Life Cycle of Testing Process

This article explains about Different steps in Life Cycle of Testing Process. In Each
phase of the development process will have a specific input and a specific output.
Once the project is confirmed to start, the phases of the development of project can
be divided into the following phases:

• Software requirements phase.

In the whole development process, testing consumes highest amount of time. But
most of the developers oversee that and testing phase is generally neglected. As a
consequence, erroneous software is released. The testing team should be involved
right from the requirements stage itself.

The various phases involved in testing, with regard to the software development life
cycle are:

1. Requirements stage
2. Test Plan
3. Test Design.
4. Design Reviews
5. Code Reviews
6. Test Cases preparation.
7. Test Execution
8. Test Reports.
9. Bugs Reporting
10. Reworking on patches.
11. Release to production.

Requirements Stage

Normally in many companies, developers itself take part in the requirements stage.
Especially for product-based companies, a tester should also be involved in this
stage. Since a tester thinks from the user side whereas a developer can’t. A separate
panel should be formed for each module comprising a developer, a tester and a user.
Panel meetings should be scheduled in order to gather everyone’s view. All the
requirements should be documented properly for further use and this document is
called “Software Requirements Specifications”.

Test Plan

Without a good plan, no work is a success. A successful work always contains a good
plan. The testing process of software should also require good plan. Test plan
document is the most important document that brings in a process – oriented
approach. A test plan document should be prepared after the requirements of the
project are confirmed. The test plan document must consist of the following
information:

1
• Total number of features to be tested.
• Testing approaches to be followed.
• The testing methodologies
• Number of man-hours required.
• Resources required for the whole testing process.
• The testing tools that are to be used.
• The test cases, etc

Test Design

Test Design is done based on the requirements of the project. Test has to be
designed based on whether manual or automated testing is done. For automation
testing, the different paths for testing are to be identified first. An end to end
checklist has to be prepared covering all the features of the project.

The test design is represented pictographically. The test design involves various
stages. These stages can be summarized as follows:

• The different modules of the software are identified first.

Then the design is drawn. The test design is the most critical one, which decides the
test case preparation. So the test design assesses the quality of testing process.

Test Cases Preparation

Test cases should be prepared based on the following scenarios:

• Positive scenarios
• Negative scenarios
• Boundary conditions and
• Real World scenarios

The software design is done in systematical manner or using the UML language. The
tester can do the reviews over the design and can suggest the ideas and the
modifications needed.

Code Reviews

Code reviews are similar to unit testing. Once the code is ready for release, the
tester should be ready to do unit testing for the code. He must be ready with his own
unit test cases. Though a developer does the unit testing, a tester must also do it.
The developers may oversee some of the minute mistakes in the code, which a tester
may find out.

Test Execution and Bugs Reporting

Once the unit testing is completed and the code is released to QA, the functional
testing is done. A top-level testing is done at the beginning of the testing to find out
the top-level failures. If any top-level failures occur, the bugs should be reported to

2
the developer immediately to get the required workaround.

The test reports should be documented properly and the bugs have to be reported to
the developer after the testing is completed.

Release to Production

Once the bugs are fixed, another release is given to the QA with the modified
changes. Regression testing is executed. Once the QA assures the software, the
software is released to production. Before releasing to production, another round of
top-level testing is done.

The testing process is an iterative process. Once the bugs are fixed, the testing has
to be done repeatedly. Thus the testing process is an unending process.