Software Testing Strategies

Software testing strategy is an approach which incorporates planning of the steps to test the software along with the planning of time, effort & resources that will be required to test the software. Software testing strategies plans to test any software starting from the smallest component of the software and then integrating test towards the complete system.

The testing strategy should be developed carefully as a non-effective testing strategy would waste the time, cost, effort & resources of the organization. In this section, we will discuss the strategies of software testing, along with the characteristics of testing strategies and the level of testing strategy. We will further study the factors that should be considered while developing the strategy of software testing.

Content: Software Testing Strategies

1. Software Testing Strategies
2. Levels of Software Testing Strategies
3. Factors Considered to Develop Testing Strategies
4. Key Takeaways

Software Testing Strategies

Software testing strategy is the planning done before testing commences and exercised systematically to test the software. The testing strategy could be developed by the project manager, or by the software engineers or it could even be a testing specialist.

Developing a testing strategy for software is important because if testing is not conducted properly it would lead to wastage of time and effort and it would even be the case that some error or bugs remain undetected. Some general characteristics that should be considered while developing the testing strategy are as follow:

1. For successful testing, you should conduct the technical evaluation, it would reveal many of the error before the testing starts. It would help in correcting the technical error before the testing commences & would save time while testing the software.

2. Testing must start from the core of the software design and it must progress outward to incorporate testing of the entire software.

3. You should not follow the same strategy to test all the software. Appropriate testing strategies must be developed for different software engineering approach.

4. Generally, the developer of the software conduct the software testing, and in case the project is large a separate team must be allotted to test the software.

5. Though debugging and testing are two distinct jobs; debugging must be incorporated in every testing strategy.

The software testing strategy is implemented at two levels, low-level testing and high-level testing. Low-level testing is conducted at the core of software design like verifying the code segments of the software. Whereas, high-level testing is conducted to validate software functions against the specified requirements of the customers.

Verification and Validation

Verifying and validating a software incorporates a wide range of software quality assurance activities. By verifying a software, we ensure that every function in the software is implemented and functioning accurately. By validating software, we ensure that the developed software meets the requirements specified by the customer.

In a simple language, verification answers the question of whether ‘we are implementing the software correctly?’ & validating answers, the question of whether ‘we are implementing the correct software?’.

Levels of Software Testing Strategies

While developing the software the software engineers first review the customer requirements, then models it and finally go for coding. That means while developing the software developers move inwards the spiral in an anti-clockwise direction.

For testing, initially, the core part of the software is tested, each unit of the software is tested separately to ensure that as a unit this component functions properly. Then the testing proceeds outward the spiral along the streamlines. Moving outwards the spiral in the clockwise direction gradually widens the scope of testing and in each turn, testing integrates the components and ensure that all the elements of the software are functioning properly and the desired performance is achieved.

In the image below you can see the levels of testing strategies that are developed to test the entire software.

Unit Testing

Unit testing focuses on testing the lowest component of the software individually which is also called unit. Unit testing involves the testing of each code segment to ensure that it functions properly.

Integration Testing

The unit components are integrated to implement the complete software. Integration testing involves testing the design structure of the software which include modelling and software architecture. It focuses on verifying whether functions of the software are working properly or not.

Validation Testing

Validation testing focuses on the testing of software against the requirements specified by the customer.

System Testing

System testing focuses on testing the entire system as a whole and its other system elements. It tests the performance of the system.

Factors Considered to Develop Testing Strategies

1. The first and foremost thing before developing and software are gathering customer requirements. The requirements specified by the customer should be measurable so that the testing result is not ambiguous.
2. The objective of testing should be in measurable terms. Like cost required to detect and debug the error, time spends by the team to test the software.
3. While developing the testing strategy one must understand the need of the user who is going to use the software.
4. The testing strategy should implement rapid testing cycles and the generated feedback can be used in software quality control.
5. The software should be designed in a way that it is capable of diagnosing its own errors.
6. Before testing the software do the technical analysis to discover the error before testing commences.
7. The testing strategies should be improved for the better testing result of the software.

Key Takeaways

So, this is all about the software testing strategies. If the testing strategies are developed effectively it would help in conduct testing efficiently.