The Do’s and Don’ts of Software Product Testing

Software products have become an integral part of driving the whole global digital ecosystem. They bring with them attributes like convenience, speed of operations, security, and privacy, among others. As customers became choosy with their preferences and the competition among providers got intense, quality became the core differentiator that helped an organization stay ahead of the competition. To ensure the delivery of superior-quality products from the build pipeline and pre-empt customers from facing any issues with their performance, the former should be subjected to rigorous software product testing. Over a period, quality assurance has come to be associated with standard processes, practices, and methodologies. These should be followed in letter and spirit to enhance quality, streamline workflows, improve efficiency, and be responsive to customer feedback. However, a few QA practices have become dated and should be updated with the new trends. To understand these better, let us discuss some dos and don’ts about software application testing.

The do’s of software product testing

Quality Assurance (QA) is a critical requirement in the product development lifecycle to identify and remove glitches. It helps to make a product competitive and allow it to meet the customer’s expectations. If QA is not part of the SDLC, the consequences for the entire value chain can be severe.

·       The product would be left with glitches thereby impacting its performance.

·       Hackers can exploit the inherent vulnerabilities to steal sensitive business and customer information.

·       Security protocols can go for a toss with the business inviting censure and penalties from regulators.

·       The brand suffers immensely as adverse publicity through word of mouth can go viral.

ü  Choose specific test cases for automation: Automation is the key when it comes to performing repetitive tests such as regression. However, care should be taken to choose the right test cases for automation as test complexities can render such testing infructuous. To automate everything is certainly not the way to go about in a software product testing strategy. There should be a proper selection criterion in place to choose a test case for automation. If done the right way, test automation can deliver benefits that far outweigh the costs.

ü  Upgrade skills for automation: Even though automation is a potent software product testing method, the skills required to execute the same is not always available. For any team going for test automation as part of the software product testing strategy, the QA team should be well-versed with any one of the programming languages such as Ruby, C#, JavaScript, or Python. Besides, the team members should have the expertise of handling automation test tools like Selenium. The bottom line is that more the testers have skills for automation, better will be the outcome of software product testing.

ü  Quicken the pace of testing: In a non-Agile test environment, testers are wont to leave some of their difficult tests at the end of the SDLC. However, this practice is flawed as testing the quality of applications at the end of the development process hinders delivery. Rather, the testing team should adopt a risk-based approach towards software product testing and execute the high priority cases first.

ü  Manage the testing environment: Testers seeking deployment no longer holds, for today, it is more about managing the test environment by configuring the CI tool or Selenium grid. There should be cloud, containers, and virtualization, and the ability to write appropriate test scripts.

ü  Shorter tests: The test suites should be made shorter to enable better and quicker detection of glitches. Not everything should be tested in a test scenario, for it would make troubleshooting difficult later.

ü  Follow shift-left: The QA team should align itself with the development team through shift-left testing. This way, they can make a better impact on the quality of software and deliver it faster through the value chain. Also, shift-left helps developers to quickly mitigate any glitches in the code and move to the next sprint.

The don’ts of software product testing

In addition to the above-mentioned ‘dos,’ testers should follow some don’ts as well to enhance the quality of testing and not leaving anything to chance.

·       Tracking defects in many places: Keep a single log of defective cases or glitches instead of documenting them in various places – excel sheets, tracking tools. A centralized repository for documenting glitches can help in their quicker tracking and better monitoring.

·       Focus on negative scenarios: Testers should not spend their energies on testing negative test scenarios that are less likely to be used by the end customers. Even though these should be tested during the test cycle, the priority should be set for scenarios that are most likely to be used by the end customers.

·       Avoid regression testing: Any change made to the application can impact specific areas of it unless regression testing is carried out. Often testers are of the view that regression testing can be avoided as the features or functionalities to be tested had been done earlier. However, any assumption in this regard can be fraught with danger as the changes can cause defects in other areas of the application.

·       Automate everything: This follows from the ‘dos’ mentioned above where only specific test cases should be automated. The testing team should leave some space for manual testing as automation does not lend itself to every possible scenario. For example, any wrong code in the test script can harm the testing exercise.

Conclusion

With quality forming the centerpiece in ensuring success of any software application, testing or QA cannot be overlooked. In fact, it should be integrated into the SDLC along with development to identify and fix glitches as and when they happen. However, the QA team should religiously follow the dos and don’ts to avoid any negative fallout of testing. The aim, ultimately, should be to deliver the best user experience and achieve ROI.

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.