Software Test Life Cycle

Software testing life cycle identifies what test activities to carry out to accomplish quality assurance process in a software development project.

There are different kinds of software development life cycle such as Waterfall, Spiral, Agile, and many others. Software testing has its own life cycle that intersects with every stage of the SDLC either it is Waterfall, Spiral or Agile. However, SDLC varies from one to another based on size of project, test team, test in Scope/out of scope, and code release date (how frequently). So, knowledge about some of the major phase in STLC, quality assurance activities during phases and role of a tester, makes you as a tester always ready to accomplish your task with a mark. This picture describes one of widely used STLC phases.

Generally STLC for a single test cycle consists of phases:

1) Planning, 2) Analysis, 3) Design, 4) Initial Testing 5) Testing Cycles, 6) Final Testing and Implementation and 7) Post release

Planning:

•      High level test plan

•      Identify review process, Metrics

•      Bug reporting procedures

•      Acceptance criteria for QA

•      schedule

Analysis Phase:

•      Develop Test Case format , Validation Matrix

•      Develop, and plan Test Cycles matrices and time lines

•      Begin writing Test Cases based on Functional Validation matrix

•      Map baseline data to test cases to business requirements

•      Identify Automation, Manual and Types of testing ,

•      Test environment, automation system setup.

Design:

•      Test -plan(ning) review and verify.

•      Review matrix (coverage).

•      Continue working on Test Cases.(update, new )

•      Finalize test case selection for each cycle for manual run and automation.

Initial Testing:

•      Complete all plans, Test Case, scripting

•      Unit test (Automated?)

Test Cycle:

•      Test Cycle 1, run first set of test

•      Report bugs - Triage(bug verification)- Bug fixes - Regression

•      Add test cases as required

•      Test Cycle 2, 3 ...

Final Testing and Implementation:

•      Code Freeze

•      Run Test cases for including performance level .

•      Communicate defect tracking metrics.

•      Regression

•      Documents.

Post Release:

•      Evaluation meeting - lesson learned

•      Prepare final Defect Report and metrics. Develop strategies to prevent similar problems in future project.

•      Milestones for improvements

•      Environment clean-up, clean (tag and archive tests and data for that release) restore test machines to baseline for next test cycle.

Final summary:

What is testing?

Testing is the process of showing the presence of defects. Testing is the process of exercising or evaluating a system or system component by manual or automated means to verify that it satisfies specified requirements, or to identify differences between expected and actual results

Process of testing:

Testing = Verification + Validation

•      Verification: building the product right.

•      Validation: building the right product.

•      A broad and continuous activity throughout the software life cycle.

•      An information gathering activity to enable the evaluation of our work, e.g.

•      Does it meet the users requirements?

•      What are the limitations?

•      What are the risks of releasing it.

Software Testing Life Cycle

Phase	Activities	Outcome
Planning	Create high level test plan	Test plan, Refined Specification
Analysis	Create detailed test plan, Functional Validation Matrix, test cases	Revised Test Plan, Functional validation matrix, test cases
Design	test cases are revised; select which test cases to automate	revised test cases, test data sets, sets, risk assessment sheet
Construction	scripting of test cases to automate,	test procedures/Scripts, Drivers, test results, Bugreports.
Testing ycles	complete testing cycles	Test results, Bug Reports
Functional Testing	execute remaining stress and performance tests, complete documentation	Test results and different metrics on test efforts
Post Implementation	Evaluate testing processes	Plan for improvement of testing process.

If you have any queries/feed back catch me on - knowthetesting@gmail.com 

Thank you 

Ram