile frameworks other than scrum for product development?

Ans: Kanban, test-driven development (TDD), and feature-driven development (FDD).