7 Best Software Testing Practices

Today, no company can afford to deliver a compromised or defective product while attributing the fault to human error. To ensure a high-quality deployment of your product, there needs to be a process, i.e, software testing, in place to find the errors before release. Software testing is an essential and mandatory component of the development process if you want your product to succeed.

Businesses have one shot to make a positive first-impression, so emphasizing a quality customer experience needs to be at the forefront. When it comes to software development, the primary goal should be to avoid releasing a low-quality software product. Even the tiniest bugs and errors can result in significant financial losses. Due to this, a significant portion of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) should be devoted to software testing. In addition, it is crucial to assess the product’s quality and test its user interface to ensure that it meets customer requirements.

This blog illustrates the seven best software testing practices for enhancing the software testing process and raising the caliber of your products.

Are you still unsure of what it means? So first, let’s get right into what Software Testing entails!

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What is Software Testing?

Software testing can be summed up as determining and validating whether software or an application is bug-free, complies with the technical specifications established by its design, and successfully satisfies user requirements by handling all exceptional and boundary cases.

Software testing aims to find bugs in the software and ways to improve the software’s efficiency, accuracy, and usability. Its main objective is to evaluate the functionality, performance, and specification of a software product or an application.

It is divided into two steps:

Verification is a procedure that ensures the software carries out a specific function as intended.

Validation refers to various procedures that ensure the software was developed following the client’s needs.

Now that you know the basics of Software Testing, let’s get started with the best practices for Software Testing.

7 Best Software Testing Practices

Software development is not complete without testing. Knowing where and when to begin testing can be complex. It might result in a poor reputation, fewer customers, and disgruntled developers. Thus, educating oneself on software testing best practices is crucial.

Below are the best practices to ensure your Software Testing is in line with your product requirements.

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Test Throughout The Life Cycle

Testing reduces the workload during launch by taking place throughout the SDLC. Some people think the launch is the only time to test, but by testing frequently and early, you can identify and correct mistakes as you advance in the development process. According to IBM researchers, fixing a bug after the product has been released will cost 4–5 times more than catching it during the Software Testing process.

Thus, testing should begin during the development stage and progress from there; this is known as the shift-left strategy. Shift left testing provides the following advantages:

• After planning or designing a system there may be problems in its implementation. Probable issues can also be foreseen and addressed quickly at a significantly lower cost.
• Since testing is a part of every stage of the SDLC, management won’t feel it is a bottleneck for releasing the product.
• Due to their greater involvement in the product’s early stages of development, testers will be more familiar with the software.
• Writing test cases during the requirements phase and sharing them with the dedicated development team before the development phase can encourage developers to think creatively and consider more potential points of how to handle the probable errors at the coding stage itself.
• Risks and delays can be foreseen, and the test environment can be prepared beforehand.
• The risk of having little time for testing is significantly reduced by increasing test coverage and the variety of tests run.
• An organization’s “quality culture” can be developed by incorporating software testing into all stages of the SDLC.

You should test early and frequently to ensure successful integration. Businesses can either outsource QA engineer tasks or hire in-house specialists in order to get top-notch product quality within a reasonable period of time.

Testing Manually And Automatically

Combining automated and manual testing strategies speeds up testing and raises the caliber of software. To conduct manual testing, the testing team must manually conduct test cases to identify bugs and errors and notify developers as soon as possible.

Automated testing necessitates testers to run tests automatically using scripts and QA automation tools. This method enables engineers to examine the features and functionality of a software program. In addition, by combining manual and automated testing, test coverage is increased, and the testing process becomes successful when coverage is between 80% and 100%.

Take Advantage Of Different Testing Methods

Diversifying your testing strategy allows you to identify the various bugs that can cause problems later. While sanity testing, usability testing, and regression testing are three beneficial kinds, there are a few more to take into account:

• Smoke testing ensures that the software is stable and does not fail after the first pass.
• Black Box testing evaluates functionality without delving into the application’s internal workings.
• White Box testing examines the application’s internal structures but not its functionality.

There are many more testing procedures. Still, the key is finding the appropriate combinations that work with your process and ensuring that your product fully satisfies the business objectives.

Write Tests Ahead Of Time, But Don’t Let Developers Do It

Test cases increase testing efficiency because you can reuse the same tests on new builds without having to rewrite them. To make tests straightforward to execute, they should be written with a specific purpose and effectively arranged to ensure the procedure can be repeated.

Running tests in advance, also referred to as test-driven development, has several advantages, including time savings by fixing errors before writing a new code. Additionally, it avoids code duplication, another time thief.

Furthermore, tests can aid in the early detection and correction of bugs during development. Finally, writing tests is a responsibility that every programmer must accept.

However, do not allow programmers to write tests against their code for the best results. Although this appears to be the simplest solution, it introduces a bias that can impede advancement. Additionally, this action lacks originality and the capacity to challenge the code in a way that encourages it to advance.

Establish A Safe Testing Environment

Testing is integral to software development but can be quite expensive. Therefore, a secure testing environment is crucial for reducing the cost involved in saving your application from malicious attacks.

A secure testing environment can protect you from data loss and many other problems. A secure testing environment can also safeguard your data and guarantee the error-free development of the software. Developers can ensure their software is high-quality and satisfies user needs by investing in a secure testing environment.

A secure testing environment safeguards your data as well as your testing process. Furthermore, it ensures that all data is accessible only to authorized users.

For secure testing environments, you can follow these steps:

• Determine the needs
• Assess the solutions at hand
• Choose the best security solution
• Implement and track the solution

Employ Both Internal And Outsourced Teams

Putting together an in-house dream team of testers who can meet all requirements isn’t always possible because it requires a level of infrastructure and administrative investment that many companies can’t afford. As a result, many businesses rely solely on outsourced QA teams to save money.

It is best to balance the two for the best results. Like interacting with your consumers is beneficial in the testing process, utilizing internal and outsourced teams can also help you better understand the consumer markets, especially if you’re working with offshore testing teams. Consider having the best of both worlds with this combination. With platforms such as Wishup, hiring the best QA engineer or a team of QA analysts has become pretty convenient.

Perform Risk-based Testing

This approach aims to identify the most severe risks during the testing process. The software testing service evaluates potential risks, assigns them a priority, and organizes the testing procedure.

Risk-based testing assists engineers in identifying and eliminating the most critical risks that could impair the overall performance of the software. Consequently, the customer gets a high-quality product that meets all their needs.

This process should involve the entire project team. This means that developers, project managers, technical architects, software testers, and consumers can participate in brainstorming sessions to identify all potential risks.

Wrapping Up

 

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A company needs a culture of excellence and high-level software testing teams to oversee the software testing and development cycles to produce high-quality products.

The best software testing practices should focus on improving the software’s overall performance by identifying and fixing bugs at the beginning of the SDLC. In addition, testers should check the software product during the testing process to comply with industry practices, fundamental principles, acceptance criteria, and customer requirements.

The QA testing team should not view software testing as a single stage in product development.

The software testing best practices outlined above should be followed from the discovery stage to software release and beyond, including maintenance and support stages. Naturally, you don’t have to implement all these best practices for software testing in a single project.

A skilled and knowledgeable software testing team can select the best strategy and tools to satisfy the needs of a specific client. This will result in an excellent workflow and optimized product quality.