Top 15 Agile Testing Tools for Your Project

Agile methodology is a project management approach that involves breaking projects into multiple phases. The agile methodology emphasizes continuous improvement and collaboration. In agile, the delivery is small and frequent. The cycle starts with planning and ends with delivering small chunks of the product. As agile follows a rapid development approach, aligning testing with agile is challenging. Agile testing tools help to fasten the testing cycle.

What is Agile Testing?

Agile testing is the software testing practice that follows the agile development approach. In the Agile development process project evolves in each sprint. The Agile testing aligns with these development changes assuring quality in each development cycle. Furthermore, the agile tester is active throughout the sprint, and he closely works with the developer to ensure the quality.

Why Agile Testing Tools are handy?

One of the major challenges in agile is testing. As the developer follows the agile sprint for the development. Tester needs to ensure that testing for the user stories is completed within the sprint. During the initial days of the sprint, the developer is less likely to provide the testable modules. As the sprint progresses, tester gets the module to test, and the testing window will be shorter. You cannot follow the legacy manual approach in Agile as it requires more resources and time. Agile testing tools help team member to speed up their process.

List of best agile testing tools

Here, we have listed popular agile testing tools that can help you achieve your agile testing goals better.

Note: Tools list given below are random and not ranked.

Jira

Jira is a popular project management tool. It supports entire agile development cycle activities like planning, defect tracking, reporting, and other management activities. Jira software is developed by Atlassian. It also supports third-party plugins.

You can easily add the test management plugin with Jira. With third-party testing tools such as qTest, Testlink, and Selenium, Jira provides the end-to-end project management life cycle. Since it provides seamless integration to many apps in different phases of agile development this tool is widely accepted and comes on top.

Features of Jira

• It supports multiple project development methodologies such as Agile, Kanban, etc.
• You can also use the third-party plugin to automate the tasks and process.
• It supports Jira Query Language (JQL). JQL is a more powerful tool for creating filters.
• It has Rich reporting feature; anyone can create detailed or summary reports.
• Jira supports the end-to-end traceability of your projects at various levels.

Testsigma

Testsigma is one of the agile testing tools. It follows codeless test automation; in turn it helps to improve the automation coverage of the product. The application can be hosted on-premises or on the cloud as SaaS. Additionally, it supports all major types of testing like functional tests, API Tests, visual tests, etc.

Features of Testsigma

• Manual QAs can write automation scripts in plain English.
• It supports web, mobile, desktop, and API testing in one suite.
• Easy to integrate continuous delivery tools such as Jenkins, Bamboo, etc.
• Good documentation helps you to quickly learn and start testing.
• Community-powered plugins help to extend the tools for more capabilities.
• The in-built reporting feature helps to share and analyze the reports in detail.
• A dedicated technical support team answers your queries.

Selenium

Selenium is an open-source test automation tool. Surprisingly, it has decades of history and is still one of the most used agile testing tools. It is best suitable for web applications. You can use it on any platform such as Windows, Mac, and Linux. It supports all major browsers.

Features of Selenium

• It is open-source and free to use.
• It supports all major browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, and IE
• Provides large community support, and most of your questions and issues are already answered on various online platforms.
• It supports multiple programming languages like Java, C#, JavaScript, Ruby, Perl, etc.
• The framework can be extended using third-party test libraries such as JUnit, NUnit, Cucumber, etc.
• The documentation helps to understand the API commands and architectures.
• Support for CI/CD tools makes it the right fit for agile testing.

Playwright

Playwright is a modern open-source automation tool. It is managed by Microsoft. This tool supports Functional Testing, API Testing, and Component testing. It has inbuilt HTML reports, multiple debugging options, and a record and playback utility. Furthermore, it supports multiple browsers, platforms, and languages.

Features of Playwright

• It is an open-source tool.
• It is not just a testing library but rather a complete framework. You can install and start testing within a few minutes.
• Tool supports many operating systems like Windows, Mac, and Linux
• It supports Firefox, Chromium Family browsers, and an open-source version of Safari browser.
• The In-built CodeGen tool helps to record your scripts.
• Playwright inspector helps to execute tests, generate selectors, and view logs.
• One of the fastest test execution tools available in the market.
• It supports End to end tests, accessibility tests, visual tests, API tests, and component tests.
• In-depth documentation helps to self-resolve any issues that you encounter.
• It is extensible and supports CI/CD tools.

Appium

Appium is an open-source agile testing tool. It is free to use. Appium helps to automate mobile and hybrid applications with ease. It is a cross-platform tool. Additionally, you can use this tool to integrate to and test real devices, emulators and simulators.

Features of Appium

• Easy to set up the framework.
• It supports multiple programming languages like Java, Python, C#, Javascript(NodeJS).
• This tool can be used to automate native mobile apps and hybrid apps.
• It supports real devices, simulators, and emulators.
• This tool supports multiple browsers such as chrome, safari, and built-in mobile browser.
• It doesn’t incur any cost for usage as it is an open-source tool.

Cypress

Cypress comes with both an open-source license and a proprietary license. However, the open-source version is the most popular. Cypress detects all events that are fired by your browser and give it real native access to everything within your tests.

Features of Cypress

• Easy to set up the framework.
• Supports both command line and UI-driven test execution.
• Extensible and great community support
• Supports multiple testing types like end-to-end, UI, component, and unit testing.
• Developer and tester friendly debugging options
• Easy to mock the network and APIs.
• Supports test execution, screenshots, and videos.
• It can be easily integrated with CI/CD tools.
• Cypress dashboard provides in-detail reports. However, it is a proprietary feature.

JMeter

JMeter is widely accepted performance testing tool for web application. The tool is open source and truly community driven. Friedly user interface is the unique feature that other performance testing tools lag behind.

Features of JMeter

• JMeter is open source and cross-platform.
• Its user interface enables easily development of test scripts.
• Real-time user simulation helps to uncover a lot of performance bottlenecks.
• It can be easily integrated with the BlazeMeter ecosystem to run resource-consuming performance tests.
• JMeter supports a lot of plugins, you can easily customize the performance testing framework.
• In-built HTML report provides graphical result and helps in test result analysis.
• You can also use this tool for API testing.

Postman

Postman is the most popular agile testing tool for APIs. It is available as a free version and paid version. However, in most cases, the free version will serve the purpose. Postman comes with a self-explanatory user interface and is easy to test the APIs. Many don’t know that supports automation. Apart from manual API testing, it can also be used for API automation. Postman has a test script editor, so you can easily write the test with javascript and integrate it into your pipeline.

Features of Postman

• Easy to learn, setup, and execute.
• API test automation is the unique feature of this tool.
• It supports multiple operating systems like Windows, Mac, etc.
• It supports powerful mocking; you can test the individual APIs without database integrations.
• Postman provides additional features to add third-party plugins.
• Newman is the command line version of Postman. Newman can be used for CI/CD integration.
• Via collaboration feature, it provides a shared workspace environment for both developers and testers.

qTest

qTest is the enterprise test management tool. qTest is Tricentis’s proprietary tool. It provides a centralized repository for test artifacts. You can capture all the requirements from Jira within a few clicks and create a test case. In addition, instant bug reporting integration with various agile testing tools is a key feature.

qTest Features

• It supports BDD, TDD, and ATDD principles.
• Files can be imported and exported for further processing.
• Supports manual and automation test executions.
• Helps to analyze test reports.
• Extensive integration with Jira makes this tool more robust.

Katalon

Katalon is a modern test suite. Under one suite, it offers many agile testing tools. The single platform serves many purposes, such as test case design, automation, mobile testing, desktop testing, API testing, web testing etc.

Katalon Features

• Easy to install and set up the automation framework.
• Covers different types of testing such as mobile, desktop, API, Visual testing, etc.
• Supports plugins to extend the framework.
• It has a data-driven testing capability.
• Smart reports are easy to share and analyze.
• Available as Free and premium plans.

Zephyr

Zephyr is an agile testing tool by Smartbear. It supports end-to-end test management. This tool can be easily configured to software development methodologies like Agile, waterfall, V-model, etc. It is available as an add-on for Jira too, thus helping to extend your Jira to support test management.

Zephyr features

• It provides bi-direction Jira integration.
• Helps in the end-to-end traceability of testing life cycle.
• It also supports third-party automation tools.
• You can also create test plans, test cycles, and track quality assurance metrics.

QMetry

QMetry is a testing tool designed with Quality and DevOps (continuous testing) in mind. It provides advanced test management. It can be used for test authoring, execution, etc. Furthermore, you can also integrate with Jira to make the process better.

Features of QMetry

• Test authoring with BDD syntax and sharing
• Automatically detects duplicate test cases
• Easy to integrate with automation tools and bug-tracking tools
• You can create personalized dashboards and reports
• Easy to integrate CI/CD tools
• You can easily migrate from older days tools to QMetry

TestRail

Testrail is another popular test management tool used by many agile testers. It is a centralized tool for quality assurance. It provides rich features to build, connect, and optimize all of your testing activities.

Features of TestRail

• It provides features almost everything that is needed for quality assurance
• You can also do the seamless integration with other agile testing tools like Jira, Selenium, Jenkins, etc.
• Provides rich dashboard experience with alerts and metrics
• It can be used irrespective of the size of the team whether it is large or small.
• Easy to migrate from legacy test management tool to TestRail

Cucumber/Specflow

Cucumber and Specflow are not independent tools, but these tools play critical roles. Cucumber and Specflow can be used for Behavior Driven Development Testing. These two tools serve the same purpose. Cucumber supports java, python, and other programming language-based frameworks. Specflow supports C# based automation framework.

Features of BDD frameworks (Cucumber)

• Supports Gherkin (given, when and then) syntax for automation.
• Easy to convert the requirements into test cases.
• Generated reports are easy to understand for non-technical people
• It can also be integrated with popular testing tools like Selenium, Cypress, Capybara, etc.
• Open-source framework.

Azure DevOps

Azure DevOps is an alternative to Jira by Microsoft. It provides end-to-end integration with requirements, testing, and DevOps activities. You can use Azure DevOps tool for writing test cases, creating user stories, creating builds and execution, etc. If your organization is using Microsoft tech-stack, then this tool provides seamless integration with all of your applications.

Features of Azure DevOps (ADO)

• It supports everything related to SDLC, from requirement gathering to release
• Dashboards help to visualize and track various activities
• ADO provides various agile boards like a sprint, backlog, epics, etc.
• Helps to create documentation with ADO wiki
• You can easily access your code repository with Azure DevOps.
• You can also build test plans, create test cases and execute in pipelines.

Bonus Agile Testing Tools

The above tools are the most popular agile testing tools. There are a few other tools that come in handy when you work on agile projects.

Confluence

Confluence is a documentation tool. In the software development world, you need to document everything. Confluence comes in handy if you are looking for centralized documentation. Also, it supports many advanced features like uploading files and creating unique sharable links etc.

TestLink

Testlink is truly an open-source test management tool. Most of the test management tools are paid tools. However, if you are looking for an open-source agile testing tool Testlink is the one. It is not a SaaS tool, so you need to integrate this tool with your own infra. If your organization is out of budget and has a team who can take care of minimal configuration and maintenance, then Testlink is a go-to tool.

The list of agile testing tools is never-ending. There are hundreds of tools designed with a specific purpose in mind. However, based on the organization’s need and process you can choose the right tool. Many tools require upgrading skillsets. In turn, it can incur costs for organizations. Tools like Testsigma don’t require special training as it provides automation capability in plain English language.

To get the most out of agile use the tools as much as possible whether it can be automation tools, performance tools, or test management tools. Lastly, choose the right tool based on your requirement.