Introduction to Software Testing Life Cycle

Every organization has to undertakes testing of each of its products. However, the way it is
conducted differs from one organization to another. This refers to the life cycle of the testing
process. It is advisable to carry out the testing process from the initial phases, with regard to the
Software Development Life Cycle or SDLC to avoid any complications.

Software Testing Life Cycle Phases

Software testing has its own life cycle that meets every stage of the SDLC. The software testing
life cycle diagram can help one visualize the various software testing life cycle phases. They are

1. Requirement Stage
2. Test Planning
3. Test Analysis
4. Test Design
5. Test Verification and Construction
6. Test Execution
7. Result Analysis
8. Bug Tracking
9. Reporting and Rework
10. Final Testing and Implementation
11. Post Implementation
Requirement Stage
This is the initial stage of the life cycle process in which the developers take part in analyzing the
requirements for designing a product. Testers can also involve themselves as they can think from
the users' point of view which the developers may not. Thus a panel of developers, testers and
users can be formed. Formal meetings of the panel can be held in order to document the
requirements discussed which can be further used as software requirements specifications or
SRS.

Test Planning
Test planning is predetermining a plan well in advance to reduce further risks. Without a good
plan, no work can lead to success be it software-related or routine work. A test plan document
plays an important role in achieving a process-oriented approach. Once the requirements of the
project are confirmed, a test plan is documented. The test plan structure is as follows:

1. Introduction: This describes the objective of the test plan.

2. Test Items The items that are referred to prepare this document will be listed here such as
SRS, project plan.
3. Features to be tested: This describes the coverage area of the test plan, ie. the list of
features that are to be tested that are based on the implicit and explicit requirements from
the customer.
4. Features not to be tested: The incorporated or comprised features that can be skipped
from the testing phase are listed here. Features that are out of scope of testing, like
incomplete modules or those on low severity eg. GUI features that don't hamper the
further process can be included in the list.
5. Approach: This is the test strategy that should be appropriate to the level of the plan. It
should be in acceptance with the higher and lower levels of the plan.
6. Item pass/fail criteria: Related to the show stopper issue. The criterion which is used has
to explain which test item has passed or failed.
7. Suspension criteria and resumption requirements: The suspension criterion specifies the
criterion that is to be used to suspend all or a portion of the testing activities, whereas
resumption criterion specifies when testing can resume with the suspended portion.
8. Test deliverable: This includes a list of documents, reports, charts that are required to be
presented to the stakeholders on a regular basis during testing and when testing is
completed.
9. Testing tasks: This stage is needed to avoid confusion whether the defects should be
reported for future function. This also helps users and testers to avoid incomplete
functions and prevent waste of resources.
10. Environmental needs: The special requirements of that test plan depending on the
environment in which that application has to be designed are listed here.
11. Responsibilities: This phase assigns responsibilities to the person who can be held
responsible in case of a risk.
12. Staffing and training needs: Training on the application/system and training on the
testing tools to be used needs to be given to the staff members who are responsible for the
application.
13. Risks and contingencies:This emphasizes on the probable risks and various events that
can occur and what can be done in such situation.
14. Approval: This decides who can approve the process as complete and allow the project to
proceed to the next level that depends on the level of the plan.

Test Analysis
Once the test plan documentation is done, the next stage is to analyze what types of software
testing should be carried out at the various stages of SDLC.

Test Design
Test design is done based on the requirements of the project documented in the SRS. This phase
decides whether manual or automated testing is to be done. In automation testing, different paths
for testing are to be identified first and writing of scripts has to be done if required. There
originates a need for an end to end checklist that covers all the features of the project.

Test Verification and Construction

In this phase test plans, the test design and automated script tests are completed. Stress and
performance testing plans are also completed at this stage. When the development team is done
with a unit of code, the testing team is required to help them in testing that unit and reporting of
the bug if found. Integration testing and bug reporting is done in this phase of the software
testing life cycle.

Test Execution
Planning and execution of various test cases is done in this phase. Once the unit testing is
completed, the functionality of the tests is done in this phase. At first, top level testing is done to
find out top level failures and bugs are reported immediately to the development team to get the
required workaround. Test reports have to be documented properly and the bugs have to be
reported to the development team.

Result Analysis
Once the bug is fixed by the development team, i.e after the successful execution of the test case,
the testing team has to retest it to compare the expected values with the actual values, and declare
the result as pass/fail.

Bug Tracking
This is one of the important stages as the Defect Profile Document (DPD) has to be updated for
letting the developers know about the defect. Defect Profile Document contains the following

1. Defect Id: Unique identification of the Defect.

2. Test Case Id: Test case identification for that defect.
3. Description: Detailed description of the bug.
4. Summary: This field contains some keyword information about the bug, which can help
in minimizing the number of records to be searched.
5. Defect Submitted By: Name of the tester who detected/reported the bug.
6. Date of Submission: Date at which the bug was detected and reported.
7. Build No.: Number of test runs required.
8. Version No.: The version information of the software application in which the bug was
detected and fixed.
9. Assigned To: Name of the developer who is supposed to fix the bug.
10. Severity: Degree of severity of the defect.
11. Priority: Priority of fixing the bug.
12. Status: This field displays current status of the bug.

The contents of a bug well explain all the above mentioned things.

Reporting and Rework

Testing is an iterative process. The bug once reported and as the development team fixes the bug,
it has to undergo the testing process again to assure that the bug found is resolved. Regression
testing has to be done. Once the Quality Analyst assures that the product is ready, the software is
released for production. Before release, the software has to undergo one more round of top level
testing. Thus testing is an ongoing process.

Final Testing and Implementation

This phase focuses on the remaining levels of testing, such as acceptance, load, stress,
performance and recovery testing. The application needs to be verified under specified
conditions with respect to the SRS. Various documents are updated and different matrices for
testing are completed at this stage of the software testing life cycle.

Post Implementation
Once the tests are evaluated, the recording of errors that occurred during various levels of the
software testing life cycle, is done. Creating plans for improvement and enhancement is an
ongoing process. This helps to prevent similar problems from occuring in the future projects. In
short, planning for improvement of the testing process for future applications is done in this
phase.

Read More on:

 Types of Software Testing

 Software Testing Methodologies
 Software Testing Tutorial

This was an overview of the software testing life cycle. Thanks to the information technology
boom and continuous innovation in the software industry, the need for software testing is, and
will always be, growing.

Types of software testing

What is Software Testing?

Software Testing is a process of verifying and validating whether the program is performing
correctly with no bugs. It is the process of analyzing or operating software for the purpose of
finding bugs. It also helps to identify the defects / flaws / errors that may appear in the
application code, which needs to be fixed. Testing not only means fixing the bug in the code, but
also to check whether the program is behaving according to the given specifications and testing
strategies. There are various types of software testing strategies such as white box testing
strategy, black box testing strategy, grey box software testing strategy, etc.

Need of Software Testing Types

Types of Software Testing, depends upon different types of defects. For example:

 Functional testing is done to detect functional defects in a system.

 Performance Testing is performed to detect defects when the system does not perform
according to the specifications
  Usability Testing to detect usability defects in the system.
 Security Testing is done to detect bugs/defects in the security of the system.

The list goes on as we move on towards different layers of testing.

Types of Software Testing

Various software testing methodologies guide you through the consecutive software testing
types. Those who are new to this subject, here is some information on software testing - how to
go about for beginners. To determine the true functionality of the application being tested, test
cases are designed to help the developers. Test cases provide you with the guidelines for going
through the process of testing the software. Software testing includes two basic types of software
testing, viz. Manual Scripted Testing and Automated Testing.

 Manual Scripted Testing: This is considered to be one of the oldest type of software
testing methods, in which test cases are designed and reviewed by the team, before
executing it.
 Automated Testing: This software testing type applies automation in the testing, which
can be applied to various parts of a software process such as test case management,
executing test cases, defect management, reporting of the bugs/defects. The bug life cycle
helps the tester in deciding how to log a bug and also guides the developer to decide on
the priority of the bug depending upon the severity of logging it. Software bug testing or
software testing to log a bug, explains the contents of a bug that is to be fixed. This can
be done with the help of various bug tracking tools such as Bugzilla and defect tracking
management tools like the Test Director.

Other Software Testing Types

Software testing life cycle is the process that explains the flow of the tests that are to be carried
on each step of software testing of the product. The V- Model i.e Verification and Validation
Model is a perfect model which is used in the improvement of the software project. This model
contains software development life cycle on one side and software testing life cycle on the other
hand side. Checklists for software tester sets a baseline that guides him to carry on the day-to-
day activities.

Black Box Testing

It explains the process of giving the input to the system and checking the output, without
considering how the system generates the output. It is also called as Behavioral Testing.

Functional Testing: In this type of testing, the software is tested for the functional requirements.
This checks whether the application is behaving according to the specification.

Performance Testing: This type of testing checks whether the system is performing properly,
according to the user's requirements. Performance testing depends upon the Load and Stress
Testing, that is internally or externally applied to the system.

1. Load Testing : In this type of performance testing, the system is raised beyond the limits
in order to check the performance of the system when higher loads are applied.
 2. Stress Testing : In this type of performance testing, the system is tested beyond the
normal expectations or operational capacity

Usability Testing: This type of testing is also called as 'Testing for User Friendliness'. This
testing checks the ease of use of an application. Read more on introduction to usability testing.

Regression Testing: Regression testing is one of the most important types of testing, in which it
checks whether a small change in any component of the application does not affect the
unchanged components. Testing is done by re-executing the previous versions of the application.

Smoke Testing: Smoke testing is used to check the testability of the application. It is also called
'Build Verification Testing or Link Testing'. That means, it checks whether the application is
ready for further major testing and working, without dealing with the finer details.

Sanity Testing: Sanity testing checks for the behavior of the system. This type of software
testing is also called as Narrow Regression Testing.

Parallel Testing: Parallel testing is done by comparing results from two different systems like
old vs new or manual vs automated.

Recovery Testing: Recovery testing is very necessary to check how fast the system is able to
recover against any hardware failure, catastrophic problems or any type of system crash.

Installation Testing: This type of software testing identifies the ways in which installation
procedure leads to incorrect results.

Compatibility Testing: Compatibility Testing determines if an application under supported

configurations perform as expected, with various combinations of hardware and software
packages. Read more on compatibility testing.

Configuration Testing: This testing is done to test for compatibility issues. It determines
minimal and optimal configuration of hardware and software, and determines the effect of
adding or modifying resources such as memory, disk drives and CPU.

Compliance Testing: This type of testing checks whether the system was developed in
accordance with standards, procedures and guidelines.

Error-Handling Testing: This software testing type determines the ability of the system to
properly process erroneous transactions.

Manual-Support Testing: This type of software testing is an interface between people and
application system.

Inter-Systems Testing: This type of software testing method is an interface between two or
more application systems.
Exploratory Testing: Exploratory Testing is a type of software testing, which is similar to ad-
hoc testing, and is performed to explore the software features. Read more on exploratory testing.

Volume Testing: This testing is done, when huge amount of data is processed through the
application.

Scenario Testing: This type of software testing provides a more realistic and meaningful
combination of functions, rather than artificial combinations that are obtained through domain or
combinatorial test design.

User Interface Testing: This type of testing is performed to check, how user-friendly the
application is. The user should be able to use the application, without any assistance by the
system personnel.

System Testing: System testing is the testing conducted on a complete, integrated system, to
evaluate the system's compliance with the specified requirements. This type of software testing
validates that the system meets its functional and non-functional requirements and is also
intended to test beyond the bounds defined in the software/hardware requirement specifications.

User Acceptance Testing: Acceptence Testing is performed to verify that the product is
acceptable to the customer and it's fulfilling the specified requirements of that customer. This
testing includes Alpha and Beta testing.

1. Alpha Testing: Alpha testing is performed at the developer's site by the customer in a
closed environment. This testing is done after system testing.
2. Beta Testing: This type of software testing is done at the customer's site by the customer
in the open environment. The presence of the developer, while performing these tests, is
not mandatory. This is considered to be the last step in the software development life
cycle as the product is almost ready.

White Box Testing

It is the process of giving the input to the system and checking, how the system processes the
input, to generate the output. It is mandatory for a tester to have the knowledge of the source
code.

Unit Testing: This type of testing is done at the developer's site to check whether a particular
piece/unit of code is working fine. Unit testing deals with testing the unit as a whole.

Static and Dynamic Analysis: In static analysis, it is required to go through the code in order to
find out any possible defect in the code. Whereas, in dynamic analysis the code is executed and
analyzed for the output.

Statement Coverage: This type of testing assures that the code is executed in such a way that
every statement of the application is executed at least once.

Decision Coverage: This type of testing helps in making decision by executing the application,
at least once to judge whether it results in true or false.

Condition Coverage: In this type of software testing, each and every condition is executed by
making it true and false, in each of the ways at least once.

Path Coverage: Each and every path within the code is executed at least once to get a full path
coverage, which is one of the important parts of the white box testing.

Integration Testing: Integration testing is performed when various modules are integrated with
each other to form a sub-system or a system. This mostly focuses in the design and construction
of the software architecture. Integration testing is further classified into Bottom-Up Integration
and Top-Down Integration testing.

1. Bottom-Up Integration Testing: In this type of integration testing, the lowest level
components are tested first and then alleviate the testing of higher level components
using 'Drivers'.
2. Top-Down Integration Testing: This is totally opposite to bottom-up approach, as it tests
the top level modules are tested and the branch of the module are tested step by step
using 'Stubs' until the related module comes to an end.

Security Testing: Testing that confirms, how well a system protects itself against unauthorized
internal or external, or willful damage of code, means security testing of the system. Security
testing assures that the program is accessed by the authorized personnel only. Read more on brief
introduction to security testing.

Mutation Testing: In this type of software testing, the application is tested for the code that was
modified after fixing a particular bug/defect.

Software testing methodologies

Software Testing Methodologies

These are some commonly used software testing methodologies:

 Waterfall model
 V model
 Spiral model
 RUP
 Agile model
 RAD

Let us have a look at each one of these methodologies one by one.

Waterfall Model
The waterfall model adopts a 'top down' approach regardless of whether it is being used for
software development or testing. The basic steps involved in this software testing methodology
are:

1. Requirement analysis
2. Test case design
3. Test case implementation
4. Testing, debugging and validating the code or product
5. Deployment and maintenance

In this methodology, you move on to the next step only after you have completed the present
step. There is no scope for jumping backward or forward or performing two steps
simultaneously. Also, this model follows a non-iterative approach. The main benefit of this
methodology is its simplistic, systematic and orthodox approach. However, it has many
shortcomings since bugs and errors in the code are not discovered until and unless the testing
stage is reached. This can often lead to wastage of time, money and valuable resources.

V Model
The V model gets its name from the fact that the graphical representation of the different test
process activities involved in this methodology resembles the letter 'V'. The basic steps involved
in this methodology are more or less the same as those in the waterfall model. However, this
model follows both a 'top-down' as well as a 'bottom-up' approach (you can visualize them
forming the letter 'V'). The benefit of this methodology is that in this case, both the development
and testing activities go hand-in-hand. For example, as the development team goes about its
requirement analysis activities, the testing team simultaneously begins with its acceptance testing
activities. By following this approach, time delays are minimized and optimum utilization of
resources is assured.

Spiral Model
As the name implies, the spiral model follows an approach in which there are a number of cycles
(or spirals) of all the sequential steps of the waterfall model. Once the initial cycle is completed,
a thorough analysis and review of the achieved product or output is performed. If it is not as per
the specified requirements or expected standards, a second cycle follows, and so on. This
methodology follows an iterative approach and is generally suited for very large projects having
complex and constantly changing requirements.

Rational Unified Process (RUP)

The RUP methodology is also similar to the spiral model in the sense that the entire testing
procedure is broken up into multiple cycles or processes. Each cycle consists of four phases
namely; inception, elaboration, construction and transition. At the end of each cycle, the product
or the output is reviewed and a further cycle (made up of the same four phases) follows if
necessary. Today, you will find certain organizations and companies adopting a slightly modified
version of the RUP, which goes by the name of Enterprise Unified Process (EUP).

Agile Model
This methodology follows neither a purely sequential approach nor does it follow a purely
iterative approach. It is a selective mix of both of these approaches in addition to quite a few new
developmental methods. Fast and incremental development is one of the key principles of this
methodology. The focus is on obtaining quick, practical and visible outputs and results, rather
than merely following theoretical processes. Continuous customer interaction and participation is
an integral part of the entire development process.

Rapid Application Development (RAD)

The name says it all. In this case, the methodology adopts a rapid development approach by
using the principle of component-based construction. After understanding the various
requirements, a rapid prototype is prepared and is then compared with the expected set of output
conditions and standards. Necessary changes and modifications are made after joint discussions
with the customer or the development team (in the context of software testing). Though this
approach does have its share of advantages, it can be unsuitable if the project is large, complex
and happens to be of an extremely dynamic nature, wherein the requirements are constantly
changing. Here are some more advantages of rapid application development.

This was a short overview of some commonly used software testing methodologies. With the
applications of information technology growing with every passing day, the importance of
proper software testing has grown multifold.