Software Testing Best Practices

We all know the importance of quality assurance and software testing for software development. For successful software development, testing is crucial and cannot be neglected. However, sometimes, the software testing process is added later at the end before the project’s release is planned. There might be many thoughts running through your mind when it comes to quality assurance and best software testing practices. So it is important to plan the software testing process in the beginning because the consequences of performing testing in the wrong way can be even more costly.

After investing a lot of time in research, we came to know that the main reason behind the failure of software startups is performing poor quality assurance during the software development process. This is the main reason to perform strict quality assurance tests and prevent the release of poor-quality products. So to overcome such complications, you need resourceful QA engineers from a top-notch software testing company that offers a comprehensive set of manual and automated testing services adhering to standard quality assurance best practices.

In this post, we’re going to list down the 9 best practices for software testing that you must know before releasing your project. So without any further ado, let’s get started!

1. Make Sure All Tests Are Integrated In Ci/Cd Pipeline

We are in the era of DevOps methodology where every software testing team needs to have an automated CI/CD pipeline. Manual quality assurance strategies are error-prone so it doesn’t make much sense. So make sure that you’re not neglecting the important aspect of modern quality assurance testing before releasing the software. Implementing test automation is crucial as it is a part of the CI/CD setup that makes your code error-free while it is deployed. So to get the best outcomes after investing a lot of development efforts, you must check your code into the CI pipeline where the code is automatically tested.

You might not be aware that automated CI/CD pipelines make it inevitable to test the code at an initial stage, which improves security by allowing issues to be detected faster during the production chain. The importance of CI/CD cannot be overlooked as it helps you to eliminate unwanted complexity from the testing process and allow stakeholders involved in quality control to embrace it.

2. Perform Regression Testing

Rectifying code to fix an issue can easily lead to another. One of the best practices to embrace this when it comes to Agile development is reusable regression tests. Performing regression testing at this stage helps you to resolve one problem without creating another issue in the code. And to make it even more effective, make sure to segregate test cases and graph the bugs so that you can easily analyze the problem spots.

3. Write Tests For Maximum Coverage

To get the maximum coverage, make sure to write all types of tests. Start writing test cases for unexpected behavior and valid conditions of applications under the test to get maximum coverage. And when it comes to the requirements phase, write test cases for the analysis and designing phase so that your requirements can also become testable.

4. Perform Testing Throughout The Lifecycle

Make sure you’re testing your software until the software development process is completed. This helps you to eliminate the burden during quality assurance. Some of you might think that testing can only be performed in the testing phase after the development phase is completed, but this is not the truth. You can perform testing at an initial stage so that you’re able to detect bugs and resolve them quickly. Doing this can lessen the burden of QA and increases the chances of delivering the best quality software if you perform testing at every stage.

5. Leverage Sanity Testing

Sanity testing is an intricate process that targets topical features. Sanity testing takes place when you don’t have much time to perform full regression testing. It makes sure that everything is working as expected and there are no bugs/errors in the code. This might require some effort but it saves a lot of time and does quick sanity checks to offer developers immediate feedback.

6. Develop Requirements That Are Testable

When it comes to software testing, how business or functional requirements are written determines their testability. If your requirements are well-written, then it will help you to describe the software behavior in such a way that tests can be developed and requirements can be met. Ensure that your requirements are written without any ambiguity, clarity, and completeness.

7. Adopt ‘test Early Test Often’ Principle

You must have come across the phrase that says, “test early and often test” while you’re performing software testing. You must plan all the software quality assurance activities at an early stage of development to gain the best and optimal solutions. If you have additional time throughout the software development lifecycle, you can come up with a more realistic time frame without sacrificing product quality.

8. Report All Tests

When you’re in the testing phase, don’t forget to keep records of all tests whether it is manual testing or automated testing. Write all observations in the file and incorporate them into the final test reports to release unambiguous test reports and demanded details. Also, note the bug’s symptoms as it affects the entire system and exerts possible solutions to make testing meaningful.

9. Adopt Diverse Testing Strategies

Embracing diverse testing processes will help you quickly determine various types of bugs at an initial stage of the software development life cycle. But when we talk about regression and sanity testing, both these testing strategies are valuable. Apart from this, you should also consider:

• White box testing helps you to test the internal structure of your product rather than the functionalities included in it
• Smoke testing helps you to make your application stable and it does not flame up after the initial pass
• Black box testing tests the internal functionality of the software without working into the inner side of the app

You’ll find a variety of testing procedure types but choose the one whose combinations fit your processes and help you to achieve your business objectives. Having a solid QA and testing process by your side helps you to eliminate major risks at the beginning and triaging defects.

Key Takeaway

So that’s it for the post. After reading this post, you have many practices to implement for software testing that helps you to perform tests in an effective way and allows you to detect bugs at an initial stage. We hope you find this post helpful. It would be great for us if you share this post on Facebook or Twitter to reach more audiences. Feel free to mention your queries in the comment section given below and we will get back to you soon.