Use Only the Best Testing and QA Process for your Software and Web Application

Your Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is nothing if it isn’t testing intensive. Software testing and QA play a very important role in deciding whether the software that you had so painstakingly developed will set the cash registers jingling or will prove to be a damp squib.

With testing, you are actually doing a rewind of everything that you had done, and checking if the SDLC was accomplished perfectly or not. You are taking it through the various tests to know if its performance is of very high quality or mistakes have been made.

The process of testing and QA helps you take out a postmortem report of the software and web application for comprehensive analysis and evaluation. This requires crucial skills needed to design and perform structured and thorough testing. Proper testing certifications, similar to the istqb advanced test analyst, from reputed institutes (whether online or in-person) equip you with knowledge and skills ranging from foundation to advanced levels.

So let’s take a closer look at Testing and QA.

 Understanding Requirements

What to test? That’s crucial. So, you must collect all the information you can about the project; this is where the documentation comes in to help you out. You will then need to analyze the information collected and decide the parameters on which the software/web application needs to be tested. This will help you plan a comprehensive testing process.

Systematic Testing Planning

There are various elements that come into play here:

Test Scheduling

This is not just about zeroing in on a date, but includes the steps and tasks that are a part of testing and allocating start and end dates. Preparing a test schedule also includes underlining how a particular test will be will tracked, reviewed and approved.

Team Allocation

You will need to allocate test engineers to a particular project. You will need to decide how many testing professionals can handle the testing requirements; while doing so you will also need to keep an eye on your project deadline.

Setup a Friendly Testing Environment

Software or a web application is tested under various software and hardware test conditions. The requirement gathering and analysis that you have performed will give you a clear idea of the architecture, hardware and software needed to prepare the testing environment. Before you start, you also need to setup the test data; when you are ready just ‘test the test’ environment. This will tell you whether you have everything in place or not.

Preparing Test Plan

In order to document your testing efforts you need a test plan that describes testing objectives, its scope, the approach you are taking and the core focus area.

Testing Design

This is where the testing team prepares a large number of test cases and designs the testing process:

Preparation of Testing Cases

It’s always advisable that test cases are prepared right from the time the development life cycle begins; this is because even during preparation of test cases, you can come across problems in design and development of the applications as the testing engineer will have to go through the operation of the application in some details, to create a test case.

The three essential elements of a test case are input, action/event and the expected response; this is done to check whether each feature of the application is working correctly.

Preparing Test Data and Scripts

You now need to prepare the input data that you are going to use for testing purposes. This data should be realistic, practically valid and must be versatile enough to cover various scenarios. You will also have to prepare the test script that will ask the system to perform various tasks, to check its functionalities.

Test Suites and Runs

You must configure test suites that help you run multiple test files at a time.

Testing Execution

You can conduct different forms of testing including:

Functional Testing: Checks internal links, orphan pages, broken links, value, field validation, and cookies etc.

Usability Testing: Checks the UI and whether the application can be used easily.

Performance Testing: The responsiveness and stability of the application is checked with reference to the work load.

Interface Testing: Checks interaction between application server and the database.

Compatibility Testing: It helps check browser and OS compatibility; it also checks the accessibility of app on mobile browsers, and also its printing options.

Once the testing is done, bugs and networking error reports are generated, which need to be fixed to improve the operational efficiency of the software/application. Also, all test results are captured, so that you can learn from history; these also help plan subsequent tests.

Testing Monitoring

The purpose of testing is to identify the bugs and errors in the software/web application. If a test fails it’s a red flag and a warning sign of something wrong in the code or in the integration of specific functionalities. It helps track bugs and defects; this enables you toidentify and solve these problems before deployment. Once the errors are rectified, the software is taken through more rounds of testing before the green signal is given.

Test Closure

At the end of the testing process, you get real time insights into the performance of the applications and ifit is found wanting in some areas. There are also reports and graphs for your review, which assure you of the software’s feasibility, applicability and high performance.

End Words

Testing gives you the assurance you need that the software or web application will achieve the objectives that you have set for it. This assurance is important for both developers and their clients. There are absolutely no doubts about the efficiency of the software applications after thorough testing and QA.