Testing Process - QTP

QTP (Quick Test Professional) lets you create tests and business components by recording operations as you perform them in your application.

Test - A compilation of steps organized into one or more actions, which we can use to verify that our application performs as expected. A test is composed of actions (3 kinds of actions are there in QTP Non-reusable action, Reusable action and External action).

1)      First step is Planning Before starting to build a test, you should plan it and prepare the required infrastructure. For example, determine the functionality you want to test, short tests that check specific functions of the application or complete site.Decide how you want to organize your object repositories.

2)      Second step in QTP is Creating Tests or Components

User can create a test or component by the following way
a) Either recording a session on your application or Web site. As we navigate through the application or site, QuickTest graphically displays each step we perform as a row in the Keyword View. The Documentation column of the Keyword View also displays a description of each step in easy-to-understand sentences. A step is something that causes or makes a change in your site or application, such as clicking a link or image, or submitting a data form.

OR

 b) Build an object repository and use these objects to add steps manually in the Keyword View or Expert View. We can then modify your test or component with special testing options and/or with programming statements.

3)      Third step is Inserting checkpoints into your test or component. A checkpoint is a verification point that compares a recent value for a specified property with the expected value for that property. This enables you to identify whether the Web site or application is functioning correctly.

4)      Fourth step is Broaden the scope of your test or component by replacing fixed values with parameters.

To check how your application performs the same operations with different data you can parameterize your test or component.

When you parameterize your test or component, QuickTest substitutes the fixed values in your test or component with parameters

Each run session that uses a different set of parameterized data is called an iteration.

We can also use output values to extract data from our test or component. An output value is a value retrieved during the run session and entered into the Data Table or saved as a variable or a parameter. We can subsequently use this output value as input data in your test or component.

We can use many functional testing features of QuickTest to improve your test or component and/or add programming statements to achieve more complex testing goals.

5)      Fifth step is running the test

After creating test or component, we run it.
Run test or component to check the site or application.

When we run the test or component, QuickTest connects to your Web site or application and performs each operation in a test or component, checking any text strings, objects, or tables you specified. If we parameterized the test with Data Table parameters, QuickTest repeats the test (or specific actions in your test) for each set of data values we defined.
Run the test or component to debug it.

We can control the run session to identify and eliminate defects in the test or component. We can use the

Step Into,
Step Over,

And Step Outcommands to run a test or component step by step. We can also set breakpoints to pause the test or component at pre-determined points. We can view the value of variables in the test or component each time it stops at a breakpoint in the Debug Viewer.

6)      Sixth step is analyzing the results

After we run test or component, we can view the results.
View the results in the Results window.
After running the test or component, we can view the results of the run in the Test Results window. We can view a summary of the results as well as a detailed report.

Report defects identified during a run session.
If Quality Center is installed, we can report the defects fond out to a database. We can instruct QuickTest to automatically report each failed step in the test or component, or we can report them manually from the Test Results window.

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

Manual and Automation testing Challenges

Software Testing has lot of challenges both in manual as well as in automation. Generally in manual testing scenario developers through the build to test team assuming the responsible test team or tester will pick the build and will come to ask what the build is about? This is the case in organizations not following so-called ‘processes’. Tester is the middleman between developing team and the customers, handling the pressure from both the sides. And I assume most of our readers are smart enough to handle this pressure. Aren’t you?

This is not the case always. Some times testers may add complications in testing process due to their unskilled way of working. In this post I have added most of the testing challenges created due to testing staff, developing staff, testing processes and wrong management decisions.

So here we go with the top challenges:

1) Testing the complete application:

Is it possible? I think impossible. There are millions of test combinations. It’s not possible to test each and every combination both in manual as well as in automation testing. If you try all these combinations you will never ship the product 

 

2) Misunderstanding of company processes:

Some times you just don’t pay proper attention what the company-defined processes are and these are for what purposes. There are some myths in testers that they should only go with company processes even these processes are not applicable for their current testing scenario. This results in incomplete and inappropriate application testing.

3) Relationship with developers:

Big challenge. Requires very skilled tester to handle this relation positively and even by completing the work in testers way. There are simply hundreds of excuses developers or testers can make when they are not agree with some points. For this tester also requires good communication, troubleshooting and analyzing skill.

4) Regression testing:

When project goes on expanding the regression testing work simply becomes uncontrolled. Pressure to handle the current functionality changes, previous working functionality checks and bug tracking.

5) Lack of skilled testers:

I will call this as ‘wrong management decision’ while selecting or training testers for their project task in hand. These unskilled fellows may add more chaos than simplifying the testing work. This results into incomplete, insufficient and ad-hoc testing throughout the testing life cycle.

6) Testing always under time constraint:

Hey tester, we want to ship this product by this weekend, are you ready for completion? When this order comes from boss, tester simply focuses on task completion and not on the test coverage and quality of work. There is huge list of tasks that you need to complete within specified time. This includes writing, executing, automating and reviewing the test cases.

7) Which tests to execute first?

If you are facing the challenge stated in point no 6, then how will you take decision which test cases should be executed and with what priority? Which tests are important over others? This requires good experience to work under pressure.

8 ) Understanding the requirements:

Some times testers are responsible for communicating with customers for understanding the requirements. What if tester fails to understand the requirements? Will he be able to test the application properly? Definitely No! Testers require good listening and understanding capabilities.

9) Automation testing:

Many sub challenges - Should automate the testing work? Till what level automation should be done? Do you have sufficient and skilled resources for automation? Is time permissible for automating the test cases? Decision of automation or manual testing will need to address the pros and cons of each process.

10) Decision to stop the testing:

When to stop testing? Very difficult decision. Requires core judgment of testing processes and importance of each process. Also requires ‘on the fly’ decision ability.

11) One test team under multiple projects:

Challenging to keep track of each task. Communication challenges. Many times results in failure of one or both the projects.

12) Reuse of Test scripts:

Application development methods are changing rapidly, making it difficult to manage the test tools and test scripts. Test script migration or reuse is very essential but difficult task.

13) Testers focusing on finding easy bugs:

If organization is rewarding testers based on number of bugs (very bad approach to judge testers performance) then some testers only concentrate on finding easy bugs those don’t require deep understanding and testing. A hard or subtle bug remains unnoticed in such testing approach.

14) To cope with attrition:

Increasing salaries and benefits making many employees leave the company at very short career intervals. Managements are facing hard problems to cope with attrition rate. Challenges - New testers require project training from the beginning, complex projects are difficult to understand, delay in shipping date!

These are some top software testing challenges we face daily. Project success or failure depends largely on how you address these basic issues.

For further reference and detailed solutions on these challenges refer book “Surviving the Top Ten challenges of Software Testing” written by William E. Perry and Randall W. Rice.