Introduction

The testing phase of software development often gets the short shrift by developers and IT managers. Yet testing is the only way to determine whether an application will function properly before it is deployed. In this whitepaper we offer an overview of the whys and hows of our software testing approach.

Belatrix Software is a leading Software Services Outsourcing company with its main offices and delivery centers based in Mendoza, Argentina and Lima, Peru. We provide Software Development, Quality Assurance, Localization and Graphics Design Services using the “Agile Near-Shore Model”.

Although it doesn’t get a lot of press, testing is arguably the most important phase in any software development project. Testing is the only way to know whether your project or product is destined for success or doomed to failure before it goes live.

Our focused approach to functional testing includes verifying that an application or Web site conforms to specifications and correctly performs all required functions.

Quality Assurance Services: We offer comprehensive testing services to ensure that your product – project, web site or web application – conforms to stated/documented behavior and specifications.

Our team performs tests of your application on all of the relevant operating systems and browser versions. Once a product’s expected functionality has been defined, test cases or test procedures are created to test actual against expected behavior of the program.

The risks of releasing a new product without rigorous QA have greater implications now than ever before because of the change in expectations and demands of the end users. Finding an autonomous QA partner who is independent of the development unit is crucial to the success of a product.

What is Functional Testing?

Functional testing examines how your hardware, software, Web site, or internal application executes its requisite functions, and is vital for assuring the quality of released software. It includes testing of user commands, data manipulation, searches, business processes, user screens, and integrations. Validating an application or Web site in this manner ensures conformity to its specifications and the correct performance of all of its functions.

This is executed as a series of tests which validates the products behavior, feature by feature, using a wide range of normal as well as erroneous input data. This can involve testing of the product’s user interface, APIs, database, security, installation, network, etc.

Performing functional testing at the user interface level is crucial as it can reveal many deficiencies not immediately apparent when conducting a source code review. First priority is given to testing the application’s usability rather than the complexity of the application’s internal workings. Regardless of the quality of the underlying code, if the user interface doesn’t work, the result is an inefficient and frustrating experience for the user.

Good functional testing practices and traits

• Be flexible, so the team´s members can switch tasks dynamically to adapt to changing requirements.
• Create a ranking to prioritize the test cases.
• Maintain traceability between the requirements, test cases and bugs.
• Cover the main business flows.

Automated Functional Testing

Management is looking to IT to deliver new capabilities, unlock new business opportunities, and deliver competitive advantages through software. This means the addition of more business application development projects with tighter schedules—but not always with more budget or incremental resources.

Automation is essential to improve the speed, accuracy, and flexibility of the software testing process, enabling your company to find and fix more defects earlier.

The benefits of automation are that it:

• Reduces risk
• Facilitates the re-use of tests
• Enables faster execution
• Facilitates greater test coverage
• Delivers higher test accuracy and finds more defects earlier
• Provides formalized processes

However, it should be noted that not all tests are meant to be automated but would be better executed manually.

Advantages of manual testing:

• A tester is the only one capable of visualizing the bugs in the user interface (GUI).
• More effective for applications that are under heavy development
• Can provide fast access to testing information
• Are easy to understand for all users

Manual testing disadvantages:

• Takes too long
• Provides incomplete coverage

To ensure the quality of the applications, we may follow some or all of the following strategies:

Smoke testing

The purpose of smoke testing is to validate the build at a high level, in other words to make sure that changes in the code do not destabilize the overall build or cause catastrophic errors. However, it is not meant to be exhaustive Typical characteristics of a smoke test are:

• Short execution time.
• Positive test cases i.e., the cases will test the expected behavior when the software is used correctly.
• Requires close collaboration between developers and testers, because it focuses on changed code and dependent components
• The smoke test is run after the execution of all the new test cases of the new features and all the regressions. It’s a final check.

Regression testing

Defect fixing stages include two forms of tests done on the fixed code: confirmation test, to verify the fix and a regression test to ensure that the application of the fix hasn’t broken any existing functionality. The same principle applies when adding a new feature or functionality to the application. A regression test pack thus covers the basic workflow of typical requirement/use case/user story scenarios.

Automated Regression Tests

Given the repetitive nature of regression tests, it is advisable to automate regression tests, since:

• Repetitive work causes a loss of interest and a lack of concentration for the tester who may thus, potentially miss new defects.
• Automating the regression test allows more test cases to be completed in a shorter time,  can be run overnight, in parallel with the manual tests or other testing strategies – thereby increasing overall effectiveness.
• Recommended for multi/scenarios testing – when the validation can be done by a computer  whenever there’s a relatively low cost to script maintenance and the script is likely to be re-useable.

Usability Testing/Graphic User Interface Testing

• Validate interactive elements on each screen (e.g. buttons, text inputs etc.)
• Validate navigation flow
• Ease of navigation.
• Elimination of redundant or low value information
• Proper display of text in the selected language.
• Compliance with W3C and Mobile standards

Browsers Compatibility Testing

• Validation on requisite OS and Browser types and versions.
• Impact of integration server changes. Does it support a seamless transition?
• Does it affect third-party systems?

Testing Tools:

Selenium, IBM-Rational Functional Tester, MS-Team Foundation Server, HP Mercury, Apodora, Ranorex, Eclipse, Watir, Watin, Paros proxy, Nunit, MS SQL, Jira, Rally, TestLink, Jmeter, Pywinauto, Virtual Machines, WinSCP, XML, XLST, etc.

Relevant Technologies:

C#, Java, Python, Silverlight etc.

About Belatrix’s QA Services

Belatrix’s Quality Assurance department provides testing and quality assurance services for projects developed internally or by other companies. It also supplies mechanisms to improve existing practices by developing standardized processes for the entire company and by applying lessons learned from ISO™, IQNet standards and CMMI™-SEI.

Belatrix’s QA team specializes in high value-added QA services that would improve the Project process. Because of this we are extremely selective in our recruitment process and only hire top software engineers that have a passion for Quality Assurance.

Some others Testing Strategies we follow are:

• Risk-Based Testing
• Acceptance Testing
• Performance, Stress and Load Testing
• Installation and configuration Testing
• Security Testing
• API Testing and Unit Test
• Navigability testing
• Installation Qualification Testing
• DB testing
• Webservices
• Web Compatibility
• Mutation test
• Integration Test
• Accessibility Testing

We invite you to learn how a relationship with Belatrix will give your company a distinctive advantage through low cost, disciplined, and high quality software development and quality assurance services.