Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Software Testing - In its simplest form : Q3 Technologies Inc,
Software testing is an important aspect of any software development company. It provides the basis for testing the quality of the software and assures a person that the software product is developed as per the requirements.
Software testing is a process, which involves various activities that are carried out throughout the SDLC, to check the software product. Testing in wider terms is a part of SQA, Software Quality Assurance. 'SQA' is the implementation of strategies and policies intended to stop defects from occurring in the early stage whereas, 'Software Testing' includes tasks for detecting defects in the software product.
Understanding the objectives/goals of testing:
1. To Find errors
2. To prove that the software work as per the requirement
3. To check the correctness of the software program and the actual behavior with the expected behavior
4.To ensure that all the functionality are implemented correctly
5. Ensure client satisfaction.
In a software development company'Software testing' is performed in two modes such as Static and dynamic. Static testing, doesn't involve the execution of the code of the project whereas dynamic testing involves the execution of the coding part.
There are different methods followed for testing. These methods depend upon the part to be tested by the testers. Some of the Methods are:
* White box testing: It tests the structure often, loops and the coding part the program.
* Black box testing: It tests the project with some sets of input conditions that tend to put to use the functional requirements for a program.
In general, testing is all about "Verification and Validation".These
are:
* Verification: Are we making the product right? That means that are we are making the product as per the requirements provided by the customer.
* Validation: Are we doing the right job? The set of activities that ensures that the product is made to satisfy/fit the purpose of the customer.
In every offshore product development firms like Q3 Technologiesand
mobile software development companies, Testing involves a lot many activities other than only finding defects. A tester has to maintain all the documents (Software documentation templates) such as test cases, defect clustering record, test policies etc, to help the developer better understand the key point of the defect and how exactly their product was tested by them.
A test case is a document that describes an input value, some action and an expected result, to determine if the attribute of an application is working properly and correctly. A test case should contain essentials such as test case attributes, test case name, objective, test conditions, input data requirements, steps, and expected results.
Testing is one the most unique fields in itself as a tester really don't know, exactly when to stop testing the software. The main focus of a tester is on the Risks and quality of the software.
Since it's not possible to test the entire product; the testers use risk analysis to determine where testing should be focused. Risk analysis is appropriate to most of the software development services and projects. This requires judgment and analytical skills and experience. Regression testing is the testing which is carried out to check whether the change, such as a bug fix, has not introduced new bugs in the other areas of the product.
In Q3 Technologies, for software testing the levels of testing followed are:
Unit testing: This testing is carried out for each component/module of the program to ensure the validity of each module. This type of testing is done usually by developers by writing test cases for each scenarios of the module and writing the results occurring in each step for each module.
Integration Testing: This testing is carried to test modules, as how are they going to behave after integration. Since, unit testing covers the validation of the modules/components only. Integration testing is required to test the interfaces with all the components integrated in that.
System testing: This testing is carried out to test the entire system/product after integration of the all the modules and components.
However, it is not possible to remove all the defects/bugs from the software modules/product. It is not because a tester or a programmer is careless or irresponsible, but because the complexity of software is generally intractable.
For More details Check Q3 Technologies
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Agile Testing
Agile testing was developed to respond to changes quickly and smoothly. It is used whenever customer requirements are changing dynamically. Agile testing does not lay emphasis on testing procedures, rather focuses on foregoing testing against newly developed code until quality is achieved from an end customer’s view. In other words, in software development companies, the emphasis is shifted from testers to the entire project team working towards desired quality.
The Word ‘Agile’ refers to moving quickly; testers have to understand and adapt to rapid deployment cycles and changes in testing patterns. It involves testing from the customer’s perspective as early as possible, testing early and often as code becomes available and stable enough from module/unit level testing.
Agile testing integrates closely with outsourcing software development. Since software is released often, there is a need to test it often. This is mostly performed by using automated acceptance testing so as to minimize the amount of manual work. Agile Testing moves the project forward by providing information, feedback, and suggestions. Continuous testing is the key to ensure continuous progress. In this type of testing, reusable checklists are used to suggest tests. The focus is on the essence of the test rather than the incidental details. Also, in Agile testing, we test all the time, not just at the end which relieves us from tough test schedules. Buggy software is hard to test and modify; and hence slows down everything. Keeping the code clean helps fix the bugs fast.
In agile testing, no conventional testing practice are applicable to wait until the completion of entire development cycle activities take place, whereas the testing is closely intact with the development and is done in parallel to as and when some part of code is developed.
Agile testing should be as quick as possible to test the parts of the code as soon as they are ready, stable, and final from developer’s unit or module level testing. This is to show the customer a high quality working product at regular short time intervals. So, agile testing is all about custom application development testing placing the customers’ quality & delivery needs for the software in the first place rather than the software vendor’s huge, repetitive testing lifecycle, and the quality strategies. The goal is shifted from “software testing as quality watch” to “a collective team effort towards a demonstrable quality”.
The agile testing drives the concept of “test-driven development” covering basic test cases to even out the main functionality of a requirement, thereby helping the developers to keep an eye on quality from the time of coding, keeping the code clean while covering the critical and fundamental test cases in their unit tests. With the test checklists already available even before the programming of the software starts, the testers are able to reuse them to easily manipulate and update the test cases for manual & automated testing, while managing the on-going requirement changes within the specific time frame.
To find more information on the same, check out software testing.
Q3 TechnologiesWednesday, January 12, 2011
What is 'Software Testing'?
In simple words, Software Testing can be defined as the process of validating and verifying that a software application meets the stated requirements. In any organization, whether offshore software development or mobile software development , Software Testing is a method of identifying faults in the product before it is released. This includes defects in the software code and its execution, as well as any potential gap between what the code is supposed to do and what it actually does. Software Testing can be implemented at any time in the development process. However, most of the test effort occurs after the requirements have been defined and the coding process has been completed.
Software testing is a process that ensures that the new software that will be released will work. Software testing helps the developers to find out whether there are technical problems in particular software before it is released. Software testing also ensures that the software that is being released by its manufacturer has passed standard quality tests. Software testing helps to avoid the hassles and cost that may be caused by faulty software’s that have been released in the market. When software that has not gone through software testing is sold in the market, it is likely to have technical issues that can arise from the software usage. This may have costly result particularly when software is used in applications that are crucial in the operation of business organizations.
There are mainly two types of software testing used by all software testing companies in India and across the globe, Manual testing and Automated testing. Manual software testing generally involves manual interaction with application, and observing the outcomes very carefully. In addition to this, a manual testing allows the tester to execute random testing in comparison to automated testing. However, automated testing is different from manual testing. Automated testing provides you with the facility to run automation against code that changes regularly to identify regressions in a sensible manner. Automated testing provides you the ability to run automation in mainstream scenarios. The latest techniques in software testing increase the quality of software products in a number of ways:
1) reduces the cost of software development services and testing.
2) reduces the time spent on the development of new software products.
3) Improves the software performance. The benefits of using software testing tools directs to increase in team motivation and decrease in the time of testing the application.
Also, learn about Issue tracking software used for software testing. To read more, check out Q3 Technologies Jaipur.
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