What is Software Testing? A Complete Guide with Basic and Advanced Topics

By Sruthy

By Sruthy

Sruthy, with her 10+ years of experience, is a dynamic professional who seamlessly blends her creative soul with technical prowess. With a Technical Degree in Graphics Design and Communications and a Bachelor’s Degree in Electronics and Communication, she brings a unique combination of artistic flair…

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Updated January 21, 2025
Reviewed by Kamila

Reviewed by Kamila

Kamila is an AI-based technical expert, author, and trainer with a Master’s degree in CRM. She has over 15 years of work experience in several top-notch IT companies. She has published more than 500 articles on various Software Testing Related Topics, Programming Languages, AI Concepts,…

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A perfect compilation of the basic as well as advanced concepts of Software Testing. Deeply explore all about the principles, practices and methodologies of Software Testing with simple examples:

Software Testing is one of the important phases in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).

It is a process of analyzing application requirements and identifying the defects in the software programs or the software application, which involves verification and validation of the Specific Requirements (Business & Technical).

Ensuring the quality of the built software application works as per user/customer requirements and is defect free.

Software Testing: All That You Need to Know

What is Software Testing

Verification: Set of tasks/activities to make sure and prove software meets all its specified requirements “at a particular stage of development”. (are we building the product right?).

Validation: Set of different activities to make sure the end product’s expectations are met, which is performed after a given module/ even on completion of the entire product/application (are we building the right product?).

Suggested Read => Verification vs Validation: Explore The Differences with Examples

Basic Software Testing (High-Level Overview)

This is one of the phases in software testing, in which software products are tested manually by a set of test teams.

There are various steps involved in basic software testing, such as

  1. Requirement Gathering/Analysis
  2. Test Plan & Test Case Creation using the Company’s standard templates
  3. Smoke testing & Environment setup
  4. Regression testing
  5. GUI testing
  6. Conducting Usability Testing
  7. Bug Reporting and Retesting
  8. Test Closure Reports

Advanced Software Testing (High-Level Overview)

While both basic and automated testing aim for bug-free releases, rapid technological advancements, and time pressures often make manual testing insufficient for achieving quality products. Hence, Advanced Software testing intervention is unavoidable.

There are different topics involved in Advanced QA services and Advanced software such as

  1. Sprint 0 or 1
  2. Test Automation Frameworks / Company Tools
  3. Automation using REST API
  4. Tools for CI/CD Pipelines and Testing
  5. Compatibility Testing
  6. Interrupt Testing
  7. Load Testing
  8. Stress Testing
  9. Security Testing
  10. AI and Machine Learning in Software Testing [Scriptless (AI) Automation tools &/ (Codeless Automation tools) for end-to-end Testing, which includes Web services, Web Applications, Mobile testing, etc all in one platform called FIREFLINK]

Here are the best practices to test the mobile applications: Interview with John Ray (Tricentis):

Software Testing on Cloud Platforms (High-Level Overview)

This Software Testing on cloud platforms has become one of the modern and essential good practices most organizations are looking forward to due to the cloud platform’s flexibility, wide range of compatibility for standard quality software products, and cost-efficiency, which are achieved at a faster pace.

Some of the well-known best practices followed in Cloud-based testing are:

  1. Automate wherever possible to speed up the testing process and consistency by integrating the automated tests into CI/CD pipelines.
  2. Choosing the Right Cloud Provider. There are various platforms like AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure also, the most popular one BrowserStack.
  3. Cloud-Native Tools, it is always a better option to utilize testing tools that are optimized for Cloud-based environments, so that the tools have the facility to use the cloud’s flexibility efficiently.
  4. Monitoring and Optimizing the costs is also essential here, as the organizations would pay for the services they consume/pay per consumption from the Cloud services.
  5. Security Compliance Assurance, making sure test data on the cloud platforms should compile the regulations such as Encrypting the sensitive data and communication protocols are secure. (GDPR Guidelines, PCI-DSS, etc). PCI-DSS is an acronym for Payment Card Industry-Data Security Standards.

To summarize, there are a lot of Testing Activities (QA Services) to be carried out during the SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) Phase in order to release quality products to markets.

Hence, the Software Testers/Testers/Test Engineers need to thoroughly understand the below concepts/Types of Software testing before implementing them.

Let’s begin by thoroughly understanding the Manual, Automation & Cloud-based Testing Concepts.

There are 2 ways the software can be tested:

  1. Manual Testing: Acceptance Criteria/Test cases are tested manually.
  2. Automated Testing: Acceptance Criteria/Test cases are tested with the help of specific automation tools.

Basic Software Testing Topics

Manual Testing

It is a process of verification and validation of the software application against the requirements specifications. Testers not necessarily be familiar with / know the specific tool to execute the manual test cases. We can prepare the test document and perform the manual testing.

Different Methods of Manual Testing

These are also called different Testing Techniques: White Box testing, Black-Box testing, and Grey Box testing.

Types of Software Testing

Apart from the above 2 ways of Software Testing, manual software testing can be categorized into 3 types, such as

  • White Box Testing
  • Black Box Testing
  • Grey Box Testing
Types of Manual Testing

White Box Testing

In White-Box testing, the Developers will inspect every line of code before they hand it over to the testing team or designated QA team. White box testing is also called transparent box testing, glass box testing, structural testing, clear box testing, and open box testing.

Black Box Testing

In Black Box Testing, the Test Engineers will analyze the software requirements of an application and identify any defects, track them, and assign them to the respective development team.

Once the fix is given by the development team, test engineers will carry out one more round of re-testing and make sure the defect is fixed and works as per the requirements. (i.e, Business needs and Customer requirements are met)

Further Black Box testing has 2 levels of testing:

  1. Functional Testing
  2. Non-Funtional Testing

Functional Testing

Here, Test Engineers will carry out systematic checks against the requirements specifications, which is also known as Component testing. The main emphasis is on the application’s requirements specifications rather than the real code, hence the testers will carry out the testing on given the value and defined output and validate the actual output with the expected value.

Functional Testing can also be classified into 3 types:

1) Unit Testing: This is the first level of functional testing wherein the testers will test independent modules of an application’s functionality.

2) Integration Testing: This is the second level of functional testing. Once the unit testing is implemented successfully, we are going to Integration testing.

Integration testing is also further divided into 2 parts:

  1. Incremental Testing: Incremental integration testing is again classified into 2 types:
    • Top-down Incremental Integration Testing
    • Bottom-up Incremental Integration Testing
  2. Non-Incremental Testing

3) System Testing: Once the Unit and Integration testing are done, next proceeding to System Testing,

Here, end-to-end testing is carried out where the test environment is parallel to the production environment, i.e. analyzing the system as a whole work according to the business requirements.

Non-Functional Testing

The other part of Black Box Testing is Non-Functional Testing, which provides detailed information on the software performance and the technologies used.

This Non-Functional testing has 3 types:

1. Performance Testing: Performance testing is classified into the following types:

  • Load Testing
  • Stress Testing
  • Scalability Testing
  • Stability Testing
TypesOfPerformanceTesting

Test Engineers will test and focus on several aspects by applying some load, i.e. Response Time, Load, Scalability, and Stability.

2. Usability Testing: Analyzing the user-friendliness of an application’s requirements and identifying any bugs in the software’s requirements/ end-user interface. i.e, the application is easy-to-understand meets the end user’s specifications, and is visible on the built application.

The application’s look and ease of use should be pleasant to the end-users.

3. Compatibility Testing: Here we check the functionality of the application’s requirements in specific hardware and software environments. Once the functionality of the Software application is stable, we go for the Compatibility testing. i.e,

Software means different Operating Systems and different browsers, whereas hardware is of different sizes.

Grey Box Testing

The last part of the Manual testing includes both White Box and Black Box testing. This Grey Box testing is performed by someone who knows Coding as well as Testing, as it includes having access to internal coding for designing the test cases.

GreyBoxTesting

How to Perform the Manual Testing/Manual Testing Process

PerformManualTesting

There are different steps involved to carry out the manual testing, such as,

1. Requirements Gathering: Using the requirements analysis step, all the requirements are understood, and know what is expected behavior and what to test.

2. Creation of draft test cases that will cover all requirements mentioned in SRS/Project documentation.

3. The tester needs to review test cases with the team leader and with the client if required, to identify any glitches and correct them before executing these test cases.

4. An appropriate test environment is chosen to execute once the test cases are ready.

Every test case will have the status, like this:

  • Passed: The test case works as expected.
  • Failed: Test cases’ actual and expected results do not match.
  • Skipped: Due to limitations, some test cases cannot be executed or cannot be completed.

5. During test execution, if any bugs are noticed are logged immediately to take timely actions, i.e. to report the identified bugs assign them to the developer, and submit the bug report.

6. The final step is to create the detailed Test Report which includes detailed information on how many bugs are found, how many test cases need to be re-run, how many are skipped, and how many test cases failed. Once the fix is provided by developers, testers need to re-test and work until closure of the defect.

Roles and Responsibilities of a Software Tester

A Tester needs to analyze the SRS &/BRDs, System Requirements Specifications, and understand the necessary steps involved in this testing process:

  1. Determine the testing estimations.
  2. Understanding and preparing the test plan.
  3. Collaborate on the test data/test cases.
  4. Execution and identifying the defects if any in the software.
  5. Reporting the identified defects immediately and taking timely actions once the fix is given by developers and work until closure of the defects.
  6. Carry out regression testing.
  7. Attending Retrospective meetings on SDLC processes.
  8. Delivering support to customers for testing the software/conducting UAT.
  9. Continuous support is provided after the implementation is completed.

Difference Between a Bug and a Defect

Bug: If there exists a fault in the program or fault in the coding error is called a Bug. These bugs arise as a result of human mistakes, made by people either in its design or the program’s source code. Typically, these bugs will not stop the program from performing the intended tasks.

Defect: Software defect is nothing but deviation from the Requirements as stated in the SRS or end-user specifications. This is caused by errors in coding to malfunction the behavior of specific features and cause unexpected results. Typically, this could be hardware, network issues, performance, software, or format.

Conclusion: A defect does not necessarily mean there is a bug in the coding. It could be a feature not implemented but is defined in the requirements specification of software/SRS documentation.

A Bug is the result of a coding error; a Defect is a deviation from the Requirement Specifications.

What are Testing Artifacts

  • Test Basis
  • Test Case Specifications
  • Test Scenarios
  • Defect/Bug Report

1. Test basis is the foundation for building the test cases in the testing process, meaning it is one of the activities during the testing phase Test Analysis, and design.

The most possible Test basis Testers need to be aware of are:

  • SRS Documentation (Software Requirements Specifications)
  • FDS (Functional Design Specification)
  • TDS (Technical Design Specification
  • If there are any User Manuals provided to the test team and Use Cases
  • Go through BRDs if there are any provided.

The team can access everything through shared documents. A Test Plan document that outlines the approaches, scope, schedules for the testing team, and resource allocations.

2. Test Case Specifications document: this is a detailed summary of scenarios that are tested during the testing phase, how they will be tested, and how often these need to be tested for given requirement features.

The purpose is to identify the required inputs and expected outputs and determine the step-by-step guidelines for pass/ fail criteria.

This test case specification is nothing but exact steps setting up and test data inputs for a single test case.

Hence, the collection of all Test Case Specifications is a Test Plan, which is a high-level summary of what should be tested during the testing phase.

Examples of Test Case Specifications may include:

  • Test Case Objective/Purpose
  • Test Requirement/ Test Item
  • Input Specification/Action to be taken
  • Output Specification/Expected result of an action
  • Environment Setup/software, Software tools, etc

3. Test Scenario: Any functionality of a given feature that can be tested is called Test Scenario, ie, the Test is to verify or validate the whereas Scenario can be any user journey, hence the name Test Scenario is to verify the user journey. (High-Level overview of what to test).

Test Engineers/Testers must have good Domain knowledge and understanding of the business functional requirements of an application, understand the project workflow, compare with wireframes if provided, and map same to the requirement specifications as these are crucial in business since all the test cases are derived from these Test Scenarios.

Example:

Test Scenario #1: Validate any login page flow

TestCase1: Input Valid credentials (Username & Password)
TestCase2: Reset Password
TestCase3: Input invalid username and password

Defect/ Bug Report: This document is the list of issues found during the testing phase.

Once the bug is found, it has to go through the Bug Life Cycle steps:

  1. Bug Identification: When the issue is noticed is called Bug Identification during the testing phase.
  2. Bug Report: The defect needs to be tracked with its severity, priority, steps to reproduce/Actions taken to cause that issue, and environment details. All these will go into the bug report.
  3. Bug Fixing: Testers may provide additional logs and screenshots upon developers’ request during triage and developers will work on giving the fix for issues found in this step.
  4. Bug Verifications: Testers will start working on re-testing the fixed issues.
  5. Bug Closure: If the re-test passed the test, the fix is confirmed and testers need to mark these issues as closed.

Agile Testing

Agile Methodology: The testing phase or STLC(Software Testing Life Cycle) will be integrated with the Agile Development process with continuous feedback and retrospectives and testing with shorter iterations(Sprint cycles).

Agile testing also includes TDD and BDD which will be covered in Advanced Topics.

Different Test Design Techniques

  1. Equivalence Partitioning: Dividing input data sets into valid and invalid partitions for testing purposes.
  2. Boundary Value Analysis: The main focus is on testing the boundary values between partitions/ data sets.
  3. Decision Table Testing: This type of technique /Tests for combinations of inputs by mapping them in a decision table.
  4. State Transition Testing: This evaluates the behavior of the software application as it transitions between different states of the data inputs.

Test Metrics and KPIs

The influence of QA on Software Release Cycles comprises various stages, development, testing, deployment, and tracking of an application.

Organizations often look to speed up the release cycles while keeping the quality of an application at a decent level. Documentation of release plans will make sure everyone involved in the project is on the same page, which includes goals, expectations, quality of software, and roles of all the participants.

Improving upon efficiency and cost-effectiveness of testing processes is very important in evaluating Software Quality. This is when the Test Metrics come into the picture, without which measuring the software quality would be challenging.

QA Test Metrics

  • Software Test Metrics are the standards used in QA teams to assess the quality of the software projects.
  • Testing Metrics can be classified into 2 groups, Absolute and Derivative.
  • An Absolute QA Metric is measured almost immediately once we have access to the test data, whereas Derivative QA Matrice would require some calculations using tried and tested methods
  • Key QA Metrics /Absolute metrics include:
    • Number of Test Cases Created
    • Number of Test Cases Passed
    • Number of Test Cases Failed
    • Number of defects identified
    • Number of Critical Bugs
  • Derivative Matrices are a bit complex and they usually require more than one piece of data to calculate, for example.
    • Mean Time to detect issues
    • Mean Time to repair
    • Test reliability (Consistent measurement)
    • Defect density
    • Escaped Defects found
  • There are some other metrics mostly used by QA Engineers and Department Heads to evaluate and improve technical testing aspects. Some of them are crucial for business insights, such as,
    • Test Coverage
    • Test reliability
    • Time to test
    • Time to Fix
    • Escaped Defects

Suggested Read => Software Test Metrics and Measurements

QA KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)

Although both Metrics and KPIs are quantitative measures,

QA Metrics are used to measure the effectiveness of the testing process as-is at any stage during the testing phase and dependent on any specific condition.

QA KPIs are always linked to the initial goals and objectives set up before the testing process has begun.

Hence, Metrices are used on their own and calculated, but KPIS are always tied up to initial goals for comparisons.

Other Types of Software Testing Terms

In software testing, some other types of testing terms are required, while testing any software or an application that testers need to be familiar with, are,

#1) Smoke Testing: This type of testing is carried out during the development/building of the software.

The main objective of the smoke testing is to analyze the workflow of core features of the application, and whether or not the build is stable and testable. Testing is carried out on basic and critical features before diving into deep positive, negative and any edge cases testing.

Here we only check/ focus on the positive scenarios flow in the application and no invalid data testing will take place, hence it is also called Build Verification testing.

#2) Sanity Testing: Sanity checks are done on the Stable Builds of the built software. Usually quick and basic testing is involved not detailed tests are carried out to make sure the code changes are working properly without any major bugs.

This test is carried out after the Smoke tests and is also a subset of Regression testing. Sanity testing should be conducted when there are minor code changes, after bug fixes, when received after a certain number of regressions, and before production release/deployment.

#3) Regression Testing: Regression testing is one of the black-box testing techniques in software testing, used to make sure software applications are working fine with the introduction of new features/functionality, any bug fixes, and or any new enhancements to existing features.

Regression testing can be done on new builds whenever major changes to existing functionality/features have occurred, to make sure the existing functionality is intact/not broken. Regression Testing most often is automated.

When to perform this Regression testing?

Regression testing is performed whenever the production code is modified.

For example,

  • Whenever new functionality is added to the application
  • When there is a change in Requirement /any Enhancements features are requested
  • When there is a bug fix
  • When there is a performance issues been fixed

How are test cases selected for Regression testing?

It is always not an easy task to select a Regression test it’s an art.

This can be done by:

  1. Test scenarios /test case which has frequent defects
  2. Test scenarios /Test cases that verify the core features of the product
  3. Features/Functionality of an application that is more visible to end users
  4. All the integration points test cases of an application
  5. All Complex scenarios
  6. A set of sample test cases that are successful.
  7. Boundary Value test cases and failed test cases

What are the essential tools used for Regression Testing?

If any software changes frequently it’s bound to increase the testing costs! In this case, automation testing is the best choice. The time required for automation depends on the number of test cases that are going to be successively reused in future regression cycles/regression packs and skilled testers to use the automation tools.

Some of the essential tools used for Regression testing are:

  1. Selenium Web Driver (for UI level regression test for web-based applications using Java programming language)
  2. QTP (Quick Test Professional) – (Record, Play, and Stop) This tool is used mainly for Regression and Functional testing. It is a Data-Driven and Keyword-Based tool.
  3. Latest AI tool called FIREFLINK (an all-in-one platform for test automation for desktop, web, mobile, web services/API apps)

Many more are available in evolving technology; above listed ones are a couple of them widely used in organizations.

#4) User Acceptance Testing (UAT): This UAT is a type of software testing that is performed by the domain experts and customers before accepting the final product, to validate whether the application has met all the business scenarios and real-time scenarios are working as per their expectations.

Here domain experts of customers will focus mainly on those scenarios and features that are frequently and/or likely to be accessed regularly by their end-users or customers.

Although the application has gone through all 3 phases of testing, Unit Testing, integration, and System testing, there are bound to be minor errors that are identified when the system as a whole is used by the end users in actual scenarios, Hence this UAT squeezes all the testing activities and tested as single test environment as a final product.

NOTE: This UAT will be carried out in a separate environment at the customer’s site known as the UAT environment, and testing is carried out by a separate team who are domain experts and know the application well, also in point of end-users perspectives.

Essential steps are taken during UAT testing, such as:

  • Requirements Analysis
  • Test Plan Creation
  • Test Case Designing
  • Test Case Execution
  • Confirmation of Objecties

#5) Exploratory Testing: Exploratory Testing (ET) is also a type of Manual Software Testing that comes under the black-box testing techniques where an interactive, creative, think-out-of-the-box approach is involved in exploring the software application to identify the defects.

For example: An E-Commerce website——–1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

Usually, testers execute the tests based on their domain knowledge, experience, and expertness which helps in identifying the defects quickly gathering feedback about an application, and taking timely actions to fix them before releases. ET allows to adjust the approaches as and when they explore the software application.

This is also one of the valuable testing techniques which helps in improving the quality of the Software.

There are some typical stages involved in Exploratory testing, such as,

  1. Preparation: Understanding the User Interfaces(UI), target audience, and business goals. Researching user stories and requirements documents is a crucial bit here.
  2. Test Execution: Think like an end-user and session-based approaches are used
  3. Learning and Adopting: Continuous learning and refining the strategies
  4. Defect Reporting: Detailed bug reporting for all encountered issues with clear details on steps to reproduce, area/ environment details, and expected actual, and screenshots & Logs if required.
  5. Test Documentation: Although Exploratory testing is less structured, documenting the findings, insights, and test scenarios are crucial part as this helps in continuous improvement and knowledge of the application’s future testing.
  6. Review and KT (Knowledge Sharing) sessions: after each testing session, testers participate in sharing their experiences and insights and any valuable findings which help in the collaboration of the team to improve and gain knowledge of an application

#6) Ad hoc Testing: Ad hoc testing is the type of software testing also known as Monkey or Gorilla testing, which is performed without any predetermined test documentation or test plan hence it is not something that can be automated. But in case there is a need to execute these manual test cases following testing automated tools can be used, ie, Selenium’s Web Driver, Test Rail, and Cucumber tool for BDD(Behaviour-Driven development tool).

This ad hoc testing is beneficial in finding out the defects that are not captured during the structured testing phase/processes or overlooked ones and trying any edge case scenarios.

Although it does not adhere to formal standard processes, thorough and adequate preparation is required before beginning this process.

This ad hoc testing is mostly carried out once the product is released to the market and only if time permits, here by not following any sequences in executions or random testing is carried out to identify the issues and make sure the software is thoroughly tested.

#7) Security Testing: Security testing is used to find out any risks, weaknesses, and potential vulnerabilities in the software application so that the built software won’t stop working abruptly. It also helps to identify possible threats from outsiders and to help programmers to handle issues effectively.

There is a proper Procedure / Principle followed in this type of testing.

While performing Security testing on web applications there are some key areas to concentrate on, they are:

  • System Software Security: Operating Systems (OS), Database System(DB), etc
  • Network Security: Any network structure weaknesses, namely policies and resources.
  • Server-Side Application Security: To ensure server-side encryption and tools used are sufficient in protecting the software.
  • Client-Side Application Security: Ensure any intruders are not operating on any browsers/tools used by customers.

Security testing can be performed on both manual testing and automation testing to scan for any vulnerability and/or unwanted file modifications on web-based applications, networks, file systems, and websites. This risk assessment is opted for in most organizations depending on the structured systems they use to protect from hackers’ attacks and vulnerabilities.

#8) Globalization Testing: This is another type of software testing used to test the software that is built for multiple languages/regions across the globe. Example: Google.com supports most of the languages, Hindi to English or English to Spanish.

To check the below conditions we go for this type of testing:

  • To verify the content is in the right and displayed at the right places.
  • To verify the content is displayed in chosen languages.
  • To verify overall product quality after changing the languages.

#9) Database Testing: A Database is a collection of data stored in an organized structure. Database Testing is a type of software testing that checks the data integrity, and consistency of schema, triggers, tables, etc. also involves creating complex queries to load and review the database responsiveness.

This type of Database testing comes under Back-end testing and testers need to be familiar with the database structure and business rules of the applications. Database tests can be fully automated, or done manually or hybrid approaches can be taken for testing processes.

Database testing ensures that the data stored in the database is accurate, reliable, and consistent, which is essential for the integrity and functionality of software applications that may rely on the data.

Database testing is important for below main reasons:

  • Helps to save data loss.
  • Ensures the data received and stored in the database to valid or not(Validates).
  • Ensure the database’s efficiency, performance, and security.

Database Testing can be categorized into 3 types:

  1. Structured Testing
  2. Functional Testing
  3. Non-Functional Testing

A sample example of how the database can be tested manually is as follows:

  1. Area preparation/ Environment setup
  2. Execution of a test
  3. Review the outcome of the results
  4. Confirm the results against the expected
  5. Documentation and address any identified defects or any database-related queries.

[read_more]

Advanced Software Testing Topics

Automation Testing

Manual testing is mostly suitable for usability testing & Ad-hoc testing.

Automation testing is the most significant phase of Software Testing, which uses specific tools to automate manual test cases with the help of specific tools/frameworks. Automation testing is the best method to increase test coverage, and regression testing and to enhance productivity and efficiency. Also used to re-run the test scenarios that are repeatedly done for instance login functionality etc.

When to go for Automation Testing?

Usually, we go for automation when various releases and several regressions are carried out on the application or built software to boost the product’s /application’s productivity, as we cannot write the test scripts and or perform the automation testing without understanding the programming languages and about the test area preparation using the automation testing tools & frameworks.

Different topics come under Advanced Software Testing, which focuses on methodologies and tools /Frameworks to scale the software quality.

Different Types of Test Automation Frameworks

Behaviour-Driven Development Tools (BDD): To have collaboration across business stakeholders, developers, and testers tools like Cucumber with Gherkin language or Spec Flow tools have been used as Hybrid testing frameworks that use the Natural language for writing the tests/test scenarios/ features

Selenium Web Driver with Java Programming language is also a popular one for Web UI automation.

  • Keyword Driven Testing: Series of keywords with respective actions of an application ID defined in test cases.
  • Data-Driven Testing (DDT): External data files like CSV files, and Excel are used by testers to run test cases with different inputs.
  • Hybrid Testing Framework: In this type of framework, to have optimized scalability and flexibility use the combined features of the frameworks, such as keyword-driven and Data-driven frameworks.

Tools for Continuous Integration (CI/CD Pipelines and Testing)

  • CI /CD Tools and Testing: Testing tools like Selenium, Appium, Junit, and FireFlink (AI tool) can be integrated with integration tools like Jenkins, GitLab, Travis, etc for Continuous integration(CI/CD pipelines) the testing process in automation testing process, ie automatically testing of software for each code commits.
  • CI-Continuous Integration
  • CD-Continuous Development

API Testing of the Application

API is Application Programming interface testing is also one type of software testing that involves confirming APIs are working as expected. ie, APIs function is working as expected, returns expected status codes/responses adhering to the standards.

API testing can either be manually tested or can be automated. Manual Testing of API involves sending the requests to an interface and validating responses. Automated Testing of an API involves using specialized tools to send requests and validate the responses.

Different API tools are used to test these API endpoints, such as Postman, Rest Assured, JMeter, and SoapUI.

AI and Machine Learning (ML)

What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?

AI is the simulation of the intelligence through the machines that are programmed to perform certain tasks and need special cognitive abilities namely decision-making, data analysis, learning, deep learning, and adopting new pieces of information, including Natural Language Processing (NLP).

What is AI in Testing?

AI Testing is a process that helps to evaluate the reliability, functionality, and performance of a system under test. These AI techniques have drastically improved upon some core technologies used in traditional software testing.

AI and ML (Machine Learning technologies/techniques would help the automation frameworks to adapt to the changes in the software application under test, which would automatically update the testing scripts whenever the UI elements are changed. This means in software testing AL and ML technologies have been integrated into many different phases, leveraging human-level decision capabilities.

Without any doubt, AI and ML have changed the way we think regarding Software testing, where many ranges of technologies are AI-augmented and cannot be ignored at all.

Overall, AI and ML in Software testing have been leveraging the QA game to the next phase.

Cross-Browser and Device Testing

In Cross-browser testing we ensure that the web applications function properly across different browsers like Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc.

In Cross-Device testing we ensure that consistency is maintained on various devices like mobile, desktop, and tablets. Different tools or Cloud Platforms are used for these cross devices and cross browsers testing such as Lambda Test, SuaceLabs, and BrowserStack.

Test Environments and Management of These Environments

There are certain testing areas/environments such as Development, QA, Staging, Pre-Prod, and Production wherein the testing activities are to be carried out. Hence coordinating and managing these environments is the test environment management.

Popular tools like Kubernetes and Docker are used to create isolated, scalable environments for testing purposes and or integrated with Testing activities.

There are always challenges to managing these configurations, any dependencies involved, and making sure the environments are up to date with that of the production area.

Exploratory Testing and Available Tools

Exploratory testing is not scripted, it is manual software testing where software testers will carry out testing without pre-defined test cases and no prior experience on the software application.

Testers here straight away jump to testing with spontaneous decisions on what to test on the fly, adopting and learning on the go. There is structured session-based testing where testers work on time-limited/time-boxed sessions and the testing activity findings are documented.

Exploratory testing shares similarities with Ad-hoc testing too with minor differences between their approaches to testing.

Different tools used for these are Rapid Reporter and Testpad.

Performance Testing and Performance Engineering

Performance Testing is a subset of performance Engineering. As a part of post-development quality assurance, load testing is carried out which involves checking the speed, reliability response time, stability, and scalability of an application under test.

Performance engineering is integrated with performance testing during the development process which focuses on optimization and designing from the start of the SDLC.

Various popular tools used for performance engineering, Apache JMeter, Load Runner, BlazeMeter, etc.

Performance Testing is mainly done on quality checks of the application’s responsiveness and load handling while Performance Engineering focuses on end-to-end optimization via continuous testing and monitoring sessions/process.

Software Testing on Cloud Services

The word Cloud is nothing but computing services like software, hardware, databases, servers, networking, storage, and analytics delivery over the internet.

Cloud computing provides flexible resources maintenance, and scalable and innovative solutions, where organizations typically pay for the services, they use for infrastructure maintenance.

Some of the commonly used examples of Cloud Services are:

  • Microsoft 365
  • Calendar
  • Google Docs, Dropbox
  • Gmail
  • Skype
  • Zoom
  • WhatsApp

For clarity of the terms used,

Cloud Services, refers to the platforms like AWS.

Cloud Computing refers to the services provided by the platforms called Cloud Service Platforms.

Popularly in-demand Cloud Computing Service Providers are:

  • Microsoft Azure: Running tests, cost management, usage monitoring, also integrating with CI/CD pipelines effectively for continuous Testing.
  • AWS-Amazon Web Services (AWS): For Load and security testing, also provides services like web and mobile app testing with other EC2 instances and helps in building the test environments
  • Google Cloud Platform(GCP): For automated scripts running and provides tools to simulate the various tests across various platforms and devices.
  • Applause: It is one of the popular crowd-sourced test platforms providing real-world criteria/scenarios and getting feedback from various testers involved across the globe on real devices.
  • Sauce Labs: Continuous integration support for web and mobile applications testing with cross-browser testing facilities.
  • Lambda Test: This cloud-based platform allows the live and automated testing of the web on different devices and browsers.
  • Browser Stack: this cloud-based platform provides real-time browsers and device testing environments on the cloud specifically for cross-device and cross-browser testing.

Example: NETFLIX uses AWS video streaming services to stream its shows, and movies, which are accessed throughout the world.

Further, these Cloud services are classified into 3 major types, such as,

  • SaaS (Software As A Service)
  • PaaS (Platform As A Service)
  • IaaS (Infrastructure As A Service)

Agile Process and Jira Tool

Agile is a methodology and Jira is a Tool, both serve different purposes in SDLC (Software development Life Cycle). Agile is a methodology while Jira is a tool to implement and track that methodology in real-time projects.

In summary, Agile is (HOW the approach) and Jira is (WHAT tool is used to implement that approach/methodology on projects).

Let us elaborate on the concepts involved in the Agile Process.

Agile Process

Agile means nothing but being swift. So Agile Model is an approach to the SDLC.

Agile is one of the project management and Software Development Life cycle methodologies that emphasizes on effective collaboration, customer satisfaction, and flexibility.

This involves an iterative development process wherein requirements and solutions provide progress through collaborating with cross-functional teams. Also encourages planning in the development evolves, and helps in early delivery iteratively with continuous improvements, feedback from collaborative teams as well as Customer satisfaction feedback.

There are different Phases involved in the Agile process model, such as

  1. Gather requirements
  2. Design gathered requirements
  3. Iterations
  4. Quality assurance testing
  5. Deployment phase
  6. Feedback sessions
AgileModelProcess

There are key methodologies/methods in the Agile Testing process, such as,

1. Scrum

Scrum is one type of Agile methodology, which involves:

  • Sprint: There are iterations involved in the project’s progress check which are Time-boxed.
  • Roles: Different roles are involved here, namely Product Owner, Scrum Master and Development Team, (QA)Quality Assurance Team.
  • Artifacts: Here, there is a Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, and Incremental Cycles for the current working software
  • Ceremonies: It involves Sprint Planning Sessions, Daily Standups, Sprint Review Sessions, and Retrospectives.

2. Kanban: It is one of the Agile methodologies where there is continuous delivery and any time-boxed iterations are not there.

3. Lean Development: Involves improving the existing flow and working on only what is necessary for the delivery of the software.

4. Extreme Programming (XP) Extreme Programming focuses on pair programming, Test-Driven Development also known as TDD continuous integration (CI), and Continuous Testing. At times Refactoring is also carried out by development teams.

JIRA Tool

Jira tool is one of the Atlassian Products developed by Atlassian, popularly used for Project management to implement the Agile methodology. This platform is used to plan, track releases, and report on software developments.

The amazing thing about this tool is that it can be customized to other Agile methodologies like Kanban, and Scrum and can be integrated with other tools too in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).

To install the JIRA Tool, follow the steps from this link

Sample Jira dashboard looks as shown in the image below:

JiraDashboard

[image source]

There are main key features of this JIRA tool, such as,

1. Project Tracking and Issue Tracking: In Jira, larger projects can be broken down into manageable tasks. The specific terms used here are Epics, Stories, Tasks, Sub-Tasks and Bugs. Bugs can also be customized to Issue Types based on project needs.

2. Agile Boards: Agile Boards contains 2 subcategories:

  • Scrum Boards: Different columns are present and they represent status as ‘To DO’, ‘In Progress’, and ‘Done’ where these Scrum boards are utilized to manage the tasks/work within the project within the Sprint cycles.
  • Kanban Boards: Since the Kanban process is not time-boxed Sprints, different items are delivered as CD(Continuous Delivery) pipelines.

3. Sprints: Jira supports the Sprints boards and Sprint progress so that it is convenient for the Scrum masters and or Project managers to track each ticket’s progress/status track their overall progress and visualize the project status.

4. Backlog Management: Here, Backlog Management has 2 separate items, product backlog and sprint planning.

  • Product Backlog: Here Product Owner will prioritize which items to work on, prioritized accordingly which includes, Epics, Stories, Tasks, Sub-Tasks, and bugs.
  • Sprints Planning To accomplish the tasks in current sprints, Backlog items will be adjusted or moved to current Sprints (Scrum).

5. Customization of Workflow: Various issue types can be customized in the Jira tool, for example, Story, Tasks/Sub-tasks, and Bug, defining their transitions and states, for example, Todo -> In Progress -> Done.

6. Roadmaps: Roadmaps help to manage the timelines and any dependencies involved between Spics and Stories, accordingly visualized and worked in the current sprints.

7. Reporting and Analytics: Under this Reporting and Analytics, we have the following:

  • Sprint burndown chart and Project scope burn-up chart.
  • Velocity Charts, here show the past Sprints details like the amount of work that has been completed, and the based on which the future capacity in the team is weighed.

8. Automation phase and Continuous Integration: Here Jira tools can be integrated with various tools such as Confluence for team documentation /knowledge sharing purposes, Slack for team communication for effective collaboration, GitHub for the continuous automation scripts/ source code writing, and Jenkins for the CI /CD pipelines

Advantages of Using JIRA in Agile Process

  • Customization is supported for Workflows, Permissions, Fields, and Issue Types to adapt to different teams’ demands.
  • Transparency, here Jira shows every activity of how the project progresses, as the Jira board is available for all team members involved in the project, also shows who is working on which task/ticket and the status of those tickets.
  • Tracking and Reporting features help in evaluating the team’s efforts /performance and working out their efficiency.
  • Collaboration, Jira encourages linking the tasks, sub-tasks, issues related to particular feature tickets, and comments on the issues which gives teams centralized communication.
  • Integration, Jira seamlessly integrates with other DevOps, development, and testing tools for software development, deployments, and delivery efficiently.

Example of JIRA Workflow in Scrum

  1. Product Backlog Creation: Product backlog is used by the Product owners. In Jira, Product Owners(PO) prioritize Epics, User Stories Tasks & Sub-Tasks in Product backlogs.
  2. Sprint Planning Session: Project Managers along with teams, select the set of tickets from the Backlog required and move them to the Sprint Backlog for upcoming iterations or the Sprint cycle.
  3. Tracking Progresses: During the current Sprint, teams will mark their respective tasks’ status and mark them accordingly on the Scrum Board, for example: ‘In Progress to Done’, ‘In progress to Blocked’, etc.
  4. Sprint Review Session: The completed set of tasks is demonstrated and reviewed by Product Owners at the end of each Sprint Cycle.
  5. Sprint Retrospective Sessions: To analyze their work’s performance in the sprint cycle teams make use of Jira’s Sprint report and these are discussed collectively and collective feedbacks are taken for any improvements in the next Sprint.

Differences Between the JIRA Tool and Agile Process

Jira Tool and Agile process model serve different purposes in the project and software development life cycle.

#1) Agile has multiple frameworks, such as Scrum with Sprints and Backlogs and Kanban with Work In Progress (WIP) and continuous flow. It is a Project management methodology in iterative development, responsiveness to any changes in between, and customer Collaboration. The purpose is to improve the efficiency and flexibility of the software project management which emphasizes on core values and principles to be adopted.

The scope of Agile methodology can be adapted to any kind of project which emphasizes team collaboration, improvements on iterations, and Customer Feedback. Matrices and Reporting: Agile methodology practices involve velocity tracking, flow charts, and burn-down charts to measure the project’s progress.

#2) Jira Tool supports the above Agile frameworks, which provide boards like Scrum Board and Kanban board to help teams to understand and visualize stages of workflow daily tasks. Jira is a software tool that helps teams manage projects, and tasks are tracked to implement Agile methodologies like Scrum and Kanban.

The purpose is to provide a platform for organizing the tasks and tracking them on whether work is done by teams in an Agile framework. This includes backlogs, sprint stories, tasks, and tracking.

The scope of the Jira tool is for Software project management tools designed specifically for agile-related projects and rarely used for non-agile projects too. Matrices and Reporting: Jira has built-in matrices and reporting charts, namely Velocity Charts, Burn-down charts, and flow diagrams to measure the performance and progress in Agile projects.

When to go for the Agile process?

  • When Project development has a highly qualified and experienced team available.
  • Whenever frequent changes are required on the current project or multiple projects need proper planning.
  • Often, the Customer/Client is ready to collaborate all the time with the software application development team members involved.

Advantages of the Agile Process

  • Can have frequent communication with clients directly.
  • Frequent Delivery of the built software in iterations.
  • Changes/Enhancements are acceptable anytime.
  • Development total time is reduced.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What are the 7 Principles of Software Testing?

The most crucial aspect of Software Development is Software Testing to ensure at most efficiency of any software product and hence to adhere to the processes and methodologies, ISTQB (International Software Testing Qualifications Board) suggests these below-mentioned 7 Principles of testing:

• Testing will show the presence of Defects, not their absence: The main goal is to make the software fail and this in turn reduces the software defects. But cannot assure on the 100% bug-free, it can only reduce the presence of defects.
Early Testing saves time and money: Testing activities should begin as early in the requirements analysis phase in the Software Development Cycle (SDLC). This will save money/can be cost-efficient.
• Defects Clustering Together: Modules involved in the Software development are more complex particularly if the legacy code is involved too. In any project, a smaller number of Modules can have more defects detected. Per Pareto Principle for Software Testing Versions states that 80% of are found in 20% of the modules being tested.
Pesticide Paradox Awareness: This principle states that if the same number of test cases are tested repeatedly it is likely that the new defects will not be revealed.
The name is based on the theory, ie, when crops are exposed to pesticides continuously, insects build immunity hence to combat testers must always review and revise their test cases library to include some additional/new test cases to find out new bugs.
Here, experienced Testing teams will make sure to add their approaches and test techniques by modifying or adding new scenarios for the test team’s efficiency.
• Testing is Context-dependent: Testing will require specific types of approaches as the testing will very much depend on the “Context”. For example, an application designed for an e-commerce website will be very different from the one used for the cruise industry application design.
• Exhaustive Testing is almost impossible: The process of testing by providing all the edge case scenarios, all possible invalid and valid scenarios, and also with any pre-conditions involved is called Exhaustive testing.
As per principle, Exhaustive Testing is impossible simply means that this type of testing would take unlimited efforts which is the ineffective way and may fall outside the project’s timelines.
Instead of testing unlimited test cases, skilled testing team experts would choose the specific test combinations and different testing techniques, for identifying the specific test case combinations and risk assessment for the optimal testing efforts.
• Absence-of-Errors is a Fallacy: This means that identification and fixing of the defects is almost useless if the tested software does not meet the client’s requirements. Hence Testing is not only to discover the defects or errors but is used to assess against the business requirements are being met along the way and the system behaves as intended by end users.
These widely identified guidelines would help testers in improvement on their efficiency and effectiveness, also these are the key principles that are the foundation for any good testing process.

2. What is advanced software testing?

• In Advanced Software Testing, the main focus here is on high-level testing & understanding deeper complex application systems, risk-based testing, specialized test design techniques, methodologies, different automation tools/frameworks, and as well as cloud platform solutions which help organizations maintain their high degree standards and quality in resolving issues like security, scalability, flexibility, continuous delivery along with cost efficiency.
• Concepts involved here are beyond the basic functional or manual software testing process.

3. What are the 7 pillars of QA?

The 7 Pillars of QA are the key principles for building a robust QA process to ensure high-quality software products.
These 7 pillars would help QA teams in the initial setting up of process and automation frameworks to align the software development phase with the client’s expectations, identify the defects earlier or to prevent them from occurring, and overall quality improvement.

Commonly used 7 pillars are:

1. Test strategy
2. Test Planning
3. Test Design
4. Test Execution
5. Defect Management
6. Test Environment management
7. Continuous Improvement (Retrospectives)

Adhering to these above-mentioned pillars, QA teams can build the foundational QA process in place where testing teams can continuously improve their efficiency, adopting new challenges, delivering secure -reliable, and top-niche performing software products.

3. What is API and how to test it?

API: stands for Application Programming Interface.

• API is in simple terms, is type of software interface that provides a connection between computer programs /components that offer services to another piece of software.
•API Endpoint is a set of rules, tools, protocols, and definitions that allows the software applications to communicate with each other by sending requests and performing some operations over the servers.
These are widely used in Web Services, for example- RESTful APIs where the client communicates requesting some data and receives back response appropriately in JSON or XML format, in order to ensure the backend software logic works as expected and the information exchanged between 2 systems are secure and are correct.
• API testing is crucial in verifying the back-end logic and communication between systems which includes testing of request methods like GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, and validating the responses with valid status codes. (200 for success, 404 for not found, 500 for server error, etc)
• There are several HTTP status codes.

GET- for fetching the data from the server
POST- Create new/Sending the data
PUT- Update Data
Delete -Remove Data
Commonly used tools for API testing are REST Assured, Postman, SoapUI, Swagger/OpenAPI, and JMeter.

4. How to test API?

Understanding & Reviewing API Documentation/Requirements provided by the service providers or in-house developers is essential which includes,
• API Endpoints ( URLs that API exposes to ),
• Methods like GET, POST, PUT, DELETE
• Expected requests or response formats like JSON or XML
• Query Parameters and Authentication tokens mechanisms involved (ie, headers, body, query parameters)
• Error & / Status Codes like 200, 404, 500, etc.

The basic steps involved in how to test API are:
• Setting up of API Endpoint (a URL to be Tested)
• Choosing the HTTP methods (Select GET, POST, PUT, DELETE)
• Set up Request Parameters (Additional query param, body data, headers)
• Send/Execute the Request and wait for Response (Execution)
• Validate the Response (Check for the right status codes, Validate the data types, values, and correct fields against the expected result on the response body, and also make sure the response time is within the expected time limits)
• Handling any Negative test scenarios (make sure the appropriate error message and status codes are returned upon sending incorrect data)
• Automation wherever possible or required using popular tools like Postman, and REST Assured. (For the larger data sets or test data suites frameworks like Postman Collections and REST Assured are utilized for automating the test scenarios).


Conclusion

Understanding these fundamental concepts (basic topics) is inevitable for anyone involved in Software testing. This helps build high-quality test strategies and deliver high-quality software products.

These advanced topics help address various levels of software testing in complex and modern software products or systems, which helps most organizations maintain their quality and high standards regarding scalability, complexity, security, performance, and continuous delivery.

Lately, Software Testing on Cloud platforms has become an essential part of any modern software development process that handles cost-efficiency, flexibility, and scalability.

Hence most Organizations adopt to Cloud-Based testing strategy which helps to accelerate their testing speed on testing processes with continuous delivery ensuring a wide range of compatibility tests that ultimately deliver the high-standard software products/applications at a much faster speed.

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