Software Testing Services

 

It’s no secret that software testing is a key component of the software product development lifecycle. Not only does it help teams detect bugs, but it also provides information on the performance of the product being tested. Moreover, with that information, the development team better understand the behavior of the product and improve its quality. Over the last years, testing is becoming increasingly more cost-efficient. Compared to expenses from 2015, in 2019 companies were able to decrease average yearly spending by more than 10%. By optimizing QA processes, introducing automation, reducing the number of manual tasks, organizations are capable to bring testing costs down. However, the result of testing strongly depends on the methods and tools used and on the skills of the QA/QC software engineers. That’s why it’s important to look for new ways to improve software testing.

 

 

 

If your company hasn’t decreased the cost of testing over the last years, it’s possible that you are not the most available method. If you want to increase the efficiency of your team without raising the costs, get started with these tried-and-proven methods.  Only by following a list of the best practices for testing software can you minimize risks of failure and save time and money in the long run. Sounds impressive, right? Let’s dive into the details to find out more.

 

Working as an Agile software development team

Agile is a software development and testing methodology that focuses on flexible cooperation. Teams can move between QA stages, release multiple iterations, and collaborate across project phases. It’s the opposite of a Waterfall – a strict methodology when staged are finalized once and for good. In testing, Agile practically means looking for defects thought the entire project development and testing. Testers cooperate with developers and enter the project early on. To implement Agile and iterative development frequently teams can use additional approaches.

 

Extreme programming has the main goal of delivering high-quality software. The goal is to develop the best product, the speed and planning come secondary.

 

EXTREME PROGRAMMING METHODS

 

 

Focus on business requirements: more than any other technology, extreme programming, phases on financial, business, and user goals;

Extensive analysis: team describes stories, analyzes competitors, takes a look at other platform’s experience and features.

Design: all tasks are dissected to in-depth details for automation framework design;

Execution: it happens way later in the project than in other methodologies, but the probability of an error is much lower.

Wrapping: the product is released in small interactions and constantly deployed;

Conclusion: analyzers and engineers audit the SLA and ensure that all necessities were conveyed.

Extreme programming takes more time and resources, but on the other hand, it’s a highly reliable method.  Due to all the research and planning. QA teams know what risks to expect and prevent them in time.

 

Scrum is a framework in which the development and testing team broke into small groups. The scope of work is divided into spring - a small, manageable pieces that focus on specific tasks. Scrum consists of the following stages:

 

scrum METHOD

Story: the testing process managed in the story - small tasks done in a short time frame;

Organization between testers and developers: the two groups meet regularly and discuss a plan together;

Automation: Scrum and Agile energy use of the platform and framework, both open-source and paid;

Management: all the scope of the work is broken down of inspiration, s and for each, the point of the story is assigned. In this way, the team prioritized task difficulty sand size.

Preparing documentation software testing

Planning test process allows the team to understand their goals, communicate with all team members, developers, stakeholders. They can keep track of small problems before they turn into problems, defect capture in time, and assess their efficiency. Let's look at the most common artifacts of the test documentation and checked out their main qualities.

 

QUALITY MANAGEMENT PLAN

The main focal point is on an item archive. The quality plan describes the quality of the product and set up quantitative targets.

 

 

 

Structure

 

Numerical expectations;

Description of duties of members of the QA team: everyone is responsible for delivering a particular purpose;

Describes an instrument for automatic and manual testing would help achieve quality expectations.

Who benefits from the document: software testers? QA teams, developers, stakeholders, the owner of the product.

 

CASE ordeal

A detailed document that describes each feature independently. test case describes what activities should be run on a particular function, condition, purpose.

 

Structure:

 

A unique ID which test cases will be defined throughout the project

Test case descriptions, steps, hope;

Metrics, the final outcome, the current status;

Date of manufacture

Documentation and data storage update.

Its use: developers, testers, QA.

 

SOFTWARE QUALITY CONTROL AND STRATEGY

The focus of this note is also on an item - not in management or inner procedures. This system characterizes the QA approach, the strategy for each bit of functionality. It describes how to achieve the goal of QS will bring the group closer to business objectives.

 

 

 

Typically, a team of Software Requirements Specification reference and project plan before building a test strategy. It is essential that the company is already aware of the non-functional requirements and business objectives.

Structure

 

objectives and activities of QA

budget calculations and limitations

Deadlines and time limits

analysis and quality industry standards for a particular field

Its use: testers, QA, stakeholders.

 

TEST PLAN METHOD AND OBJECTIVES

This document describes the just beyond the functionality of the product. It outlines an update, version, hardware, operating system, features. Every feature and version are described in terms of the quality control activities of certain software. Teams always come back to this document, verify shipment and make changes, as a function expands.

 

Structure

 

Approach the test, the item, the item;

Risks, pass and fail the requirements, and assumptions about the function;

Schedules, deadlines, and budgets;

priority function - what features should be tested first.

Who is using the document: developers, testers, QA

 

Applying automated software testing process

At the point when you make arrangements for your product QA process, you must take into account the automation right off the bat. It is important to find out that the experiment will be computerized, whose use must be examined and the characteristics of individuals who are able.

 

 

 

Automated testing is a long-term investment, and the main aspects that contribute to lowering the cost of QA. Both SMEs and large enterprises to switch from manual methods inefficiencies using an intelligent script, statistics, and metrics. If you will begin to implement automated QA now, in a few months you can already expect the following results.

 

increase in speed: automated tests that can be reused, which means, when you're writing a script once, you can use it multiple times. No need to re-enter the same data or set the conditions for each feature.

Long-term cost efficiency: automated tool is a long-term investment. Of course, getting and setting will require investment, s but there is a one-time fee. Once your team is used to implement and maintain automated testing framework, you will save resources at an increasing pace.

 

Eliminate the manual work of frustration: the automated tools do not make human errors. They find defects 24/7, do not miss the problems due to fatigue and not burned - unlike human testers. your team, on the other hand, can be switched to the fulfillment of the job instead.

Candor: programming automatically generates test reports, provide a visual dashboard, and set up the following devices. For each case, you will have bug reports, quality control, and details of the progress of the group.

Scalability: infrastructure and software testing process grow, so does the number of defects. Automation saves have more onboard team of testers. Accuracy, efficiency, and performance of automated tools is higher than the manual team.

Clearly, embracing automation testing is not possible everywhere. Some features require working through complex user scenarios. Some aspects, such as the interface, highly subjective and requires human insight. However, companies that do not embrace automation clearly set themselves to regression and long-term cost increases.

 

Apply some testing methods in the project

Another test failure which slows down a lot of the team is the lack of a bigger picture. Testers ignore the planning of all types and levels of QA. As a result, they need to change the strategy later on in emergency mode. To avoid this error, consider the following software testing methods immediately.

 

 

 

Static test checks that all the necessary functions are present. responsibility it is to ensure that the base code and documentation of the right look. The program itself does not run - so the picture is not complete.

Dynamic testing done later to ensure that the software generates the proper input and output. the team needs to run the code base and verify their performance. It is more complex testing methods that require more preparation.

Black box: testers only see software performance (input and output) without looking at the underlying architecture. The team evaluated the software means users will be - with the result-oriented mentality.

white box: testers evaluate the underlying architecture; they have a deep knowledge of the code base and works closely with the developer. Black-box testing requires more effort but in return, give deeper insight.

Visual examination: examination of testing GUI interface products, ensuring clear to clients, activities which are easy to remember and repetition, and charming outward. This testing is difficult to automate because it requires emotional outlook analysis.

If you test all components of the product, you will be able to see small defects before they turn into a fairly large legacy code.

 

Structuring testing project

We have already discussed that it is important to evaluate products with different methods to gain a deeper insight. Another aspect that is similar to take into account is the level of QA. Testers can see each feature separately, evaluate all of the functions, or even analyze the entire infrastructure.e It's best to combine these two specific sand complex approach - here's how to do it.

 

 

Unit testing: the function is broken down into smaller units (screens, functions, or minor surgery). Developers examine each part separately, paying attention to the smallest problems. This is the smallest level of QA.

testing of components: some of the functions and operations to create a module - a larger structural parts of the software. Components isolated from one another and are evaluated individually. If all the units to work both separately and together, the components must work smoothly too.

Integration testing: if the component is a combination of several units, integration is a collection of modules. Regardless of whether the function module is admirable alone, it is anything but since the implementation of coordination would be perfect. It is important to examine associations within the module and check the results.

Testing the system: developers check the inputs and outputs of the system without evaluating individual components as you can guess, it is a version of the black box testing for QA system provides a birds eye view on infrastructure.

An efficient test team know that the testing of products from the ground up is a way to find small defects, and gradually increase the field of vision. When the team began to evaluate the entire infrastructure, they already know that the underlying layer of software has been cleared.

 

User acceptance test run

After the team completed system testing, they perform acceptance tests - product evaluation performed by the end user. Skipping this stage results in missing interface error, releasing the redundant function, and misunderstanding of the needs of the user. To keep in touch with the needs of the user, the software QA team needs to operate as follows.

 

ACCEPTANCE TESTING METHOD

Alpha testing is done by the user but supervised by the developer; Tim control the process;

Beta Testing: Testing independent users, also known as field tests. Testers can provide context and explanation in the process.

Contract Acceptance Testing: developers and testers reviewing contracts and check if the product is ready to meet the requirements.

Regulation acceptance testing: QA, analysis, and engineers ensure that the solution runs in accordance with international requirements, mainly related to privacy regulations (HIPAA, GDPR, and so on)

This is the stage where the team finalizes the entire testing and QA process. Maintain documentation and dashboard during this stage keep the process transparent and intuitive.

Defining the code quality metrics in the project

During the entire testing process, the team must have benchmarks to measure its success. Testing metric describes the product quality, productivity, efficiency of delivery, etc. Since there are dozens of metrics, let's focus on the key for this moment.

 

 

 

Reliability: how much time the software can run without crashing, how many operations and requests can be processed simultaneously. Posts: bus in the production, qualify for disability, statistics on the load, and regression testing.

efficiency and performance: the speed with which the system executes a certain action. Measured by the performance of QA, stress testing (software taken to the operating capacity max), soak testing.

Security: the more vulnerabilities shows the code base, less secure it. Therefore the primary metric is the number of security bugs and the time needed to repair them. You can also calculate how many people have installed the security patch.

Maintainability shows how difficult it is to maintain the code base. The number of lines is the traditional metrics that evaluate the ease of maintenance.

Delivery rate: the number of releases, updated functionality, and bug still serves as an indicator for the efficiency of the team.

Metrics give you a long-term perspective the productivity of your team. You understand the direction in which your business will be. Infrastructure grows, you need to rely on real data to keep in touch with all aspects of software testing and development.

 

final thoughts

Now the business owner has some software testing  tools, metrics, approaches and methodologies that they have. Regardless of the industry, the company should aim to provide a full scope of functions - from small units for a large system. automated scripts and flexible management helps to achieve these objectives.

 

The most important aspects of software testing should be taken into account from the beginning. You will be able to plan in detail the process and eliminate the critical problems in time. Most importantly, you will build better software in less time and at a reduced budget - which is the ultimate goal.