Software Quality Assurance Certifications and new Trends in Software Testing

The functionality of Software Quality Assurance is to assure that the standards, processes,
and procedures are appropriate for the project and are correctly implemented.

This is a process, which flows from software requirement Analysis, software design,
coding, source code control, product testing, code reviews, change management,
configuration management, and release management.

SQA comes in many forms, from the developer who tests the own code, and SQA testers
work with automated testing tools and manual testing. Many vendors and groups have
recognized Quality Assurance and Testing as an essential part of the development and
maintenance process and have developed certifications to standardize and demonstrate
knowledge of the QA process and testing tools.

SQA Certifications standardized by the Quality Assurance Institute (QAI) includes

following levels of Certifications.

Certified Software Quality Analyst (CSQA),

Certified Software Tester (CSTE)
Certified Manager of Software Testing (CMST)
Certified Manager of Software Quality (CMSQ)
Certified Software Project Manager (CSPM)

Acquiring the above levels of certifications indicates a professional level of competence

in the principles and practices of quality assurance in the IT profession and gains
recognition as software quality profession, achieve more rapid career advancement, and
gain greater acceptance in the role as advisor to management.

Discussing about new trends in software testing can be forced on testing tools and new
methodologies in testing as the companies are trying hard to keep up a good demand by
delivering reliable, bug-free, and quality software.

Continuous Integration (CI) is one such software testing trend that is quickly being
adopted into the testing arena. It is a practice where the team members integrate their
work with rest of the development team on a frequent basis. The development team and
the testing team commit their changes to a central versioning system.

With CI the integration between the developed code and testing can be done as soon as
the changes by developers get committed. This results in many integrations per day, as
the development team will not have to wait for long to get feedbacks from the team of
testers. CI would result in removing the code duplication, authenticity of dependencies,
and coding standards.
Using the correct testing tool at the right time in a project can significantly increase the
efficiency of testing by automating processes, increasing communication, promoting best
practices and re-use of tests and test data.

The leading functional automated testing tools include:

Mecury: QTP and WinRunner

QuickTest Professional™ (QTP) and Mercury WinRunner® deliver a complete solution

for functional test, GUI test, and regression test automation with support for practically
every software application and environment.

Compuware: TestPartner and QARun

When testing complex applications based on Microsoft, Java and web-based

technologies, TestPartner helps reassure that testing efforts are complete. For other
application types, QARun gives developers and testers the automation capabilities needed
to create and execute test scripts, verify tests and analyze test results.

IBM Rational Robot

IBM Rational Robot is a general purpose test automation tool for QA teams who want to
perform functional testing of client/server applications.

Odin Technology - Axe

Axe is a new class of business process-oriented tools that allow non-technical users to
automate testing. It provides a means to rapidly deploy automated testing systems that
can be used by staff without specialist automation skills and minimal training. This
reduces the cost of introducing and maintaining test automation by a factor of four. Axe
can translate scripts to run with any of the functional testing tools mentioned above.

These are the leading automated testing tools for functional and regression testing. As
well as functional regression testing tools there are also automated performance testing
tools