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CHAPTER 1: FUNDAMENTALS OF TESTING

DEFINTION OF SOFTWARE TESTING:

The process consisting of all life cycle activities, both static and dynamic, concerned with
Planning, Preparation and evaluation of software products and related work products
to determine that they satisfy specified requirements, to demonstrate that they are fit
for purpose and to detect defects.

TESTING PRINCIPLE:-

 Testing is context dependent


 Exhaustive testing is impossible
 Early testing
 Defect clustering
 Pesticide Paradox
 Testing shows presence of a defects
 Absence of errors fallacy

CAUSES OF SOFTWARE DEFECTS

Errors:- A human action the produces an incorrect results

Defects (bug, faults):- A flaw in a component or system that can cause the
component or the system to fail to perform its required function. A defect
encountered during the execution, may cause a failure to component
or system.

Failure: Deviation of the component or system from its expected delivery, service or
result.

DO OUR MISTAKES MATTER?

Defects in software , systems or documents may results in failure , but not all do cause
failures.
It is not just defects that give rise to failure. Failures can caused by :

 Environmental conditions for eg. Radiations burst


 Human error in interacting with the software, for eg. Wrong input entered or output
being misinterpreted.

 Malicious damage: someone deliberately trying to cause a failure in a system.

When we think about what might go wrong we have to consider defects and failures
arising from:

 Errors in specification, design and implementation of the software and system


 Errors in use of the system
 Environmental conditions
 Intentional damage
 Potential consequences of earlier errors, intentional damage, defects and failures.

What is the Cost of defects?

 The cost of finding and fixing defects rises considerably across the life cycle
 If an error is made and consequent defect is detected in the requirements at the
Specification stage , then it is relatively cheap to find and fix and then
specification
can be corrected and re-issued.
 If the defects detected in the design stage then the design can be corrected and
 re-issued with relatively little expenses.
 If the defect is introduced in the requirement , specification and it is not detected
Until accepatance testing or even once the system has been implemented then
it will be much more expensive to fix.

Testing and Quality

 Testing can give confidence in the quality of software if it finds few or no


defects

 Testing helps us to measure the quality of the software in terms of the


number of defects found , the tests run and the system covered by the
tests.

Quality : The degree to which a component , system or process meets specified


requirements or user or customer needs and expectations.

Validation: Is the right Specification?


Verification : Is the system correct to specification?

How much testing is enough? ( Test Principle – Exhaustive testing impossible)

 Instead of exhaustive testing, we use risks and priorities to focus testing efforts.
 Pressures on a project include time and budget as well as pressure to deliver technical
solution that meets customer needs.

 Customer and project manager will want to spend an amount on testing the produces
Return on Investments for them.

 Return on Investments  Preventing failures after releases that are costly.

 By assessing and managing risk is are of the important activities.

 How much testing is enough is according to level of risk, technical and business Risks
related to product and project

Detect Defects:

Help us understand the risks associated with putting the software into
operational .

Fixing the defects improves the quality of the products. Identifying the
defects has another benefits to improve the development process and
make fewer mistakes in future work.

When can we meet our test objective? (Test principle – Early Testing)

 Finding the defects


 Gaining confidence in and providing the information about level of quality.
 Preventing defects.

Benefits of early testing


Early test design and review activites — finds defects early on when they are
cheap to find and fix.

Fousing on defects can helps us plan our tests --- (Testing Principle – Defect clustering)
Main focus of reviews and other static tests is to carry out testing as early as possible
finding and fixing defects are more cheaply and preventing defects from appearing
at later stages of this project. These activites helps us find out about defects earlier
and identify potential clusters.

Debugging : The process of finding , analyzing and removing the causes of failures in
software.

TEST PLANNING

 Determine the scope and risks and identify the objectives of testing
 Determine the test approach (techniques, test items, coverage,testware) .
 Implement the test policy and the test strategy.
 Determine the required resources
 Schedule test analysis and design tasks,test implementation ,execution and evaluation
 Determine the exit criteria

TEST CONTROL
 Measure and analyze the results of reviews and testing .
 Monitor and document progress,test coverage and exit criteria.
 Provide information on testing.
 Initiate corrective actions
 Make decisions.
TEST ANALYSIS AND DESIGN
 Review the test basis.
 Identify test conditions based on analysis of test items, their specifications.
 Design the tests
 Evaluate testability of the requirements and system.
 Design the test environment set-up and identify any required infrastructures
and tools

TEST IMPLEMENTATION AND EXECUTION

IMPLEMENTATION:
 Develop and prioritize our test cases.
 Create the test suites from the test cases for efficient test execution.

EXECUTION:
 Execute the test suites and individual test cases.
 Log the outcome of test execution and record the identities and version, test tools and
testwares.
 Compare the actual results with expected results
 Repeat the activities as a result of action taken for each discrepancy.

EVALUATING EXIT CRITERIA AND REPORTING


 Check test logs against the exit criteria specified in the test planning
 Assess if more tests are needed or if the exit criteria specified should be changed.
 Write a test summary report for stakeholders.

TEST CLOSURE ACTIVITIES


• Check which planned deliverables with actually delivered and ensure all incident reports
have been resolved through defects repair or deferral.
• Finalize and archive testware,such as scripts, test environment and infrastructure.
• Hand over testware to the maintenance team.
• Evaluate the testing and analyze the lessons learned for future projects.

PSYCHOLOGY OF TESTING.
We need to be careful when we are reviewing and when we are testing.

 Communicate findings on the product in a neutral, fact focused without criticizing


the person who created it.

 Explain that by knowing about this now we can work round it or fix it so the
delivered the system is better for the customer.
 Start with collaboration rather than battles. Remind everyone common goal
of better quality system.
CHAPTER 2: TESTING THROUGHOUT THE SOFTWARE LIFE
CYCLE

In every development life cycle , a part of testing is performed on VERIFICATION


Testing and part is focused on VALIDATION Testing.

VERIFICATION: To determine whether it meets the requirements. Is the deliverable


built according to the specification?

VALIDATION: To determine whether it meets the user needs ---Is the deliverable
Fit for purpose?.

V-MODEL

Water fall model was one of the earliest models to be designed . It has the
natural timeline where the tasks are executed in a sequential fashion.
Draw backs of this model is difficult to get feedback passed backwards up the
waterfalls and there are difficulties if we need to carry out numerous
iterations for a particular phase.

The V-Model was developed to address the problems experienced using


the traditional Waterfall approach. The V-Model provides guidance that
testing needs to begin as early as possible in the life cycle.

The type V-Model uses four test levels.

Component testing
Integration testing
System testing
Acceptance testing
Iterative life cycles
 A common feature of iterative approaches is that the delivery is divided into
Increments or builds with each increments adding a new functionality.
 Intial increment will contain infrastructure required to support the
build functionali\ty

 The increment produced by a iteration may be tested at several level


as part of its development.

Testing within a life cyle model


In summary, whichever life cycle model is being used, there are several
Characteristics of good testing:

 For every department activity there is a corresponding testing activity.


 Each test level has test objectives specific to that level.
 The analysis and design of tests for a given test level should begin during
the corresponding development activity

 Testers should be involved in reviewing documents as soon as drafts are


are available in the development cycle.

Test Levels

Component Testing:
Also known as unit, module and program testing, that are separately testable.
Component testing may include testing of functionality and specific non-functional
Characteristics such as resource-behavior (e.g. memory leaks), performance or
Robustess testing as well as structural testing.

One approach in component testing, used in Extreme Programming (XP), is to


Prepare and automate test cases before coding. This is called a test-first approach
or test-driven development.

Integration Testing:
Integration testing tests interfaces between components, interactions to different
parts of system such as an operating system, file system and hardware or
interfaces between systems.

There may be more than one level of integration testing and it may carried
out on test objects of varying size.
 Component integration testing tests the interaction between software components
and after component testing
 System integration testing tests the interaction between the different systems and
may be done after system testing.

‘Big-Bang’ Integration testing


one extreme is that all component or system are integrated simultaneously, after
which everything is tested as a whole. Big –Bang testing has the advantage that
everything is finished before integration testing starts. Disadvantage is time
consuming and difficult to trace the cause of failures.

Different approach of integration

 Top-down approach
 Bottom- up approach
 Functional incremental.

System Testing:
System testing is concerned with the behavior of the whole system/product as
defined by the scope of a development project or product.

System testing should investigate both Functional and non-functional requirements


of the system.

System testing requires a controlled test environment with the regard to amongst
Others things, control of software versions, testware and the test data.

Acceptance Testing:
The goal of acceptance testing is to establish confidence in the system.
Acceptance testing is focuses on validation type of testing, determine whether
the system is fit for purpose. Finding defects should not be the main focus
in acceptance testing.

Acceptance testing may occur at more than just a single level.

 A Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) software product may be acceptance tested
when it is installed or integrated
 Acceptance testing of the usability of a components may be done during the
component testing.
 Acceptance testing of a new functional enhancement may come before system
testing.

Different types of Acceptance testing


 Operational Acceptance test (testing of backup/restore, disaster recovery)
 Compliance Acceptance test (testing is performed against the regulations, such as
legal or Safety regulations).
 Contract Acceptance test(performed against a contract’s acceptance criteria for
producing custom-developed software).

Two stages of Acceptance tests.


 Alpha testing: Tests take place at the developer’s site.
 Beta testing: Tests take place at the customer’s site (under real world working
conditions).

Test Types:
Testing of function:
Functional testing considers the specified behavior and is often as referred as
Black- box testing.

Function testing can based upon ISO 9216, be done focusing on suitability
Interoperability, security, accuracy and compliance

Testing functionality can be done from two perspectives:


 Requirements – based testing uses a specification of the functional requirement
for the system as the basis for desiging tests.

 Business- process- based testing uses knowledge of the business processes, which
describes the scenarios involved in day – to- day business use of the system.
Use cases are a very useful basis for test cases from business perspective.

Testing of software product characteristics (Non-functional testing)


Non-functional testing includes of performance testing, load testing, stress testing
Usability testing , maintainability testing, reliability testing and portability testing.

The ISO 9216 standard defines Six quality characteristics and the subdivision

Reliability: sub-characteristics maturity (robustness), fault-tolerance,


Recoverability and compliance
Usability: understandability, learnability, operability, attractiveness and
compliance.
Efficiency: Time behavior, resource utilization and compliance.

Maintainability: analyzability, changeability, stability, testability and compliance.


Portability: adaptability, installability, co-existence, replaceability and compliance.
Testing software structure/architecture (structural testing)

Structural testing is often referred as ‘white-box’ or ‘glass-box’ because we are


interested in what is happening ‘inside the box’.

Structural testing is most often used as a way of measuring the thoroughness


of testing through the coverage of a set of structural elements or coverage
items.

Testing related to changes:

Confirmation testing (re-testing):


When a test fails and we determine that the cause of failure is software
defect, the defect is reported and we can expect a new version of the software
that has had the defect fixed. We will need to execute the test again to confirm
that the defect has indeed been fixed. This is known as Confirmation Testing.

Regression testing
Testing of a previously tested program following modification to ensure that
defects have not been introduced or uncovered in unchanged areas of the
software as a result of the changes made. It is performed when the software or its
environment is changed.

Maintenance Testing:
Modification of a software product after delivery to correct defects, to improve
performance or other attributes or to adapt the product to the modified
environment .

Impact analysis and regression testing:


Usually maintenance testing will consist two parts:
 Testing the changes
 Regression tests to show that the rest of the system has not been affected
by the maintenance work.

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