5 Steps in the Software Testing Process

Nowadays, in such a highly competitive industry, demand for new applications and functionality is becoming more important and with the increase in demand, quality assurance companies are improving their skills to meet deadlines.

Testing is a part of the software development life cycle. A complete testing process involves the following basic steps:
1. Planning and Control
2. Analysis and Design
3. Implementation and Execution
4. Estimating Exit criteria and Reporting
5. Test Closure Activities

1. Planning and Control
Planning and control involves the following main activities.
I. To evaluate the scope, risk and identifying the goals
II. To plan the basic approach.
III. To implement the test strategy and policy. Basically it is an important part of the software development cycle. It is designed to inform tester, developers and project manager about some key issues about the testing process. This consists of the testing objectives, its approach, total time and resources required for the completion of project.

Test control involves following important activities
I. To analyze the results of testing
II. To estimate the test coverage, documentation and exit criteria
III. To give complete project information
IV. To make decisions

2. Analysis and Design
Test Analysis and Design
Activities involved in this phase are:
To examine the test basis, basically it is the information that is needed to start test cases and analysis. This documentation helps to create test cases, design specifications, such as requirements, risk analysis, interfaces and architecture.
I. To determine test cases
II. To design the work flow
III. To examine testability of the system and requirements

3. Implementation and Execution
In this phase, we convert the test requirements into test cases and writing scripts for automation. In test cases we specify conditions under which we check whether a software is returning correct output or not.

4. Estimating Exit criteria and Reporting
Depending on risk analysis of the project we fix the criteria for each test level. The fixed criteria vary from software to software and is called exit criteria.
Exit criteria take place when
1) Maximum test cases are executed with certain pass percentage.
2) Number of bugs falls down at a certain level
3) When achieved the deadlines.

5. Test Closure Activities
Test Closure Activities are performed when the project is delivered. It contains the following list of activities.
I. To determine that planned outcomes are actually deliver to make sure that reports and bugs has been resolved.
II. To complete scripts and test environments for future use.
III. To analyze how the complete process went through and to figure out what extra points can be added to the process for future projects.