Improving,software,test,effici computer Improving software test efficiency
Gone are those times when the companies and the organisations didn't need a hi-tech system to handle them. Owing to the considerable increase in the business sector and thus, an enormous increase in the complexity of the organisational struc ----------------------------------------------------------Permission is granted for the below article to forward,reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website,offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as longas no changes a
Softwaretesting. Not a well known job, and usually not regarded as a fair value forthose who know about it. Yet, software testing is an essential part of thesoftware creation process. Why do you think most of the softwares you use arebugfree ?During thedevelopment process of every software, there are 2 major stages :programming and testing. These two stages are dependant from eachother, and thesoftware is going to go back and forth a large number of times, until testingteam gives whats called the « Go » decision. At this point, thesoftware can be deployed or pushed out on the market.Testers haveto follow a test plan, which is defined upstream. This test plan isusually included in a test managementtool (the most used one is HP Quality Center).Every time testersreceive a new version or a new release of the software, they have to followthis test plan in order to make sure every component of the software is workingproperly. Why do testers have to play the test plan over and over ? Forone simple reason When testersfind a bug in the software, they send it back to developers. Developers willcorrect that bug and send the new release of the software to testers again. Youmight then think testers only have to test this specific component ; butthey cant, because of regression risks. What are regressions ?Whendevelopers correct a bug, they have to modify some parts of the source code.But doing this, they can affect other components of the software also using themodified part of the source code. This is a regression : correcting a bugin module 1 can introduce a bug in module 2, which was bugfree before thechange. Thus, testers have to test all over to make sure no other bug has beenintroduced, and to find these bugs if not. This is regression testing.Also, if atest plan have been setup upstream, how to be sure that every part of thesoftware is well covered by tests ? Knowing every possible cases is not reallypossible, and as there are frequent modifications or improvements, the code canchange with time. If the test coverage is not sufficient, bugs can beintroduced but not detected by testers as no test have been defined for thesecases !Kalistick, asoftware editing company, has developed a tool that will help testers to makeall these situations easier. This tool is Cloud based and thus can be accessedby any web browser.With this,regression tests, test coverage and Godecision can be improved and can be accelerated ! As testersdont like to get their hands dirty, the first point is that no code is goingto be shown to testers.This tool isable to help testers to choose the right test strategy :change based testing, risk based testing, regression testing, agile testing Choosing theright strategy will allowtesters to accelerate their process.Using theappropriate strategy will help testers to know what changed in the software andwhich are the related risks. It will also tell testers what didntchange ! So, no need to loose time with useless testing. If a componenthasnt been modified and has been successfully tested before, so testing itagain is not needed.Finally, thetool will check the test coverage. This means that it will tell testers whathasnt been tested, and what cant be tested because of the lack oftests ! It will then help testers to define new tests for uncoveredmodules.With allthese data, the final decision, know as the « Go » decision, will bemuch easier and much faster. This decision is one of the more important :it allows the deployment of the application. This means the program is ready tobe used by clients. As all softwares, zero bugs is never the case, but withKalisticks tool, you can be sure that the bugs are fewer than ever.
Improving,software,test,effici