Entries Tagged 'Basics of Software testing' ↓

Are you going to start on a new project for testing? Don’t forget to check this Testing Checklist in each and every step of your Project life cycle. List is mostly equivalent to Test plan, it will cover all quality assurance and testing standards.

Testing Checklist:
1 Create System and Acceptance Tests [ ]
2 Start Acceptance test Creation [ ]
3 Identify test team [ ]
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Today I got  interesting question from reader, How testing is carried out in company i.e in practical environment? Those who get just out of college and start for searching the jobs have this curiosity,  How would be the actual working environment in the companies?

Here I focus on software Testing actual working process in the companies. As of now I got good experience of software testing career and day to day testing activities.  So I will try to share more practically rather than theoretically.

Whenever we get any new project there is initial project familiarity meeting. In this meeting we basically discuss on who is client? what is project duration and when is delivery? Who is involved in project i.e manager, Tech leads, QA leads, developers, testers etc etc..?

From the SRS (software requirement specification) project plan is developed. The responsibility of testers is to create software test plan from this SRS and project plan. Developers start coding from the design. The project work is devided into different modules and these project modules are distributed among the developers. In meantime testers responsibility is to create test scenario and write test cases according to assigned modules. We try to cover almost all the functional test cases from SRS.  The data can be maintained manually in some excel test case templates or bug tracking tools.

When developers finish individual modules, those modules are assigned to testers.  Smoke testing is performed on these modules and if they fail this test, modules are reassigned to respective developers for fix. For passed modules manual testing is carried out from the written test cases. If any bug is found that get assigned to module developer and  get logged in bug tracking tool. On bug fix tester do bug verification and regression testing of all related modules. If bug passes the verification it is marked as verified and marked as closed. Otherwise above mentioned bug cycle gets repeated.(I will cover bug life cycle in other post)

Different tests are performed on individual modules and integration testing on module integration. These tests includes Compatibility testing i.e testing application on different hardware, OS versions,  software platform, different browsers etc. Load and stress testing is also carried out according to SRS. Finally system testing is performed by creating virtual client environment. On passing all the test cases test report is prepared and decision is taken to release the product!

So this was a brief outline of process of project life cycle.

Here is detail of each step what testing exactly carried out in each software quality and testing life cycle specified by IEEE and ISO standards:

Review of the software requirement specifications

Objectives is set for the Major releases

Target Date planned for the Releases

Detailed Project Plan is build. This includes the decision on Design Specifications

Develop Test Plan based on Design Specifications

Test Plan : This includes Objectives, Methodology adopted while testing, Features to
be tested and not to be tested, risk criteria, testing schedule, multi-
platform support and the resource allocation for testing.

Test Specifications
This document includes technical details ( Software requirements )
required prior to the testing.

Writing of Test Cases
Smoke(BVT) test cases
Sanity Test cases
Regression Test Cases
Negative Test Cases
Extended Test Cases

Development – Modules developed one by one

Installers Binding: Installers are build around the individual product.

Build procedure :
A build includes Installers of the available products – multiple platforms.

Testing
Smoke Test (BVT)  Basic application test to take decision on further testing

Testing of new features
Cross-platform testing
Stress testing and memory leakage testing.

Bug Reporting
Bug report is created

Development – Code freezing
No more new features are added at this point.

Testing
Builds and regression testing.

Decision to release the product
Post-release Scenario for further objectives.

Recently I read a very interesting article on “All I Ever need to know about testing” by Lee Copeland.
I was so impressed with the concept of our day to day work comparison with the software testing.

I will extract only points related to software testing. As a software tester keep in mind these simple points:

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If you are willing to choose software testing as your career then this is a must read!
Nowadays I get many mails asking me about software testing jobs. Should I select software testing as my career? How to switch to software testing from other job experience? Which institute should I join for testing course? And many more …

I will give a common answer to all these questions whether you should choose software testing as your career or not? Let me first explain in brief about software testing. Software testing and quality control are the processes by means of which application quality is improved. Software testing is done in each phase of product life cycle i.e from requirement specifications , design, coding, to the user acceptance.

Many complex software structures require in depth analytical and technical skill to test the applications. Knowledge of programming languages is required for unit testing, scripting skill essential for Automation testing.

Now we will speak about your career in software testing. No one can guide you choosing your career more than you! Its right and you are the only person to decide your career.
Do self-assessment to figure out where you can fit well. Do study of your skills, interests, strengths, weaknesses.

Ask some questions to your self like:
What is your goal in life?
What will increase your satisfaction and skill?
What is your interest?
Which skills you have developed in your life till now?
Which training you did that can be applied to future job?

By answering these questions you will automatically come to decision.

To switch to software testing career What skills you will require? Is the most important question I think.

In my previous post what makes a good test engineer, I mentioned some of the software testing required skills.

1. Communication: Customer communication as well as team communication most important for this job. Written communication as well!

2. Technical skill: As I mentioned earlier for testing technical domain skill in languages is important.

Some of the Testing skills are:
Project life cycle,
Testing concepts,
Knowledge of testing types,
Programming languages familiarity,
Database concepts,
Test plan idea,
Ability to analyze requirements,
Documentation skill,
Testing tools

3. Leadership quality
4. Analytical and judging skill

Don’t worry if you don’t have some of the skills mentioned above. You can always learn the things if you have interest. Non-IT personas can also grow fast by gaining necessary skills.

So finally selecting testing as your career ask one question to yourself:
Are you looking for career in software testing or just a Job?

Best of luck!

It’s a every testers question. How to be a good tester? Apart from the technical knowledge, testing skills, tester should have some personal level skills which will help them to build a good rapport in the testing team.

What are these abilities , skills which make a tester as a good tester? Well, I was reading Dave Whalen’s article “Ugly Baby Syndrome!” and found it very interesting. Dave compared software developers with the parents who deliver a baby (software) with countless efforts. Naturally the product managers, architectures, Continue reading →

In this post I am gonna give answer to reader’s question.
There was one question asked by Srividya:
Q.What is difference between client server and Web Testing?
Vijay: Well Srividya I would like to add one more testing type i.e Desktop Testing in this discussion. So now we have three testing types Desktop application testing, Client server application testing and Web application testing.

Each one differs in the environment in which they are tested and you will lose control over the environment in which application you are testing, while you move from desktop to web applications.

Desktop application runs on personal computers and work stations, so when you test the desktop application you are focusing on a specific environment. You will test complete application broadly in categories like GUI, functionality, Load, and backend i.e DB.

In client server application you have two different components to test. Application is loaded on server machine while the application exe on every client machine. You will test broadly in categories like, GUI on both sides, functionality, Load, client-server interaction, backend. This environment is mostly used in Intranet networks. You are aware of number of clients and servers and their locations in the test scenario.

Web application is a bit different and complex to test as tester don’t have that much control over the application. Application is loaded on the server whose location may or may not be known and no exe is installed on the client machine, you have to test it on different web browsers. Web applications are supposed to be tested on different browsers and OS platforms so broadly Web application is tested mainly for browser compatibility and operating system compatibility, error handling, static pages, backend testing and load testing.

I think this will have an idea of all three testing environment. Keep in mind that even the difference exist in these three environment, the basic quality assurance and testing principles remains same and applies to all.