Software Testing Best Practices: 12 Ways to Improve Testing

Finding effective ways to implement result-driven testing strategies at the most possible initial stage will help you address and resolve unnecessary defects. Software testing best practices become crucial, enabling you to prevent these issues whilst maintaining the quality of the product. Did you know that the software testing market size is valued at USD 40 billion in 2021 and is projected to grow at a 6% CAGR in upcoming years? It indicates the significance of the services offered by ‘software quality assurance’ services.

Software QA services become the go-to choice when it comes to ensuring the quality of your software product. It is a win-win scenario for your product and brand ultimately resulting in increased efficiency and better quality product. You can also reduce costs and maximize your revenues.

Are you also looking for the best software testing ways to implement in your product management process? The guide provides you with everything you need to know regarding effective testing strategies. Continue reading!

Understand Product Objectives in Order to Design Effective Test Strategies

Understanding your product objectives before finding out and starting to work on test methodologies is crucial. First and foremost, you need to analyze the important aspects and elements of your new software product. For instance, you should assess:

• Who is your target audience?
• What your potential consumers are looking for in your product?
• How you will fill the gap?
• What benefits your product will offer to the people, and so on?

Considering such essential queries will help you select the best test quality assurance testing strategies for your software product. Additionally, assess the potential risks involved in the project so you can have a sound start.

Plan the Testing and QA Practices

When testing a product, it is essential to ensure that the quality assurance tests cover all of the relevant domains. This provides assurance that the tests verify the operation of the program and check for any potential blunders. By adhering to these best practices, you can verify that your product has been thoroughly tested and that any possible issues have been found and resolved seamlessly.

In addition to that, test processes and procedures must be documented, structured, and maintained well. It will help the product managers and the crew to communicate efficiently without any obstacles and gaps.

Below mentioned are a few important types of documentation that can aid in the QA process.

Test Policy

As the term implies, a test policy is an elite-level document designed at the organizational level to define the crucial test standards implemented by the organization. There is no conventional method for testing policy; nevertheless, it often comprises the following:

• Important testing tools are available
• The classification of software testing for the organization
• Organizational and operational goals must be tested
• General project testing guidelines and characteristics

Quality Management Plan

Explaining an adequate level of product worth, the quality management plan is a mandatory manual that helps the firm to analyze how the venture would be accomplished. It also contains the below-mentioned elements:

• Quality tools and standards
• Quality assurance activities & objectives
• Quality duties, roles, and responsibilities
• Strategies for assurance problems and reporting quality control systems

Test Strategy

Another crucial document is termed a ‘test strategy’ which is typically designed by a business specialist or a product manager. It explains software testing and quality assurance approaches and models utilized to accomplish project goals. In addition, it also contains the following components:

• Test initiatives and objectives
• Status reporting and communication
• Budget limitations & the scope of testing
• Test implementation schedule & deadlines
• Risk evaluation U& configuration management

Test Plan

A mandatory document explaining what, when, and how to test the product is termed a ‘test plan’. The document also highlights who will be held responsible for conducting testing practices along with defining the project goals, timelines, and tools that are to be used during the process. Here’s what will be included in the ‘test plan’:

• Introduction
• Approvals and evaluation
• Testing schedules and timelines
• Testing approaches and strategies
• Software errors and potential risks
• Features to be evacuated and tested
• Test environment including tools, software, and hardware

Test Cases

A test case is crucial for successful software product testing. It includes a set of input data, implementation conditions, projected outcomes, and successful execution. It is one of the vital tools used by project managers. A test case will involve:

• The test case description and ID
• Test steps and prerequisites
• Test data and findings
• Initial evacuation and output
• Ultimate assessment and result
• Status of the testing process
• Date of creation, implementation, and execution

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Develop Requirements That Are Testable

In order to make your software product testing successful, make sure to identify and develop seamlessly testable requirements. Assess the purpose, objectives, and scope of software testing before commencing the actual testing process.

Ideal Methods to Writing Requirements

The product manager or a business analyst working on the project must have a sound understanding of the essential features and user requirements. They should compose and maintain testing documents at the initial evaluation and design phase. This will help quality assurance specialists to determine which requirements are testable or which ones they should eliminate.

Listen to your customers’ queries, pay focus to their feedback, and consider their reviews in order to evaluate what they want to get and what they are expecting from your end. Make sure requirements are clear and consistent.

Test-Driven Development (TDD)

‍This particular activity favors a test-first methodology through which tests are composed prior to the concrete code for the product being executed. Since a new product or a feature begins with an automated test case have a chance to come out unsuccessful. Consequently, the code is composed to assure the functionality meets the requirements and passes the initial test.

Behavior-Driven Development (BDD)

BDD employs a syntax known as Gherkin to replace abstract terms with real-world instances.

User Stories ‍

This approach is centered on the potential consumer or users. They are expressed in the structure of purpose and user-role, and so are comprehensible to end users.

Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD)

This mixes consumer stories with conformance to show if the software product is functioning properly.

Use a Shift-Left Approach to Start Testing Early and Often

It is already explained how to use test-driven programming approach within a core programming framework. A shift-left testing strategy mirrors this principle, suggesting that testing operations begin at the commencement of the development process rather than at the end.

Putting off testing processes until the final stage can lead to inefficiencies and delayed progress. Make sure to develop a testing schedule early in the development process in order to address and correct defects efficiently.

Conduct Formal Technical Reviews

The most ideal timeframe to conduct an FTR is when you have a grown-up software product. However, it might depend on the nature of the review. A conventional FTR requires a crew with certain job capabilities such as producers, reviewers, and speakers.

In order to expose logical, operational, and functional errors within the project, a formal technical review is been conducted by software engineers. It typically refers to a formal conference at which participants with specific duties and responsibilities ensure that the invented software product or application meets the standard criteria.

Ensure a Suitable Work Environment for QA Team

Working culture within a company has a direct impact on employees’ performance and productivity. It also impacts their attitude toward their jobs and responsibilities. In order to maintain a smooth working environment within the organization, here is what you need to practice:

Describe QA Roles

Testing comprises a variety of actions carried out by various professionals. Roles are outlined in a test plan at the brainstorming stage to ensure a smooth testing process. In QA, there are 6 major roles including:

• Test architect expert
• Test automation engineer
• Test manager and analyst
• Software development specialist
• Quality assurance software engineer

Respect Your Testers

 To reach top-notch quality standards, you must establish trustworthy relationships between team and QA specialists. It would also be preferable to look for folks with coding expertise. Engineers would undoubtedly value such analyzers more. They are also capable of coding a few of their own tools as well which is a win-win for you.

At group sessions, a QA lead must acknowledge the team’s success as well as the individual accomplishments of its members. It will inspire other experts to conceivable outcomes in the future.

Give Business Training To Your QA Team

Provide your QA professionals with the training they need to enhance their theoretical and technical knowledge. To improve the work of the entire team, you can conduct team-building practices and resourceful training sessions. A quality assurance manager should also conduct result-oriented strategy meetings to unleash the team’s combined creativity. It will aid in the development of new ways of resolving existing issues and challenges.

Encourage Communication

QA leaders must motivate their crew to discuss current problems and other concerns that might ultimately affect their efficiency and productivity. Gather your testers and programmers together to boost effective communication. Face-to-face contact will aid in the prevention of misconceptions and the sharing of appropriate solutions to issues identified during testing.

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Implement User Acceptance Testing

User personas are used in product development to define an ideal customer for a product. It can be a fictitious figure who mimics your product’s target audience’s behavior patterns and aspirations. Personas are used by QA teams to choose how and when to look for issues. However, following persona direction cannot forecast the whole range of conduct patterns. Consider including end-users in testing to verify that your product satisfies user demands.

1. Types of User Acceptance Testing

There can be various ways by which UAT can be conducted including:

• Contract Acceptance
• Testing Alpha and beta
• Production Readiness Testing
• Regulation Acceptance Testing

2. How to Organize User Acceptance Testing?

User acceptance testing assists in uncovering issues that were missed throughout the testing cycle. Given the significance of end-user feedback, consider the following ideas for correctly organizing UAT:

• Coach testers
• Respect their time
• Seek concerned users
• Minimize the practices of test tools

3. Test User Documentation

Any form of software that is created has User Documentation (UD). It acts as a manual or a guide for using a service or a program. As a result, ensure that you assess your user documentation. However, if you do not have ideal user documentation and instead rely on onboarding materials, be sure you involve your users to determine how useful and successful the onboarding is.

Optimize the Use of Automated Tests

If you truly want to enhance the quality of the product or an app, employing automation tools or using automated testing to perform the tests might be a wise decision.

Test automation offers various benefits including eliminating human mistakes, saving time, increasing test capability and performance, and performing parallel implementation. Here are some examples of how using automated testing improves the process:

• Testing across browsers and various devices
• Performance, loading, and smoke testing

Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery

As the term implies, continuous integration (CI) refers to an approach in software product development in which engineers must incorporate modifications into a product multiple times; this might be on a daily basis or in accordance with certain requirements.

At every code’s latest update, each code component performs the “integration tests” to discover flaws and issues faster and more readily. Merging CI together with automated testing is supposed to be a smart approach in order to make your code trustworthy.

However, on the other hand, continuous delivery (CD) is evident as a revolutionary advancement of agile concepts. This strategy allows you to make further improvements to your clients rapidly and in a resilient manner. CD permits the latest bits of code to be committed once they are prepared, rather than in short-release iterations.

Implement Ad Hoc and Exploratory Testing

The central idea of exploratory and ad hoc testing lies in human inventiveness. Both need minimum preparation and typically would be relatively random in their identification of unique problems or errors that would not be addressed in the scope of other, more organized software tests.

Because it involves experimenting with a range of user behaviors and scenarios, it is considered the most successful way of analyzing usability. Additionally, this technique allows the software to be assessed and tested quickly, gaining rapid feedback, and suggesting focal points for further testing for a robust project or product.

Consider Code Quality Measurements

Are you still trying to figure out how to enhance product testing? If so, then make sure that your quality targets are documented, quantifiable, evaluated, and monitored. There might not be any single correct technique to assess code quality; however, the greatest recommendation is to select testing metrics and KPIs for your processes that are simple to use, effective, and straightforward.

Report Bugs Effectively

A strong bug report is ideal to make product testing more effective by defining the issue and route cause as well as guiding the team toward its resolution. On the other hand, a poorly prepared report might lead to major miscommunication between team members. Here are some pointers for writing a successful bug report:

• Provide clarity
• Provide screenshots
• Provide possible remedies
• Make sure to reproduce the bug before reporting it
• Consider including a bug description in your report

Get the Most Out Of Your Test Management Tool

Test control systems and management tools are solutions that assist QA teams in organizing and managing the testing process. These systems can be connected with your test automation platforms, continuous integration/continuous delivery tools, bug tracking tools, and other software products. Utilizing such tools for your projects will help you:

• Create test cases
• Requirements for capture
• Plan your testing operations
• Save testing data and findings
• Tracking KPIs provides visibility
• Make reports on test execution
• Controlling test case environments

Conclusion

If you want your organization to be competent and win in the IT industry, you will have to offer high-quality products to your potential customers. Improving software product quality will have the greatest overall influence on your organization and its financial success.

When controlling your operating procedures, don’t skimp on testing because the cost of certain errors might be eventually prohibitively expensive. Therefore,   your quality strategy must address all critical components, including a test-centered quality management framework, effective planning, and a dedicated QA staff.

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