What should I be testing, aside from unit testing, in an agile environment?

Question

The focus always seems to be on short stories and then the code that goes with them tends to have units tests.

What other areas or levels should I be testing in?

The context is for SaS (Software as a Service) applications being developed in an Agile environment using a variety of Scrum and Kanban techniques.

Answer 1

During each iteration for each story I like to-do the following:

• During planning: Are we building the correct feature? I try to look from a user perspective instead of a technical
• During development: Prepare test-data, pair program with developers and question UX of new developments
• After development: Risk analyses with a code review, do the unit-test cover all the changes? Did we hit something else that is brittle?
• Exploratory testing of the new functionality
• Create at-least one or two automated GUI tests from the knowledge of the exploratory testing
• Write, update and "test" user documentation. Testing here is both grammar, but also question if it is understandable

Suggest reads:

• Book: Agile Testing
• Blog: The QA Role - What Is It Really?

Answer 2

Unit testing is a great way to test code with specific endpoint values and compare them with expected results, but there are many things that unit testing cannot cover. Unit tests provide you with a linear test, for the software. Automation should cover a more broad approach to what the software actually does. Agile is a difficult space to implement automation, and it needs to have ample time to be set up. After the framework is up and running, you can add tests in your suite sprint-by-sprint to cover the material developed. So to answer your question, other areas for automation include a wide variety of things. I would recommend you speak to your Project Manager to see what they expect from your automation. Currently for me I write automation for:

1. Regression Testing
2. End-To-End Testing
3. Defect/Feature Testing

These are the items that I am responsible for, and this is what my testing encompasses.