Software Testing – All you need to know

1. Requirement Analysis

It is the first step in the Software testing life cycle. Here, the Quality Assurance team understands the requirement in terms of what the testing team will be checking/testing and figures out the testable requirements. The test team studies the requirements from the testing point of view to identify the testable requirements.

The QA team interacts with various stakeholders such as clients, business analysts, system architects, technical leads, etc., to understand the detailed requirements.

The different requirements include:

• Business Requirements – They are high-level requirements and are taken from the business case from the projects.

• Architectural and Design Requirements – These requirements are more detailed than the business requirements. They determine the overall design for implementing the business requirement.

• System & Integration Requirements – It is a detailed description for each requirement, and it is in the form of user stories to describe everyday business language. Here, the requirements are in detail for developers to begin coding.

2. Test Planning

It is the most crucial part of the Software testing life cycle where you define all the testing strategies. The phase is also known as the Test Strategy phase. Here, the test manager determines the effort and cost estimates for the entire project to define the objective and scope of the project.

A test plan is one of the vital steps in the software testing life cycle. The steps include:

• Analyze the product
• Design the Test Strategy
• Define Test Objectives
• Define Test Criteria
• Resource Planning
• Plan Test Environment
• Schedule & Estimation
• Determine Test Deliverable

3. Test Case Development

The Test case development begins once you complete the test planning phase. The STLC  phase is where the testing team notes the detailed test cases and prepares the test data for Testing. Once your test cases are ready, they are reviewed by peer members or QA leads.

A good test case effectively finds defects and covers most of the scenarios on the system under test. A step by step guide for developing a good test case is as follows:

• Create simple and transparent test cases.
• Create test cases keeping end-users in mind.
• Avoid test case repetitions.
• Do not assume the features and functionality of your software application.
• Ensure 100% coverage of the software requirements.
• Name the test cases in such a way that they are identified easily while tracking defects.
• Implement all the testing techniques.
• The test cases that you create should return the Test Environment to the pretest state.
• The test case must generate the same results every time.
• Your peers should uncover the defects in your test case design.

4. Test Environment Setup

It’s a setup of software and hardware for the testing teams to execute test cases and is a critical part of the Software testing life cycle. It supports test execution with software, hardware, and the network to which it is configured.

The test environment involves multiple setups like:

• Setup of Test Server: Every test is not executed on a local machine. It needs to establish a test server that supports applications.
• Network: You need to set up the network as per the requirements.
• Test PC Setup: You should set up different browsers for different testers.
• Bug Reporting: The bug reporting tools must be provided to testers.
• Creating Test Data for Test Environment: Many companies use separate environments to test the software product. The standard approach is to copy production data to test.

5. Test Execution

Test execution is a process of executing the code and comparing the expected and actual results. It is the next phase in the Software Testing Life Cycle. When you begin the test execution, the test analysts start executing the test scripts based on the test strategy allowed in the project.

6. Test Cycle Closure

The test cycle closure is the final phase of the Software Testing Life Cycle. It involves the testing team members meeting and evaluating cycle completion criteria depending upon the test coverage, time, quality cost, critical business objectives, and software.

The test lead can publish a test closure report after accomplishing the exit criteria and finishing the testing phase. It follows a standard format like:

• Test Summary Report
• Identifier
• Test Summary
• Variances
• Comprehensiveness Assessment
• Summary of Results
• Evaluation
• Summary of Activities
• Approval

The test closure process is implemented using the following six stages

1. Check Planned Deliverables: The team checks and analyzes the planned deliverables given to the project’s stakeholders.
2. Close Incident reports: The team checks whether the planned deliverables are delivered and makes sure that all the incidents are resolved before the process culmination.
3. Handover to Maintenance: After you resolve the incidents and close the incident report, the test-wares are handed over to the maintenance team.
4. Finalize and Archive the Test-ware: It includes finalizing and archiving the test-ware and software like test scripts, test infrastructure, test environment, etc.
5. Document System Acceptance: It includes system verification and validation as per the outlined strategy.
6. Analyze Best Practices: It determines various changes required for similar projects and the future release.

Black Box Testing

The technique of testing without knowing the interior workings of the app is called Black box testing. The tester is unmindful to the system architecture and has no access to the source code. While performing a black-box test, the tester interacts with the system’s user interface, providing inputs and studying outputs without knowing where and how the inputs are worked.

The following table gives you the advantages and disadvantages of black-box testing:

Now, you can further divide Black box testing into two types:

1. Functional Testing

Functional testing involves testing the functional aspects of a software application, and you have to test every functionality while performing it. Plus, you need to see if you are getting the desired results.

There are various types of functional testing which are as follows:

• Unit testing
• Integration testing
• End-to-end testing
• Smoke testing
• Sanity testing
• Regression testing
• Acceptance testing
• Interface testing

You can perform functional tests both manually and using automation tools. Mostly, manual testing is easy, but you must use tools when necessary. Some useful functional testing tools are Micro Focus UFT, Selenium, JUnit, soapUI, Watir, etc.

2. Non-Functional Testing

It is testing non-functional aspects of an application like performance, reliability, usability, security, etc. Non-functional tests are performed after functional tests.

Non-functional testing helps you improve your software’s quality to a great extent. Functional tests also improve the quality, but non-functional tests give you the opportunity to make your software better. It allows you to polish the software. Non-functional tests are not about whether the software works or not, but about how well the software runs and many other things.

Non-functional tests are not run manually as it’s challenging to do so. Hence, these tests are executed using tools. There are many types of non-functional testing which are as follows:

• Performance testing
• Security testing
• Load testing
• Failover testing
• Usability testing
• Compatibility testing
• Scalability testing
• Volume testing
• Stress testing
• Compliance testing
• Maintainability testing
• Efficiency testing
• Reliability testing
• Endurance testing
• Localization testing
• Disaster recovery testing
• Internationalization testing

White Box Testing

A detailed investigation of internal logic and code structure is called White box testing. It is also known as glass testing or open-box testing. To perform white box testing on an app, a tester must understand the internal workings of the code. It must look inside the source code and determine which chunk/unit of the code is misbehaving.

The advantages and disadvantages of white box testing are as follows:

Grey Box Testing

The technique to test an application when you have limited knowledge of the internal workings of an application is called Grey box testing. In software testing, the phrase “the more you know, the better” impacts testing an application.

Mastering a system domain always gives the tester an edge over someone with limited domain knowledge. Unlike black box testing, where the tester tests the application’s user interface, the tester has full access to design documents and the database in grey box testing. So, the tester can prepare better test data and test scenarios during test planning.

Read more about Black box, White box, and Grey box Testing

1. Unit Testing

2. Integration Testing

Integration testing is the combined parts’ testing of an application to determine if they are functioning correctly. You can do it in two different ways: Bottom-up integration testing and Top-down integration testing.

In a software development environment, bottom-up testing is done first, followed by top-down testing. The process ends with multiple application tests, preferably in scenarios designed to mimic the actual situation.

3. System Testing

System testing tests your system as a whole. Once you integrate all the components, the application as a whole is tested rigorously to make sure that it meets the specified Quality Standards. A specialized testing team performs such type of testing.

System testing is vital due to the following reasons:

• It is the first step in the Software Development Life Cycle, where the app is tested as a whole.
• The application is thoroughly tested to ensure that it meets the functional and technical specifications.
• The application is tested in an environment very close to the production environment to deploy the application.
• It enables us to test, verify, and validate both the application architecture and the business requirements.

4. UAT Testing

A testing methodology where the users get involved in testing the product to validate the product against their requirements. UAT testing is performed at the client located at the developer’s site. In the medicine or aviation industry, contract and regulatory compliance testing and operational acceptance testing are carried out as a part of user acceptance testing.

UAT depends on the context and its plans are prepared based on the requirements and are not mandatory to execute all kinds of user acceptance tests, coordinated and contributed by the testing team.

Unit Testing

Developers perform Unit testing before handing over the setup to the testing team to execute the test cases formally. The respective developers perform it on the individual units of source code assigned areas. The developers use test data, different from the test data of the quality assurance team.

Unit testing aims to isolate each part of the program and show that individual parts are correct in requirements and functionality.

Limitations

Testing doesn’t catch every bug in an application, so it’s impossible to evaluate execution paths in every software application—the same stands for unit testing.

There is a limit to the test data and the number of scenarios a developer can use to verify a source code. After all the options are exhausted, there is no choice but to stop unit testing and merge code segments with other units.

Integration Testing

System Testing

System testing tests your system as a whole. Once you integrate all the components, the application as a whole is tested rigorously to make sure that it meets the specified Quality Standards. A specialized testing team performs such type of testing.

Regression Testing

Whenever you make a change in a software application, other areas within the application may be affected. Regression testing helps verify if any fixed bug hasn’t resulted in another functionality or business rule violation. It intends to ensure that a change, such as a bug fix, should not result in another uncovered fault in the application.

Smoke Testing

Alpha Testing

It is the first testing stage and is performed amongst the teams (developer and QA teams). Unit testing, system testing, and integration testing on combining are known as Alpha testing. During this phase, the following aspects are tested in the application:

Beta Testing

Stress Testing

It includes testing the behavior of the software under abnormal conditions. For example, Stress testing may include taking away some resources or applying a load beyond the actual load limit.

Stress testing aims at testing the software by applying the load to the system and taking over the software resources to identify the breaking point. It can be performed by testing various scenarios like-

Performance Testing

Performance tests check the behaviors of your system when they are under significant load. These tests are non-functional and have various forms to understand the platform’s reliability, availability, and stability. For instance, it may observe response times when executing a high number of requests or see how the system behaves with a significant amount of data.

Object Oriented Testing

Object-oriented testing combines various testing techniques that help you verify and validate object-oriented software. It’s done in the following manner: