What constitutes the process of Software Quality Assurance?

  

 To ensure the quality of the software product, software quality assurance is conducted comprising activities like planning, setting up the metrics, formal technical reviews, setting up multiple testing strategies, change control, report and documentation.

In a rapidly growing digital landscape built on complex software applications, system software suites, state-of-the-art hardware systems, networks, and internet technologies, the customers have become very demanding. The demand is for quality products with attributes such as speed, security, cost-effectiveness, usability, and convenience. Software quality assurance is the process to evaluate these attributes by testing software applications based on a set of parameters. It majorly tests whether the software application under development fulfils all criteria that the initial plan entailed. A QA software testing process validates the functioning of all processes, modules, methods, work items, and activities as per pre-defined metrics. It also checks if the software application complies with the industry defined standards such as ISO 9000, CMMI, SOX, ISO 27001, and PCI DSS, among others.
The process of software quality assurance is comprehensive and entails the end-to-end lifecycle of the software development and delivery process. There may be situations when the software conforms to the explicit requirements but does not meet the implicit requirements. These situations are emblematic of suspected software quality and require the hiring of software quality assurance services for mitigation.

Objectives of quality assurance and testing

QA testing services follow the below-mentioned objectives:

• Ensure the software fully complies with the protocols and meets all quality parameters before delivery

• Customers should get a superior experience while browsing the software and using its various features and functionalities

• The software should be well-structured and understandable by any developer or tester

In a competitive business landscape where the requirement is for delivering quality products faster to the market, the software quality assurance process should be continuous. This entails the adoption of the agile way of software development wherein cross-functional teams work in tandem within a QA enabling culture. The other aspects of pursuing software quality assurance methods are implementing test automation and provisioning the requisite test environment.

What activities belong to the Software Quality Assurance process?

The software quality assurance testing process entails the following activities:

Planning: At the outset, the testing team along with other stakeholders prepares a test plan outlining the test activities to be performed. The activities typically include the identification of evaluations, the performance of audits and reviews, identifying the applicable standards, tracking and documenting the errors, and feedback offered to the development team.

Setting up the metrics: The quality assurance and testing team identifies and sets up suitable metrics against which the quality of the application is evaluated. This helps in better monitoring and improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the testing process as per its overall objective. The examples may include measuring the capacity, quality level, performance, design features, dimension, amount, or some other attributes of the software application.

Formal Technical Reviews (FTR): This process evaluates the design and quality of the prototype. Here, the technical team is consulted about the software’s quality requirements to detect glitches early on in the SDLC. The FTR helps to reduce rework in the later phases and works as a quality control mechanism. The FTR verifies if the software application under test meets specific quality requirements as per predefined standards.

Setting up a multi-testing strategy: This ensures the software quality assurance testing process is not dependent on a single testing approach. With a multiple-testing strategy, the software application is tested from various angles to achieve better quality. These include black-box and white-box testing, system testing, unit testing, regression testing, and acceptance testing, among others.

Change control: Here, a mix of manual and automated testing procedures is used to create a mechanism for change control. Through the validation of change control, the nature of change and its impact are evaluated to maintain software quality during the phases of development and maintenance. The change control activity determines the impact of change brought about by fixing a defect(s) and verifies whether the change is in accordance with the objectives of the project.

Reports and documentation: The entire process of software quality assurance testing is documented and shared with the stakeholders for further analysis. The documented reports include test results, review reports, audit results, and change results, among others.

Conclusion

Software quality assurance is the lynchpin to achieve the success of the software product based on its adoption by the customers. It consists of several processes, activities, techniques, and standards, which determine if the software product aligns with the business objectives and performs to its desired level.  

 

Article Source:
https://www.softwaretestingmaterial.com/

What is Software Integration Testing all about?

The software applications driving the modern digital ecosystem, in conjunction with the hardware systems, are dependent on various third-party applications and platforms. The omnichannel footprint of software means each module (and the interface between modules) needs to function smoothly to deliver the expected outcomes. This is ensured by conducting software integration testing.

One of the important characteristics of a software application are the seamless flow of information between its two ‘units’ or ‘modules’. However, the flow of information could be interrupted by the presence of glitches, which if not identified and corrected in time can make the application faulty. Thus, software integration testing helps to expose faults that lie at the interface between two integrated units. Once the individual units or modules are tested, the integration of interfaces gets validated.

To draw an analogy to this type of testing, let us consider two groups of friends who have been invited to a party. To find out if they can get along, they should be subjected to an ‘integration test.’ This is done by bringing them to a single room and observe how they interact. In a similar vein, to check if each unit of software functions seamlessly, they need to be integrated and tested. Thus, integration testing, as part of the software testing services, checks if all unit’s function in harmony. It ensures if the modules developed by different developers are working towards a singular objective.

Various types of software integration testing

The various ways to test the integration of modules are as following:

Big Bang: As one of the most common ways to test the integration of software modules, the big bang involves smashing and testing all the units together. This may keep the tester in good stead if all the tests are completed or the software project is relatively small. However, it can have its cons as well. For example, in case a glitch is identified, it would be difficult for testers to figure out the right module or unit responsible for it. To find the erring module, testers have to detach a few of them and repeat the testing till they identify the glitch. Since this approach requires the modules to be ready before testing, it can extend the turnaround time for product release.

Incremental: Here, two or more logically aligned units are tested as part of a single batch. Thereafter, other similarly aligned units are checked eventually ensuring the interface of every single unit with another is validated. It combines both the bottom-up or top-down approaches.

Hybrid, Mixed, or Sandwich: This approach combines both bottom-up and top-down type of integration testing. Here, the top and lower modules are tested simultaneously for integration thereby deriving the best results. This approach can come in handy for large projects.

Best practices for integration testing

Since most software development processes are moving towards Agile or DevOps, it needs to be seen how integration testing can fit into a CI/CD environment. The software testing services for integration should have the following best practices.

Execute integration testing before unit testing: The waterfall model of software product testing has led us to believe that fixing a glitch later in the SDLC can be costly. This is due to the fact that one doesn’t move to the next stage until the completion of the present phase. This approach, however, can be turned on its head in an Agile environment. This is because Agile offers the flexibility to change the business logic in an SDLC.

Do not confuse unit testing with integration testing: Unit testing targets the basic code and needs to be run frequently to detect bugs. On the other hand, integration testing is much more time consuming and should not be part of every build cycle. However, it may be included in the daily build.

Extensive logging of processes: Identifying and mitigating bugs in a unit test are easy. However, given the scope and complexity of integration tests spanning a number of modules, doing the same is difficult. The need is to keep a record of processes to better analyze the reasons for failure.

Conclusion

Integration testing may be expensive and time-consuming but is essential to deliver quality products in the DevOps and Agile-driven environments.

This article is originally published on dev.to.