7 Software Testing Strategies For Developing Successful Products
Software is one of the most labor-intensive, complex, and fallible technologies in the history of humankind. Did you know that poor quality software resulted in a scaring loss of $2.84 trillion collectively across the US in 2018? That’s not it. Enterprises worldwide have been struck by software glitches, including big giants such as British Airways, Facebook, O2 network, to name a few. They have unveiled the daunting after-effects of software failure.
Hence, the importance of software testing cannot be overemphasized. Software testing or quality engineering is a process of investigation and testing a program to rectify any error and ensure that it fulfills the product requirements.
Importance of Software Testing in Developing Successful Products
Software testing in product development ensures better business optimization, less maintenance cost, reliability, and superior user experience. Software testing is essential in catching and fixing a bug in the early phase of the development cycle, resulting in cost and time-saving.
In a nutshell, software testing is a continuous testing process that involves debugging to deliver an error-free product. Software testing can make or break your product. Hence, it is crucial to outsource software testing to the right QA partner.
By successfully passing through the varied levels of testing, the final products could perform beyond the expected outcomes. At each level, the testers can not only figure out the errors but also prevent such obstacles in the future. Besides identifying each mistake, it also makes way for an improvised version of the software. Let’s have a look at some of the important software testing strategies:
Top 7 Software Testing Strategies Every QA Engineer Should Know
1. Identify and specify the requirements of the product in a quantitative manner.
The software has different characteristics such as maintainability, risk probability, and usability. Before software product testing begins, all these characteristics qualities should be specified in a particular order to obtain precise test results without any error.
2. Define Testing Objectives
Testing objective refers to the overall goal and achievement of the test execution. Testing has several purposes, such as effectiveness, which measures how effectively the software can achieve the target. Another objective is to find as many software errors as possible and ensure that the software under test is bug-free before release. An important software testing strategy is that all these objectives should be defined well in advance in the test plan.
3. Identify Use Cases
Use cases describe the interactions and communication between the system and a user to achieve the desired target. Use cases are perfect for finding defects in the real-world use of the system as they are based on the flaws that the users are most likely to come across when first using the system.
4. Develop a detailed test plan
A test plan is a detailed document describing the scope, approach, resources, and schedule of intended test activities. The test plan works as a blueprint for conducting the software product testing and helps determine the effort to validate the quality of the software under test. Therefore, developing a test plan is one of the most crucial software testing strategies.
5. Leave time for fixing
You must set aside ample time for fixing the bugs once they are discovered. Once problems are found, developers will require enough time to fix them, and the company needs time to retest the fixes as well. Without a time and plan for both, testing is not very effective.
6. Conduct Manual Testing
Manual testing is a software testing process in which test cases are executed manually by users without using any automated tool. It is carried out according to the end-user perspective. Manual testing ensures both visible and hidden defects of the software are found and rectified. Manual testing is necessary as the real-world use of the software will not be scripted; hence the testers must be free to investigate without a defined script.
7. Test Often for Continuous Development
Software testing as a continuous improvement process will ensure that the quality of the software is evaluated at every step and helps prevent huge backlogs of problems from building up. Frequent testing is considered the best approach. Testing and fixing software can be tricky and subtle. However, as long as one can anticipate common issues, things could be kept running seamlessly.
Software product testing is an inseparable part of the product development process and is vital to delivering quality products.
