by admin | Oct 12, 2019 | Software Testing, Fixed, Blog |
In the context of a software product (as is the case of most products), the user is either the person utilizing the product or the person who asked to create such a product. Hence, UAT or beta/end-user testing is the testing conducted from the usability perspective of the user. This is tail-end testing done post system and regression testing and functional testing are completed. Any top company offering software testing services would inform their clients of the usefulness and importance of UAT. The aim of this form of testing is the validation of the software against the requirements and expectations of the client’s business. Validation is conducted by any end-user with an understanding of the specific requirements. UAT, alpha, and beta testing comprise the different types of acceptance testing.
When to Perform UAT?
The experts at software testing companies, who perform UAT, understand that as the last step before a product goes to market, User Acceptance Testing must be meticulous. The following steps are required for top-quality UAT:
- A clear outlined strategy for UAT is prepared in the planning stage
- The next stage would be designing test cases that cover functional scenarios in the real world. These test cases must be simple to understand language and ensure that the testing process for testers is simple and swift
- The testing team must comprise of real-world end users
- The next step is executing the test cases, with some random but relevant tests. Post this the results and bugs need to be properly documented
- Post the finding of the bugs, the next step would be to make the necessary adjustments and remove the bugs, ensuring a high-quality bug-free software
- The testing team provides the go-to-market approval for the software
User Acceptance Testing – Who conducts it and why is it important?
The team would comprise of beta testers and or someone buying the product or who may have asked for the software to be created. In addition, the customers could have a say in which members should be part of the testing team to ensure that every user role is tested as required. The software testing companies with expertise in this domain stand by the fact that UAT is critical to ensure that the software is operating as per the business functions, and would be suited to real world usage and scenarios.
User Acceptance testing plays a crucial role to validate business requirements, by using live data and real use cases. Rather than suffer losses and embarrassment, post-release, due to issues, it is wise for businesses to ensure User Acceptance Testing is conducted by experts. These domain experts know that the cost of fixing defects post-release is a lot higher and extensive, as compared to fixing the bugs prior to release.
In Conclusion:
Several businesses might skimp on User Acceptance Testing since their products would have already undergone several systems, integration, and regression testing. However, experts contradict this thought by explaining that UAT is the most important phase of any project since it is here that actual users validate the system and confirm that the software functions as required. Expert testing companies actually recommend involving end-users in the early stages of the project, in order to gain their views and recommendations thereby enabling a better software product. UAT is the perfect way to find out whether your product would be acceptable to the target audience – it is the ‘Agile’ way of conducting and delivering business. Business users are now keen on being closely involved in projects and delivering their opinion and feedback. By partnering with an expert software testing company, your business will get all these benefits and more – connect with our experts today.
by admin | Oct 18, 2019 | Software Testing, Fixed, Blog |
Businesses and software testing companies, both, understand that the realm of testing is in an accelerated mode owing to rapid technological advancements. This has translated to the fact that testing, to ensure top quality and functionality, is also moving to match the pace in order to remain competitive. While several aspects and strategies are constantly in the limelight in the realm of testing – automation, continuous integration, and others – common reasons for why bugs go undetected and what can be done to prevent this, seems to be missing. As a leading software testing company, we understand the critical nature of detecting bugs early in SDLC and are listing out some of the reasons bugs slip through’ and what can be done to prevent these ‘slips’.
Incorrect / inadequate mix of factors to Trigger Bugs
Since testing is never absolute, there would be times that triggers for bugs may not uncover all of them, leading to some of them slipping to production. At the production stage to these could remain hidden and only come to the fore when the product reaches users.
What can be done? It is important that when possible and practical, an application should be tested using a variety of condition combinations. Focusing on the most commonly used combinations by customers is a good starting point.
Backlog of Bugs – Becomes ForgottenThere are times when the backlog of bug tickets slips through given current priorities. This does not mean that there is no intention to resolve them. Tickets for bugs are created, slip into a backlog, and are subsequently forgotten, meaning that the bugs are missed too.
What can be done?There should be one person responsible to go through the backlog regularly to ensure that bug tickets are not forgotten. It is possible that some bugs may have already been resolved, and hence those tickets can be closed and removed from the backlog list.
Bugs were noticed but no actionIt is well known that testers and developers do not always get along, and pointing out bugs is one aspect that is ignored or there is no action taken. There would be times when a newbie tester might notice a bug but may not point it out given the senior position of a programmer/developer. This could mean that the bug goes unnoticed and hence the chances of it being resolved would be diminished too.
What can be done? All those parts of the project must work cohesively – there must be a culture and environment of respect, openness, and approachability. Testers and developers must communicate directly, ask questions, and be respectful to each other regardless of experience and authority levels.
One Bug Conceals AnotherOne of the most potent ways that bugs go undetected would be the presence of another bug – concealing the other one. A new or more obvious bug could prevent the triggering of another bug or even knowing that it exists.
What can be done? It is necessary to make proper notes during the testing process – including what was done and the things that remained undone. It would be necessary to fix these undone items in the next round of testing, and then conduct another full and thorough round of testing.
Paucity of TimeAs an expert QA company, we know that time is one of the most precious and scarce commodities. In the realm of testing, it is the lack of time that sometimes leads to businesses wanting to hurry up the process, which in turn leads to overlooking bugs – even the ones that may be obvious.
What can be done? In the event that there are delays, and there is a possibility that a deadline may not be met – it is necessary to highlight the delays and the reasons for the same. It is necessary to prioritize tests – omitting low-risk areas and focusing on critical to business functionalities. It is important for the testing team to let all know what could be tested within deadlines and what testing may not be possible. Transparency and open communication are necessary to ensure that no bug reaches the end-users.
Inadequate Requirement Documentation Inadequate documentation with regard to requirements can often lead to all usage scenarios not being covered, which would mean that testers leave out these scenarios from their testing regime.
What can be done? Proper and clear requirements in a document would help to identify all user scenarios, which would ensure that any bugs are uncovered and fixed too. Meticulously prepared documentation is a great way to ensure that no miscommunication happens and that defects and errors are noticed early on. Sound technical knowledge and considering all possible use cases and testing functionality from every user perspective will ensure that bugs are not missed.
In Conclusion:
Software testing is not and will never be an insignificant exercise. As experts in this realm, we essay the role of ‘guardians’ or ‘gatekeepers’ to ensure that the product that reaches the customers is top-notch. We are able to consistently meet the requirements of our clients since we conduct testing by approaching it from the perspective of users, reviewing the entire process of testing, which in turn helps to prevent any bugs from slipping through. Connect with us to work with an experienced, meticulous, and highly skilled team in the overarching realm of software testing.
by admin | Oct 31, 2019 | Software Testing, Fixed, Blog |
In the entire gamut of the Software testing life cycle, bug reproduction has been a crucial aspect in the process of delivering a product devoid of bugs. Whenever a software tester is watchful and hints you of a bug, if there exists a possibility of recreating it in the development environment, then you are in the game of discovering precisely what goes wrong and fixing it even before the users identify it. The more descriptive the steps are from the tester which leads to the bug identification, the better chances you have of identifying it for yourself.
However, the process of software bug reproduction many times is accompanied by loads and loads of ever-growing challenges. In this blog article, we try to through light on those grey areas of bug reproduction.
1. The depiction of the issue is precise that the programmer is able to comprehend the essence of the issue and why it arises
2. Having ingress into the steps to reproduce the bug, including necessary information about what the user was doing when the problem arose
As a matter of fact not all bugs can be reproduced. Lack of basic information may hamper the programmer from being able to reproduce it. Secondly, devoid of tools in place to reproduce it. In certain instances, the reason could be a user error or a local issue on the part of the tester. The first two issues can potentially be evaded by resorting to a professional software testing service by a top software testing company like us, Our proven research-driven strategies in software bug reproduction have helped clients across the globe deliver glitch free product without hassles.
Why software bug reproduction is vital?
Listed below are some of the elements which ensures that if a software bug gets fixed:
- Thorough and complete information of the defect report
- Checking whether the development team member can ascertain the actual occurrence of a defect under specific conditions?
- The underlying IT environment, tools, and application versions should be within the reach of the developers at all instances on which the defect is reported by the testers
Successfully writing defect “Steps to reproduce”:
- Be concise
- Incorporate perfect data used during the software testing process for easy reference
- All the steps ought to be in definitive order
- Don’t forget to quote all pre-requisite data points as and when needed
- Avoid writing complex steps, Say for instance, if a scenario requires you to save a document from MS Word, then it can be written as, ‘Open the File menu and click on save option’.
- Recheck your steps invariably to reproduce on a new system, clearing all cookies and cache memory
- Make sure the sentences are precise and unambiguous
Conclusion:
The insurmountable objective of any product owner has always been an incredible product free from all possible glitches. Software bug reproduction is the need of the hour at such instances. Connect with our distinctly different team of software test engineers for all your QA services.
by admin | Sep 16, 2019 | Software Testing, Fixed, Blog |
The truth about test coverage is that there is never a 100% accurate method to gauge or calculate test coverage. However, using a combination of several metrics and tools, it is possible for a high level of accuracy. The tools and methods chosen would depend on the functionality of the project and the amount of time and resources at the disposal of the testers. All the data would help to provide a relatively stable and high level of test coverage across projects, which in turn would significantly elevate the quality of your product.
Benefits of Test Coverage Measurement
A popular dictum states that what is not measured cannot be improved. Hence, even though 100% accuracy is not possible, measuring test coverage still has several advantages.
- Meticulous measurement of test coverage enables testers to understand the duration of time required to complete project testing
- Test coverage uncovers gaps, which in turn would help testers to script and add newer tests with the aim of elevating the quality of a project
- The statistics that come through from test coverage enables testers to understand which tests perform the same function, thereby helping to eliminate too many tests. This in turn saves time and valuable resources.
How Does an Expert Software Testing Services Company Assess Test Coverage?
There are several methods that apply a variety of tools and metrics to pull together information that would indicate actual test coverage. Several are used only for some types of projects that provide pertinent and concentrated data. There are some methods applicable to any type of project and both manual and automated testing, which help to get the best out of test coverage.
1. Test Coverage by Features The testers prepare a list of all the features available to the project and ensure that the tests to be conducted cover all of them. While this step does not assess the quality of the features, it definitely ensures that all the features are listed and accounted for, such that none are left out.
2. Test Code Coverage This has a slightly elevated level of complexity – white box testing to create conditions through which testers can execute each path or branch or line of code.
3. Test Coverage through Use Case The testers examine the use case document to assess which features would remain part of the system and which ones should be removed. The test case would be based on the steps that would be part of the use case pre and post-conditions. Testers then would check the performance of the system, and any unwanted ‘behaviors’ would help them to create negative test cases. For testers to get the best out of test coverage, all these approaches can either be used in conjunction or independently – depending on the software/system.
In Conclusion
As mentioned, a reputed Software Testing company will honestly tell you that 100% accuracy in measuring test coverage is not possible, irrespective of the tools, metrics, or tests used. There will always be gaps, and collecting large amounts of data is not only time-consuming but would quickly use up a number of precious resources. Most businesses do not have the in-house ability to deal with these issues, and it is feasible and more efficient to partner with experts in this realm and the wider gamut of software testing. We excel at every realm of software testing and would love to help your business succeed – connect with us today.
by admin | Sep 14, 2019 | Software Testing, Fixed, Blog |
More and more industries and companies are running on software today. Most of the suppliers we subscribe to deliver their goods via online digital products and services. As an engineer in the trenches, you can see how software is consuming more and more, and why our jobs as testers are more important than ever. It’s up to us as testers to keep pace with the rapid growth. We are the quality champions and leaders of our software.
As teams push harder and faster to get features into the hands of our customers, we are the last line of defense for educating our team to potential unseen consequences of our development decisions. The digital testing landscape is changing fast, and in this article, we will see how Continuous Testing helps us to deliver quality products.
Agile
In the pre-agile model, which is the classic software development Waterfall model, testers only began testing once the software requirements and development were complete, and we as testers had limited inputs and insights. It was basically a world full of silos.
Agile broke those silos down and brought everyone together as one team. That change was a significant one because it meant teams could work for years on a project without speaking or getting any feedback from their users. As you might imagine, resolving issues found in production were almost impossible to resolve, and fixing deep-seated architectural issues with the software required spending a great deal of time and money. Agile was the first wave of modern software development that addressed the issues presented in the Waterfall development approach.
DevOps
Once Agile took root, the second wave — DevOps began to appear. Again, it took some time for it to gain acceptance, but it ultimately caught on even faster than Agile. DevOps gave birth to the collaboration between software development and software operations, creating practices like continuous integration and delivery to provide services and products at high velocity. This approach creates a mechanism that allows us to quickly get our products into the hands of our users, which means quicker feedback in order to determine whether it’s delivering the value we’ve promised. Like Agile did before it, DevOps broke down even more silos between teams merging software operations with the rest of the team.
Continuous Testing- Current State of Testing
The best definition of Continuous testing is the ability to instantly access the risk of a new release or change before it impacts customers. You want to identify unexpected behaviors as soon as they are introduced. The sooner you find or prevent bugs, the easier and cheaper they are to fix. This approach is often accomplished by executing automated tests that probe the quality of the software during each stage of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). The mantra of continuous testing is “test early, test often, and test everywhere in an automated fashion.” Testing begins not after everything is completed but from the start. Each step along the way serves as a quality gate, baking in excellence at each stage of the SDLC pipeline.
Now with continuous testing, we’re not only running tests in an automated fashion using the same tools and languages as the developers (and leveraging open-source libraries), but we’re doing them continually all the way through into production– beginning with development. We’re not waiting until the end like in the old “waterfall” days. It’s important to remember that continuous testing is not just about end-to-end, UI test automation. With the need to quickly release software, we can no longer rely on manual and automated UI testing only. When we talk about automation in the context of continuous testing, it’s the process of automating any manual task that is slowing down the process. It doesn’t need to be a “test.” For example, before my team could do continuous integration, we needed to have an automated deploy job for our software. Having folks manually install the latest build on the nightly automated test environment was not a scalable solution. These types of tasks are critical and need to be automated.
CI Process
A typical continuous testing process consists of seven key elements: Develop, Build, Test, Report, Release, Monitor, & Repeat. Ultimately, the process starts with testing the quality of the feature. A recent study tells that 64% percent of total defect costs are due to errors in the requirements and design phases of the SDLC. So you must be careful before you start the development, you should ask these – Is it really what our customer wants? Has your team cleared up any confusion or misunderstandings before coding even starts? Getting clear on what it is you are trying to deliver to the customer can find bugs before a line of code is ever written! This is one reason some teams use acceptance criteria practices like Behavior Driven Development to help drive this communication and test the team’s assumption against what their customers really want.
Once the team agrees on what it is they are developing, testing approaches like TDD should drive the process and let you know if your code actually meets your business objectives. Code that is checked into your continuous integration process needs to be probed for quality. Automated style checks, security, performance and unit tests, automatic tests on check-in with a required pass/fail ratio needed before promotion to production, etc., will ensure that broken code is not promoted to production.
With continuous integration, your developers need to make their code testable. If you want to write test automation for your code, you need to be able to separate it into individual pieces. The secret is to build small things that can be combined into larger things. The best way to build small things is to have a good test suite around the small things, so that when you combine them into the bigger things you have to write less tests on the bigger thing first off; it’s also easier to test the bigger things because you already have guarantees about how the smaller things work. You don’t want to write code just for testing. You want to write code that is testable but doesn’t do any more than is needed. What it often comes down to is breaking these things down into smaller pieces, and testing the individual pieces.
by admin | Oct 1, 2019 | Software Testing, Fixed, Blog |
While software testing is extremely critical to ensure a top quality product, there are certain activities required before undertaking testing. Some of these steps are boring and challenging, but as a leading software testing company, we endorse the conducting of these activities. For a software product to meet and exceed business and technical requirements, pre-testing and testing activities are essential. Testing software is not only about finding and fixing bugs – it is a whole gamut of activities, and hence requires intense and meticulous planning. There are certain activities recommended as part of this planning, which would help any tester to conduct in-depth and focused software testing.
Remember there is always documentation from earlier testingDocumentation is an essential portion of testing and every experienced tester would prepare a set of documents capturing the series of events in a testing exercise. To become an expert tester, it is imperative to first read the set of documents to better grasp the system being tested. Codoid as an expert QA company prepares detailed documentation, and also recommends that every newbie tester goes through the documentation at their disposal before embarking on the testing journey. Reading the documents helps to ask the right questions and prepare a case for the team lead enlisting their understanding of the requirements from the testing exercise. Yes, we agree this task is possibly one of the most mundane and onerous ones, but is indispensable to the success of testing regimes. The truth is the greater the understanding of the system being tested, the easier it would be to test and find and fix bugs.
Time to Script your Test
Equipped with the knowledge got from the test documentation, testers are better equipped to write a detailed test case. The good part of being ‘fresh on the testing scene’ is that there would be an experienced tester/reviewer taking a good look at the test case created. The reviewer would be able to point out the great and not so good parts of the test, which would help to rewrite the portions that need tweaking. This too is a great learning opportunity however cumbersome and challenging it may appear at first.
Dive into Regression Testing ActivitiesPost creating a test, it is imperative to re-run previously written test cases – we are certain to conduct these regression testing activities, even as software testing experts. The reason this activity is so important is that it helps tests understand that certain functions may be altered, and hence the tests scripted by them would not be accurate. It would be necessary to go back ‘to the drawing board’ and script fresh tests to match the current functionalities within the system. We as a top software testing company reiterate that this activity is not fun, but is definitely not one that can be ignored.
Next is Exploratory TestingAs experienced software testers, we can safely say that this is one of the more interesting testing activities! This form of pre-testing activity allows you to use your enthusiasm and skills to assess and imagine the various scenarios of use by customers and the possible things that could go awry. It is vital to allocate sufficient time for this activity – fun and necessary.
Caught the Bug With all the efforts expended by testers, bug will soon come to the fore and be uncovered. This is a really fun activity, since here is when fixing them puts all the skills of a tester into practice. However, while this may be an interesting activity, it is no mean task and must be handled with dexterity since it is critical to success.
In Conclusion:
Post all the activities mentioned, lastly it would be necessary for all those involved to meet and discuss the findings, solutions, the testing strategy, and reporting of the details in a meticulously drafted document. As a new tester these tips will help to gain better control of the actual testing of a system. We at Codoid are highly experienced in all realms of software testing – pre, during, and post, and this is a way of sharing our expertise with fresh testers. For businesses, connect with us to leverage our skills in a wide range of activities and testing requirements.
